L.O.T.R. - Balrogs

I never gave any thought to whether Balrogs had wings until someone asked me one day "do you think Balrogs have wings". The first words out of my mouth were "yea I think so". But why did I think so? I couldn't remember the passage very well. We looked at the book and argued about it all day long. And what is funny is that we could both see both sides of the issue. So I would argue one way and my friend argued the other and then we switched positions.

I always thought that was just a weird question until I met other people who had opinions on the Balrogs and their wings. "Do you know about the Balrogs wings war" someone asked me. He handed me a copy of Wired Magazine that mentioned the "Great Balrog Wings Flame War of '97-98". People have time to argue about this on the Internet? I was curious so I started reading everything I could find on the Balrog wings debate. A lot of hard things were said back and forth. Why do people do that? Both sides are so stubborn. Neither side should be calling the other names.

I don't think Balrogs had real flappy wings. I think the shadow looked like wings because it took on that shape. Does the Balrog have to fly? That's a crazy thing to ask considering it had spent thousands of years in caves. Some people have written elaborate nonsensical documents about Balrogs. What is the point of dragging out every paragraph in every book that mentions a Balrog? One of the people in the debate, Michael Martinez, argues that Tolkien changed the way Balrogs looked in 1940. If that is true, then any descriptions of Balrogs from before that time don't have anything to do with the Balrog in the Lord of the Rings.

Martinez is all over the Internet. I found his essays at Suite101 and one of them talks about all the stupid arguments people have about Tolkien. He seems to be defending himself. I had to look up "sophistry" and it means "plausible but fallacious argument" or a misleading argument. Well I don't know if Martinez is a sophist but he makes it sound like he is no more a sophist than anyone else.

The truth about Balrogs is that there was a huge debate about them that lasted for months. It spilled onto the web and has moved into every discussion group. I have found many essays about Balrogs and lots of encyclopedias that talk about them. They all talk about the Balrogs wings war like it was some great struggle in human history. And what is funny is that like so many other things no two accounts of the war are the same.

Some people say the pro-wings movement insists there are real physical wings on the Balrog in Moria. Some people say the pro-wings movement only thinks the wings are made of shadow (hm...I must be in the pro-wings movement). Some people say the anti-wings group argue about simile and metaphor. Some people say the anti-wings group rewrite the text. The truth is that all these things are true to some extent. But who cares?

What if they gave a Balrog wings war and no one changed their mind? We don't have to play what if. I think that is what happened. When the arguing was done and all the name-calling was etched in stone, no one had a different opinion from before. Maybe the takeaway from all this is that Balrogs don't really matter. Maybe what matters is that you enjoyed the story enough to care about all the little details.