[Estelyn Telcontar]

Wonderful topic, littlemanpoet, and in paging through the RotK for the examples I wanted, I found it true that Tolkien described evil settings most vividly (lividly?!), as Mr. Underhill suggested. Here are several glimpses of Mount Doom that struck me:

Sam looking at Orodruin:

Ever and anon the furnaces far below its ashen cone pour forth rivers of molten rock from chasms in its sides. Some would flow blazing towards Barad-dûr down great channels; some would wind their way into the stone plain, until they cooled and lay like twisted dragon-shapes vomited from the tormented earth.

Mount Doom again:

…its feet founded in ashen ruin, its huge cone rising to a great height, where its reeking head was swathed in cloud. Its fires were now dimmed, and it stood in smouldering slumber, as threatening and dangerous as a sleeping beast.

And the end of Mount Doom as seen by Sam:

A brief vision he had of swirling cloud, and in the midst of it towers and battlements, tall as hills, founded upon a mighty mountain-throne above immeasurable pits; great courts and dungeons, eyeless prisons sheer as cliffs, and gaping gates of steel and adamant: and then all passed. Towers fell and mountains slid; walls crumbled and melted, crashing down; vast spires of smoke and spouting steams went billowing up, up, until they toppled like an overwhelming wave, and its wild crest curled and came foaming down upon the land.

The first two examples almost seem to describe a living entity; the third is quite an architectural description.

Passages like these are the reason I can reread LotR again and again…