Do Balrogs Have Wings?

[Folwren]

Originally posted by Morsul the Dark:
my evidence is the fact that radagast gandalf and saruman dont look exactly the same and they too were maiar

That logic makes no sense. Horses are animals and they're different from birds, that are also animals, and although two horses are never going to look exactly alike, no horse will ever have wings (like a bird). Of course those three wizards looked different than eachother!

I vote that Balrogs do not have wings. I only have the LotR to draw from because I've not read any of the other books all the way through and haven't read about any other Balrogs... Be that as it may, in the LotR, it says:

His enemy halted again, facing him, and the shadow about it reached out like two vast wings.

Okay, guys, in that second part of the sentence (and the shadow about it reached out like two vast wings) what's the subject? The shadow is the subject. Not wings. The Shadow is compared to Wings, but the Shadow is not Wings. Tolkien was an English Teacher, he studied the language, he taught it, and he was an awesome writer - he's not going to write something like that and want it to mean that the Balrog had wings and go off and make the shadow the subject.

And, if you don't like that reasoning, why didn't it fly? It didn't have to walk across that bridge and fall when the stone broke. You could say it didn't have room, but what are the chances of that in the huge hall they were in?

- Folwren