"Flame of Udun"?

bropous · 03-07-2002, 12:56 PM

Hopefully this is in the right forum, as it pertains both to the books and to the film.

Okay. At the bridge of Khazad-Dum, Gandalf calls the balrog "Flame of Udun". Maybe should have added, "overgrown, overambitious charcoal briquette" to it. However, Udun is the valley right behind the Morannon in Mordor.

Now, the Balrogs were servants of Morgoth, and the Balrog in Moria wasn't exactly in outright allegiance with Sauron. So, since there is no real direct link with Mordor and Balrogs, why call the Balrog "Flame of Udun"?

Curious what you folks think. Sorry if this has been covered in another thread already.

03-07-2002, 12:56 PM	#1
bropous EIDRIORCQWSDAKLMED DCWWTIWOATTOPWFIO Join Date: Dec 2001 Location: Littleton, CO Posts: 1,176	"Flame of Udun"? Hopefully this is in the right forum, as it pertains both to the books and to the film. Okay. At the bridge of Khazad-Dum, Gandalf calls the balrog "Flame of Udun". Maybe should have added, "overgrown, overambitious charcoal briquette" to it. However, Udun is the valley right behind the Morannon in Mordor. Now, the Balrogs were servants of Morgoth, and the Balrog in Moria wasn't exactly in outright allegiance with Sauron. So, since there is no real direct link with Mordor and Balrogs, why call the Balrog "Flame of Udun"? Curious what you folks think. Sorry if this has been covered in another thread already. __________________ "...[The Lord of the Rings] is to exemplify most clearly a recurrent theme: the place in 'world politics' of the unforeseen and unforeseeable acts of will, and deeds of virtue of the apparently small, ungreat, fogotten in the places of the Wise and Great (good as well as evil). A moral of the whole (after the primary symbolism of the Ring, as the will to mere power, seeking to make itself objective by physical force and mechanism, and so also inevitably by lies) is the obvious one that without the high and noble the simple and vulgar is utterly mean; and without the simple and ordinary the noble and heroic is meaningless." Letters of JRR Tolkien, page 160.