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RE: Melkor's enemies- Eagles on: September 25, 2007 08:26
Tolkien had a particular image of "the eagles of the Lords of the West" which crops up over and over. In this, the image of the eagle appears as gathering thunder-clouds rising over the horizon, particularly at sunset. Think about it. The great banks of cloud like outspread wings with the typical "anvil" shape rising from the centre, looking like an eagle's head in profile. Storm and flood as divine agents.
Straying slightly off-topic (or at least off-book), one of these images, followed by a great storm, can be found in "The Notion Club Papers", written in the 1940s, but set in 1987 ... the year when Britain really did have the greatest storm in living memory ... but Tolkien had been dead 14 years by then. Prophecy?