Numenorean Blood

[Gimli's Rage]

Numenorean Blood


A central theme in Tolkien’s trilogy is one that Jackson’s films go out of their way to downplay, if not completely ignore. According to Tolkien’s detailed mythology (see The Silmarillion as well as the trilogy), the Numenorean descendants of Aragorn’s time have become weaker of mind, body and spirit because their ancestors’ blood “mingled with the blood of lesser men”.
Essentially, Tolkien’s Numenorean humans were a race of beings blessed with gifts from the Valar (God), and were genetically superior (a genetically superior race) to the men roaming Middle Earth in Aragorn’s day.
Tolkien’s in-depth characterization of them suggests a people similar to the mythical Aryan race that Hitler was so fond of harkening back to.

What is that you’re thinking right now?

Yes, well you can be sure that Mr. Jackson didn’t intend for his viewers to be thinking about any such thing. These are taboo ideas. Concepts that conjure up images of fascism, Nazi propaganda and any number of other fanatical lunacies one can imagine.
Filmmakers who have “examined” the vagaries of genetic influence on society have invariably supported the “American Dream” that we all have within us the potential for greatness – that bloodlines are irrelevant.
One excellent example is Gattaca, in which genetic tampering improves physical and mental attributes but cannot, in the end, compete with willpower, drive, ingenuity and a healthy impulse to cheat the establishment. Another film that overtly ridicules the concept of royal bloodlines is Unforgiven. Richard Harris’s bounty hunting character delivers a maniacal thesis on the power of genetic inheritance just prior to having the English crumpets kicked out of him. He and his somewhat bloodied superiority are hauled away in a cage.
I suspect that Tolkien would have agreed in principle to most of what the Harris character was espousing. Sitting in his Oxford office in the mid-1950’s, with a beautiful young queen just ascended to the throne of England, Tolkien was very much a royalist. I think he firmly believed in the importance of genetic lineage, particularly with regard to leaders.
It seems clear from the canon of Tolkien’s works that he intended for Aragorn and Faramir to represent the nobler aspects of their race. Tolkien endowed these two heroes of Gondor with a “biding nobility” inherited from their ancestors, a strength of character that distinguishes each from the men around him, a presence of mind and body that comes not only from character and experience, but from the very blood that flows in their veins. While the Numenoreans were susceptible to temptation, as their eventual downfall shows, Tolkien intended for Aragorn and Faramir to represent the lost seed of Numenorean greatness.
So where does this leave Peter Jackson in his bid to translate the two characters onto the big screen?
Jackson himself has said that he chose to characterize them as fallible because all the other characters were tempted by the ring’s power and it would have been illogical for them to be immune. What he didn’t say is that it would have been illogical unless he wrote the reason for their immunity into the screenplay. He couldn’t do this because the rules of politically correct filmmaking forbid it.
Our modern mythmaking shuns the very idea of nobility being associated with blood. We like our heroes fallible. We want them to succeed despite their shortcomings, not because of the blood in their veins. After all, who in the audience has such blood, and how then can anyone identify with such a character?
Peter Jackson knows this about his audience and so he wrote a screenplay that gives them what they want.
Unfortunately for those of us who respect Tolkien’s vision, the director has filled these visually stunning films with all kinds of blood, but he has chosen to ignore the blood of Numenor.