Mentalist, on 26 January 2019 - 08:36 PM, said:
Tolkien definitely had a bit of a bias towards the West when it came to Men- they are starkly opposed to the Men of Harad or the East, who are seen as cruel, barbaric, and enthralled by Sauron's lies.
This is true, but it's more of a lack of treatment of the men of the East (and potentially some racism since the East tends to stand in for the Ottomans/Asian invasions in general in the European myth-story he's creating) then pure valorisation of The West.
But on this:
Quote
I just ran across a few moments where someone would do something good and it would be said that "the blood of the Men of West still ran strongly in their veins," or someone would lament how far man had fallen and they weren't as great as the men of the west.
I think that's much of the point. People
in the story think that way but the story itself mostly doesn't. There are also clear genetic benefits to being of Numenorian blood, particularly long life, but the story never makes out that this makes people
better.
It's definitely true that Aragorn gets some bloodline exceptionalism but that's more royalty worship than a broader thing.
The backstory does make all this a lot more clear, in fairness. In the backstory the Men of the West fucked uuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuup!
I can't carry it for you, but I can carry you.