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I disagree with this, at least in a symbolic sense. The sea is portrayed as being a tool of the Valar. Numenor deserved what it got. I don't find the sea being the means of transporting the Elves to Valinor to be particularly menacing.
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I'll just explain a little of what I mean by 'menacing' in terms of the sea in Middle Earth. I do not see it as a malevolent power; its menace comes from the fact that it is tremendously powerful and has such huge potential for wreaking destruction - not unlike our own seas. The sea is in the hands of greater powers, and, right or wrong, it is up to them what they do with this power.
As to why I find the fact that the Elves are taken across it to be menacing, I am referring to the sheer size of the ocean; it is a bridge which it is almost impossible to cross, and the Elves are being borne that way. It is a one way journey with no coming back, much as the sea would have been viewed by convicts transported across the immense oceans to Australia. There is no gong back from this trip, and what is more, there is no communication, it is absolute.