Quote:
Originally Posted by akhtene
My question is: WHY SUCH A POETIC, NOSTALGIC DESCRIPTION? It didn’t leave (with me) the feeling of a rightly deserved punishment, or eliminating something dangerous or hostile.
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Because although it was a deserved punishment, it was a tragedy that never should have happened. The nostalgia is for Numenor as it used to be - that Numenor had been dying for a long time, and its corruption was complete before it sank - the sinking was more like the burial of something dead rather than the murder or something living.
It can hardly have pleased Eru/the Valar to sink the island - they aren't, in general, vindictive sorts who sit on their thrones waiting for people to screw up so that they can be punished. It would have pleased them much more for the Numenoreans to see the error of their ways and, well, repent. To put it another way, let's say you have a really nice vase or something in your house, and it falls and breaks. You're going to fix it if you can, especially if it only chips. But sometimes you can't fix things... if it's in a thousand pieces, no matter how much you like the vase you sweep it up and throw it out. That doesn't mean you like getting rid of it. Numenor was in that thousand pieces... it couldn't be "fixed" and didn't want to be.