Quote:
|
As you can see, it is quite clear that Gimli, a Dwarf, was a hardy and resolute member of a hardy and resolute species, and it is quite clear that there was a good deal of running involved, though not constantly. Within the internal consistency of Tolkien's world, it seems fairly clear that he envisioned Gimli running--and keeping up with the others. There is a difference between "never been trained" and "unable to do something". The former implies the lack of a teacher, which I will grant: Gimli probably never had a long-distance, mile-covering teacher. However, given that he is said to be a Dwarf of many journeys, and given that Dwarves don't ride horses, and given that Aragorn admires his Dwarven resiliency, I think the implication is that Gimli was quite capable of the feat.
|
You provide some good reasoning, but I prefer to simply put it down to very subtle divine aid from Eru. Like Gollum's slip, it was something that had to be done for the triumph of good - Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli needed to reach Rohan for everything that was to follow to occur properly. Therefore Eru gave them an extra boost in speed and endurance to get them there.
And it's not as if Tolkien doesn't have ridiculous 'feats' elsewhere in his works...Hurin manages to kill *seventy* Trolls when he's completely surrounded. In a real battle he would have been overwhelmed and killed in seconds. And yet in Tolkien, he carries out this heroic, ridiculous deed and no-one criticises Tolkien...because this is a fantasy story and we can suspend our sense of reality.
As for the films...I think you're exagerrating the dwarf running thing a bit. Gimli is not shown as slow or weak, just not as fast as Aragorn and Legolas, which is quite fair as he has the shortest legs and (presumably) the most and heaviest armour. He doesn't break down and moan that he can't go on any further; he just has some trouble keeping up - however, he stays with them and doesn't actually fall behind.