Character Analysis Thread

[MatthewM]

Originally Posted by Bêthberry

And on the other hand there's Tom and Sam. If only Boromir had had a bit more sense of silliness and humour about him. )

No. That "silliness" you speak of is quite annoying in my opinion. Boromir had a sense of humor, he used sarcasm more than once on the journey. He just didn't have (thankfully) the senseless dummy humour that Sam and Tom had. And I'm extremely glad about that. Boromir's stern and proud nature made him stand out, and made him who he was.

Originally Posted by Gordis

All siblings share the same blood - but that doesn't mean they must be identical twins. Ibrin is 100% right - genes may be expressed or not. Genotype is one thing, phenotype is another: thus brothers can be (and often are) very unlike, both in appearance and in character. And even the Numenoreans from the line of Elendil were not all alike: we are told in UT that Aragorn most resembled Elendil himself, as well as Isildur’s son Elendur, while Boromir was much alike to Earnur the last King and to Boromir I, Steward of Gondor.

You misunderstood me. I never said they were supposed to be identical. Why did you make that up? I already know everything that you said. Obviously siblings come out differently. My argument is that Tolkien was definitely not talking physical blood, he was using it as a metaphor to say that Boromir did not have the same Numenorean mind qualities that Faramir and Denethor had. But he had everything else that was Numenorean. He was of high Num. lineage.

I can't stand when people take the blood quote literally. All Gandalf implied was character traits.