Orcs, the nature of (again)
Avilan
I usually lurk here, on and off. Now, I am not a scolar or nerd when
it come to Tolkien, but I have always loved his stuff. So...
I know, as we (here) all do that the concept of orcs / goblins changed
as he wrote, and even more afterwards.
Personally I prefer the version(s) in LOTR and earlier; Orcs are
"evil", but maybe not completely irredeemable, and they have free
will. I like the idea from Bilbo (and parts of LOTR) that between
bosses (Morgoth's and Sauron's various falls and rises) the orcs were
controlled only by their own free will, and although not as numerous,
because they didn't have an official Master or Breeding Programme,
seems almost happy.
Also I do think that it is that time period that Gorbag and Shagrat
refers to in the quote below. The good old times, before Sauron raised
his head again:
'No, I don't know,' said Gorbag's voice. 'The messages go through
quicker than anything could fly, as a rule. But I don't enquire how
it's
done. Safest not to. Grr! Those Nazgûl give me the creeps. And they
skin
the body off you as soon as look at you, and leave you all cold in the
dark on the other side. But He likes 'em; they're His favourites
nowadays, so it's no use grumbling. I tell you, its' no game serving
down in the city.'
'You should try being up here with Shelob for company,' said Shagrat.
'I'd like to try somewhere where there's none of 'em. But the war's on
now, and when that's over things may be easier.'
'It's going well, they say.'
'They would,' grunted Gorbag. 'We'll see. But anyway, if it does go
well, there should be a lot more room. What d'you say? - if we get a
chance, you and me'll slip off and set up somewhere on our own with a
few trusty lads, somewhere where there's good loot nice and handy, and
no big bosses.'
'Ah!' said Shagrat. 'Like old times.'
'Yes,' said Gorbag. 'But don't count on it. I'm not easy in my mind.'
I do believe that the "early" version of orcs, as portrayed in Bilbo
("Goblins") and some parts of LOTR (the quote above and other orcs
talking / arguing among themselves) are actually redeemable. Or at
least not irredeemable in that Absolute way that seems to have caused
JRRT so much trouble later. They are cruel, they are greedy and they
are selfish. But we also see that they are capable of an inner social
structure, and as Tolkien insists that they breed like all other
beings on Middle Earth, there must also be mothers, youngsters, etc.
It's just that when they once again are caught up in the Breeding
Programme of Sauron, we have no chance of seeing that.
They seem capable of cannibalism, but so have various human tribes
over the centuries.
Personally, I like to believe that if they truly could be left to
their own devices (as between Bosses, and after the fall of Sauron (I
don't buy that all of them disappeared or collapsed unable to
function, I much prefer the explanation in Bilbo that they turn into
the legends of Goblins and other creatures of the wilderness for us in
the fourth age, hiding, but being seen from time to time, maybe even
mistaken for Trolls now and then) they would turn into a Klingon (TNG
and forth version) society of sorts. Cruel, Selfish, accepting
Strength as the one good and true measure of a good Leader. Heck, even
in LOTR we see that they DO have concepts of betrayal and backstabbing
(as a Bad thing, although when done to orcs from a different tribe,
not so bad). I think they would be able to establish laws and basic
Honor.
Now I am not painting them with rose-colored glasses. The English sure
didn't think that the Vikings showing up plundering and burning were
"cruel but honorable". If an orc band would plunder a village in the
fourth age, people would still hunt them down and most humans would
still kill an orc on sight. And the other way around.
What I am saying is that they could evolve from Evil Beings to
Bastards. And maybe further, given time.
Troels Forchhammer
<7ab491f2-af00-48a4...@f63g2000hsf.googlegroups.com>
Avilan <stefans...@gmail.com> spoke these staves:
>
This arrived during the quiet period a month ago -- so quiet, in
fact, that despite being on-topic and interesting, it never got any
responses. I will refrain from snipping in order to provide a full
context.
> Hello.
> I usually lurk here, on and off. Now, I am not a scolar or nerd
> when it come to Tolkien, but I have always loved his stuff. So...
>
> I know, as we (here) all do that the concept of orcs / goblins
> changed as he wrote, and even more afterwards.
I don't know when Tolkien's conception of the Orcs underwent the
greatest actual changes. I agree with Shippey that the Orcs, in /The
Book of Lost Tales/ started out as the infantry of Melko, for which
the old word 'Orc' was an excellent match (and the details of which,
once they began to appear, were doubtlessly shaped by the choice of
name).
From this beginning, there is still a goodly way to the corrupted
Eruhíni of later legend, which emerged slowly as the legendarium grew
richer in detail.
> Personally I prefer the version(s) in LOTR and earlier; Orcs are
> "evil", but maybe not completely irredeemable, and they have free
> will.
Though Tolkien did consider other options, it does seem to me that
he, too, always returned to this idea. Despite his various
experiments with other idea, Tolkien always returned to an
explanation whereby the Orcs were corrupted Eruhíni with free will
and a soul and it is the texts containing this idea that provide the
most elaborate and detailed descriptions (as well as those that are
the most consistent with what is said in TH and LotR).
> I like the idea from Bilbo (and parts of LOTR) that between
> bosses (Morgoth's and Sauron's various falls and rises) the orcs
> were controlled only by their own free will, and although not as
> numerous, because they didn't have an official Master or Breeding
> Programme, seems almost happy.
Yes. And yet it is precisely this that constitutes the philosophical
/ theological problem for Tolkien (more about that later).
I don't think that it was so much the redeemability of the Orcs at
the individual level that caused Tolkien so many problems -- rather
it was the irredeemability of the Orcs as a race -- or, perhaps
rather, the corruptibility of any strand of the Eruhíni /as a race/!
If Orcs could be corrupted so far that much of this corruption was
inherited from generation to generation through millennia this would
mean that the corruption is such that not only can the victims not
redeem themselves by their own power (or that of any that they may
meet), but they must somehow be able to pass this corruption on with
undiminished strength.
Now, if this was about creatures that were, by nature, irredeemably
evil and, indeed, without a free will to seek redemption, there
wouldn't be any problem, but for creatures who are created with free
will and who are created with the purpose to work good (by their
maker, Eru), the level of corruption necessary to achieve the above
seems excessive.
> They are cruel, they are greedy and they are selfish.
They also take delight in the degradation and humiliation of others,
and they derive pleasure from hurting and torturing others.
> But we also see that they are capable of an inner social structure,
But so are ants and other animals, so that fact alone doesn't really
make much of a difference, I'd say. The important thing must be the
nature of that social structure, and in the matter of the Orcs, their
social structure seems to be strictly a hierarchical pecking order
with the strongest in the top, cruelly dominating the rest.
> and as Tolkien insists that they breed like all other beings on
> Middle Earth, there must also be mothers, youngsters, etc.
There is even textual evidence for the youngsters -- Gollum had
feasted on a 'small goblin-imp' not long before Bilbo arrived at his
lake.
The presence of offspring and females who have given birth does not,
in and off itself, tell us very much about the nature of the Orcs,
and unfortunately Tolkien is not very forthcoming on the matter of
Orkish society. I would find it difficult to believe that there were
any love whatsoever between 'mother' and 'child' -- the imps were
probably left to fend for themselves from a very early age, living
off the surplus and the refuse of the adults in a very harsh society
of imps where only those strong or cunning enough to fit into orkish
society will survive.
I don't know what was the role of the females in an orkish tribe, but
I don't think it was merely as breeding cows (I think that would
rather tend to bind them stronger to their offspring). It seems more
likely to me that the females were warriors on the same terms as the
males, and that a female would therefore want to be free of her child
extra quick so that she could again defend her position in the
hierarchy. Possibly a few old females were kept alive to tend for the
newborn until they could join the fight for food, but I don't believe
that orkish society had any room for anything resembling family
units.
> It's just that when they once again are caught up in the Breeding
> Programme of Sauron, we have no chance of seeing that.
There's some evidence hinting that being 'caught up in the Breeding
Programme of Sauron' was their natural state ;-) It is suggested in
one of the texts in 'Myths Transformed' (/Morgoth's Ring/) that it
was Sauron who did the practical work in corrupting the Orcs from
human stock during the ages of Melkor's Captivity in Valinor.
> They seem capable of cannibalism, but so have various human tribes
> over the centuries.
Indeed.
> Personally, I like to believe that if they truly could be left to
> their own devices (as between Bosses, and after the fall of Sauron
[# relocating parenthetical comment]
> they would turn into a Klingon (TNG and forth version) society of
> sorts. Cruel, Selfish, accepting Strength as the one good and
> true measure of a good Leader.
I'm not sufficiently familiar with Klingon society (or the Star Trek
universe in general) to comment on the specific similarity, but the
adjectives do seem apt, though I don't think they quite cover the
subject. Orkish society, IMO, would always be about power and
domination -- these are the principal motivations for Orcs both as
individuals and as a society, and would remain their principal
motives no matter
> Heck, even in LOTR we see that they DO have concepts of betrayal
> and backstabbing (as a Bad thing, although when done to orcs from
> a different tribe, not so bad). I think they would be able to
> establish laws and basic Honor.
They didn't even mind doing it to Orcs in their own tribe or company,
'D'you remember old Ufthak?'
I doubt that there was any practical concept of loyalty among Orcs,
even though they clearly understand the concept in theory ('The big
fellow with the sharp sword doesn't seem to have thought him worth
much anyhow - just left him lying: regular elvish trick.') Tom
Shippey discusses this in both his books, /The Road to Middle-earth/
(3rd ed. pp.265f), /J.R.R. Tolkien: Author of the Century/
(pp.121ff), but his most thorough treatment is, IMO, in the essay
'Orcs, Wraiths, Wights: Tolkien's Images of Evil' (published in
/Roots and Branches/ and earlier in /J.R.R. Tolkien and his Literary
Resonances: Vies of Middle-earth/ edited by George Clark and Daniel
Timmons).
[#]
> (I don't buy that all of them disappeared or collapsed unable to
> function,
No, I quite agree. I am convinced that the passage in the beginning
of LotR VI,4 'The Field of Cormallen' describing the reactions of
'the creatures of Sauron, orc or troll or beast spell-enslaved'
applies only to those Orcs and Trolls that are under the direct
command and influence of Sauron, those whom he was actively spurring
on and upon whom his mind was resting, not all Orcs and Trolls in all
of Middle-earth; surely some of the enemies defeated by Celeborn &
Galadriel, Thranduil, Bard II and Thorin III were also Orcs (in
particular those at Dol Guldur).
> I much prefer the explanation in Bilbo that they turn into the
> legends of Goblins and other creatures of the wilderness for us
> in the fourth age, hiding, but being seen from time to time,
> maybe even mistaken for Trolls now and then)
And inventing many of the methods for fast destruction of many people
that have plagued the world in the many millennia since the Fourth
Age of Middle-earth . . ..
Yes, I rather like that image ;)
I wonder if they wouldn't eventually get mixed up with humans, the
Orkish strain
> Now I am not painting them with rose-colored glasses. The English
> sure didn't think that the Vikings showing up plundering and
> burning were "cruel but honorable".
Hey! I won't have you speaking ill of the creative tourists that
visited the fair isles ;-) Heck! they weren't much worse as tourists
than their modern-day descendants . . . eh . . . I mean . . . ;-)
> If an orc band would plunder a village in the fourth age, people
> would still hunt them down and most humans would still kill an
> orc on sight. And the other way around.
I rather think that most humans would still flee from an orc on sight
-- but they would wish that they had a big warrior handy that could
cut down the orc, certainly.
I also think that you could always find human who would be willing to
co-operate with Orcs -- even to the point of cross-breeding.
> What I am saying is that they could evolve from Evil Beings to
> Bastards. And maybe further, given time.
I've wondered a bit about Orcs in connection with this. I fully
understand Tolkien's problem with respect to the inheritability of
the corruption, and I think it must have included some basic genetic
engineering (as we would say today -- Melkor and Sauron doubtlessly
didn't think of it that way). I think we could devise a human society
that could have worked at the orkish level even for some generations,
but for tens of millennia? I doubt that.
Even within Tolkien's legendarium Men are agents of change -- it is
through their deeds that 'everything should be, in form and deed,
completed, and the world fulfilled unto the last and smallest.' This
is possibly an argument why I should think that Orcs would have to be
corrupted from Elves, because orkish society doesn't display the
dynamics of human society. As an integral part of the inheritability
of their corruption, Orcs seems to lack any drive for social change,
something which I find problematic (in particular in the light of
statements that 'they were by nature short-lived compared with the
span of Men of higher race, such as the Edain.' ['Myths Transformed'
text X]).
Shippey, in /The Road to Middle-earth/ says that 'Tolkien saw the
problem, and collected th parts of a solution. He did not, however,
assemble the parts -- perhaps because it would have involved, to be
consistent, a complete revision of all his earlier work.' My
impression is that the solution Shippey is thinking of is to make the
Orcs into a type of automata similar to the Dwarves before Eru
accepted them, but I agree with what I perceive is your position,
that while this might solve Tolkien's philosophical problems, it
would also make the Orcs less interesting as adversaries; I
understand the problems, but for the literary purpose, I, too, prefer
the Orcs as they are presented in /The Hobbit/ and /The Lord of the
Rings/.
Just for fun, a couple of links to excellent information about Orcs:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orc_%28Middle-earth%29>
<http://tolkien.slimy.com/#Natures>
--
Troels Forchhammer
Valid e-mail is <troelsfo(a)gmail.com>
Please put [AFT], [RABT] or 'Tolkien' in subject.
Your theory is crazy, but it's not crazy enough to be true.
- Niels Bohr, to a young physicist