Orcs 3

[Zulema Estabrooks]

InTolkien's The Lord of the Rings, orcs appear as a brutish, aggressive, ugly, and malevolent race of monsters, contrasting with the benevolent Elves. They are a corrupted race of elves, either bred that way by the Dark Lord Morgoth, or turned savage in that manner, according to the Silmarillion.[4][5]

The orc was a sort of "hell-devil" in Old English literature, and the orc-n (pl. orc-nas, "demon-corpses") was a race of corrupted beings and descendants of Cain, alongside the elf, according to the poem Beowulf. Tolkien adopted the term orc from these old attestations, which he professed was a choice made purely for "phonetic suitability" reasons.[T 1]

The Anglo-Saxon word orc, which Tolkien used, is generally thought to be derived from the Latin word/name Orcus,[6] though Tolkien himself expressed doubt about this.[7] The term orcus is glossed as "orc, yrs, oe hel-deofol"[a] ("Goblin, spectre, or hell-devil") in the 10th century Old English Cleopatra Glossaries, about which Thomas Wright wrote, "Orcus was the name for Pluto, the god of the infernal regions, hence we can easily understand the explanation of hel-deofol. Orc, in Anglo-Saxon, like thyrs, means a spectre, or goblin."[8][9][b]

In the sense of a monstrous being, the term is used just once in Beowulf, as the plural compound orcneas, one of the tribes belonging to the descendants of Cain, alongside the elves and ettins (giants) condemned by God:

The meaning of Orcneas is uncertain. Frederick Klaeber suggested it consisted of orc orcus "the underworld" + neas "corpses", to which the translation "evil spirits" failed to do justice.[12][c] It is generally supposed to contain an element -n, cognate to Gothic naus and Old Norse nr, both meaning 'corpse'.[6][d] If *orcn is to be glossed as orcus 'corpse', then the compound word can be construed as "demon-corpses",[14] or "corpse from Orcus (i.e. the underworld)".[12] Hence orc-neas may have been some sort of walking dead monster, a product of ancient necromancy,[12] or a zombie-like creature.[14][15]

The term "orc" is used only once in the first edition of Tolkien's 1937 The Hobbit, which preferred the term "goblins". "Orc" was later used ubiquitously in The Lord of the Rings.[16][T 2] The "orc-" element occurs in the sword name Orcrist,[e][T 2][16] which is given as its Elvish language name,[T 3][17] and glossed as "Goblin-cleaver".[T 4]

Tolkien stated in a letter to the novelist Naomi Mitchison that his orcs had been influenced by George MacDonald's The Princess and the Goblin.[T 1] He explained that his word "orc" was "derived from Old English orc 'demon', but only because of its phonetic suitability",[T 1][16] and

Tolkien also observed a similarity with the Latin word orcus, noting that "the word used in translation of Q[uenya] urko, S[indarin] orch is Orc. But that is because of the similarity of the ancient English word orc, 'evil spirit or bogey', to the Elvish words. There is possibly no connection between them".[T 5]

Orcs are of human shape, and of varying size.[T 7] They are depicted as ugly and filthy, with a taste for human flesh. They are fanged, bow-legged and long-armed. Most are small and avoid daylight.[T 8]

By the Third Age, a new breed of orc had emerged, the Uruk-hai, larger and more powerful, and no longer afraid of daylight.[T 8] Orcs eat meat, including the flesh of Men, and may indulge in cannibalism: in The Two Towers, Grishnkh, an orc from Mordor, claims that the Isengard orcs eat orc-flesh. Whether that is true or spoken in malice is uncertain: an orc flings Peregrin Took stale bread and a "strip of raw dried flesh ... the flesh of he dared not guess what creature".[T 8]

Half-orcs appear in The Lord of the Rings, created by interbreeding of orcs and Men;[T 9] they were able to go in sunlight.[T 8] The "sly Southerner" in The Fellowship of the Ring looks "more than half like a goblin";[T 10] similar but more orc-like hybrids appear in The Two Towers "man-high, but with goblin-faces, sallow, leering, squint-eyed."[T 11]

In Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings films, the actors playing orcs are made up with masks designed to make them look evil. After a disagreement with the film producer Harvey Weinstein, Jackson had one of the masks made to resemble Weinstein, as an insult to him.[18]

The Orcs had no language of their own, merely a pidgin of many various languages. However, individual tribes developed dialects that differed so widely that Westron, often with a crude accent, was used as a common language.[T 8][19] When Sauron returned to power in Mordor in the Third Age, Black Speech was used by the captains of his armies and by his servants in his tower of Barad-dr. A sample of debased Black Speech can be found in The Two Towers, where a "yellow-fanged" guard Orc of Mordor curses Uglk of Isengard (an Uruk-hai chief) with the words "Uglk u bagronk sha pushdug Saruman-glob bbhosh skai!" In The Peoples of Middle-earth, Tolkien gives the translation: "Uglk to the cesspool, sha! the dungfilth; the great Saruman-fool, skai!"[T 12] However, in a note published in Vinyar Tengwar he gives an alternative translation: "Uglk to the dung-pit with stinking Saruman-filth, pig-guts, gah!"[20]Alexander Nemirovsky [ru] speculated that Tolkien might have drawn upon the language of the ancient Hittites and Hurrians for Black Speech.[21]

The origin(s) of orcs were explained two different ways (i.e., inconsistently) by Tolkien:[5] the orcs were either East Elves (Avari) enslaved, tortured, and bred by Morgoth (as Melkor became known),[T 13] or, "perhaps ... Avari [(a race of elves)] ... [turned] evil and savage in the wild", both according to The Silmarillion.[T 14][h]

The orcs "multiplied" like Elves and Men, meaning that they reproduced sexually.[22] Tolkien stated in a letter dated 21 October 1963 to a Mrs. Munsby that "there must have been orc-women".[T 16][23][24] In The Fall of Gondolin Morgoth made them of slime by sorcery, "bred from the heats and slimes of the earth".[T 17] Or, they were "beasts of humanized shape", possibly, Tolkien wrote, Elves mated with beasts, and later Men.[T 18] Or again, Tolkien noted, they could have been fallen Maiar, perhaps a kind called Boldog, like lesser Balrogs; or corrupted Men.[T 9]

O'Hehir describes orcs as "a subhuman race bred by Morgoth and/or Sauron (although not created by them) that is morally irredeemable and deserves only death. They are dark-skinned and slant-eyed, and although they possess reason, speech, social organization and, as Shippey mentions, a sort of moral sensibility, they are inherently evil."[29] He notes Tolkien's own description of them, saying it could scarcely be more revealing as a representation of the "Other", and states "it is also the product of his background and era, like most of our inescapable prejudices. At the level of conscious intention, he was not a racist or an anti-Semite" and mentions Tolkien's letters to this effect.[29] The literary critic Jenny Turner, writing in the London Review of Books, endorses Andrew O'Hehir's comment on Salon.com that orcs are "by design and intention a northern European's paranoid caricature of the races he has dimly heard about".[30][29]

Tally describes the orcs as a demonized enemy, despite (he writes) Tolkien's own objections to demonization of the enemy in the two World Wars.[31] In a letter to his son, Christopher, who was serving in the RAF in the Second World War, Tolkien wrote of orcs as appearing on both sides of the conflict:

Yes, I think the orcs as real a creation as anything in 'realistic' fiction ... only in real life they are on both sides, of course. For 'romance' has grown out of 'allegory', and its wars are still derived from the 'inner war' of allegory in which good is on one side and various modes of badness on the other. In real (exterior) life men are on both sides: which means a motley alliance of orcs, beasts, demons, plain naturally honest men, and angels.[T 21]

John Magoun, writing in the J.R.R. Tolkien Encyclopedia, states that Middle-earth has a "fully expressed moral geography".[28] Any moral bias towards a north-western geography, however, was directly denied by Tolkien in a letter to Charlotte and Denis Plimmer, who had recently interviewed him in 1967:

Auden has asserted that for me 'the North is a sacred direction'. That is not true. The North-west of Europe, where I (and most of my ancestors) have lived, has my affection, as a man's home should. I love its atmosphere, and know more of its histories and languages than I do of other parts; but it is not 'sacred', nor does it exhaust my affections. I do have, for instance, a particular fondness for the Latin language, and among its descendants for Spanish. That it is untrue for my story, a mere reading of the synopses should show. The North was the seat of the fortresses of the Devil [ie. Morgoth].[T 22]

Scholars of English literature William N. Rogers II and Michael R. Underwood note that a widespread element of late 19th century Western culture was fear of moral decline and degeneration; this led to eugenics.[33] In The Two Towers, the Ent Treebeard says:[T 23]

It is a mark of evil things that came in the Great Darkness that they cannot abide the Sun; but Saruman's orcs can endure it, even if they hate it. I wonder what he has done? Are they Men he has ruined, or has he blended the races of orcs and Men? That would be a black evil![T 23]

The Germanic studies scholar Sandra Ballif Straubhaar however argues against the "recurring accusations" of racism, stating that "a polycultured, polylingual world is absolutely central" to Middle-earth, and that readers and filmgoers will easily see that.[34] The historian and Tolkien scholar Jared Lobdell likewise disagreed with any notions of racism inherent or latent in Tolkien's works, and wondered "if there were a way of writing epic fantasy about a battle against an evil spirit and his monstrous servants without its being subject to speculation of racist intent".[35]

3a8082e126