A question about Orcs? (This bothers me, and is not utterly Vanity, I hope!)

self. Vanity.

[Iris7]

I am a great fan of the Professor's story of the War of the Ring. The Lord of the Rings is wonderfully written; the last time I read it I found myself reading aloud to myself. The language rings and shimmers.

Professor Tolkien agreed with his many critics that the story was too short. The Professor was correct in this, I believe. Another thousand pages would have rounded out the story nicely. I have a question, important to me, that I wish the Professor would have answered about Orcs.

What were Orcs really like? Jackson gives his opinion in Towers where Merry and Pippin are captives of the Uruk Hai, and a good scene it is. Mostly, though, I saw Jackson's Orcs as un-understandable, as if they were cardboard demons.

Unlike Jackson's telling of the tale, Orcs do not come out of the mud by Saruman's magic, but are instead creatures made from Elves by Sauron. (Jackson does have Saruman say this to the Orcs, after his scene of the mud birth.) Orcs are born, not made one at a time like machines.

Tolkien uses the word "made" from Elves, as I recall. I do not see this "made" as being assembled like robots, nor grown in vats in some hideous travesty of genetic manipulation, but instead "made" like Gollum was "made", made as he is by the malevolence of Evil and by his own choices, his own sinfullness. I see that in some important way Orcs remain Elves. They have children, and raise them, they have some sort of community life, some idea of responsibility, duty, even affection for each other, else they would be like scorpions in a shaken bottle, all dead very quickly. I see them as like Gollum, sinned against as well as sinning, in some way conquered by the glamour of evil, the lust for the Ring, and their own weakness and sin, their fallen nature. Orcs have personal and moral responsibility for what they do and are, just like us.

If this is so, what can be reasonably drawn? How can Orc mothers stand to give birth to such children? How can children live without some affection, even love? (Spoken as a Dad.) What is the home life of Orcs like? How do Orc fathers treat their wives and children? Wives husbands? How do Orc children play with each other? What is the Orc's relationship with God? Simple materialism and atheism, are Orcs simply Leftists writ large? What about their social life? It cannot be only murder and destruction, else there would be no Orcs! What do they do for fun? Post on the "Orc Republic"? Watch television? If so, what are the shows like? Follow sports teams? Drink beer? Who gets the everyday work, making, cleaning, keeping track of supplies, the mail, etc.? How is this organized? What, for Heaven's Sake, do Orcs believe in?

[Iris7]

I actually am very interested in this question, and ask it with seriousness. My wife and children don't think I am utterly sane to ask what the inner life of Orcs is like, but they must have an inner life, an understanding of life and their place in it. How can Sauron have extinguished their very souls? The orcs are not wargs, unconscious animals, but something more like us. Not machines of destruction.

Can any of you, fellow Tolkien admirers, help me with this?

[Iris7]

You offered my question to this forum, and thank you.

[Samwise]

I'm going to ping ecurbh so that he can ping the ringers to your question.

[ecurbh]

Ring Ping!!

There and Back Again: The Journeys of Flat Frodo

Anyone wishing to be added to or removed from the Ring-Ping list, please don't hesitate to let me know.

[HairOfTheDog]

I actually am very interested in this question, and ask it with seriousness. My wife and children don't think I am utterly sane to ask..

ROTFL! Poor tortured soul! I hope you find comfort here.

I guess I imagined that they did breed and have a community such as it was.... I think we have assumed those we confronted in the story were all male though... but maybe we just can't tell.... (its the beards)

[Wneighbor]

You know, I may really be gonna step in it with my thoughts but I'll share anyway.

I too thought about this. Even as 20 years ago I read the books as a young adult I thought about this. The scene where Saruman is pulling the orc from the mud set wrong with me - but only because I had puzzled over this question.

But, my thoughts about how orcs come to be as they are mirror the thoughts of how young men - mere boys actually, become homicide bombers in the middle east. The same questions arise for me between the 2. How could a child be raised to do that? How could parents possibly bring up a child that way?

Without making any effort at all to politicize our beloved books I came to this conclusion WAY BACK probably in the late 70's or early 80's - before our first military events in Iraq. I think, perhaps, Tolkien also knew of such cultures. I have to wonder if seeing some of the events during the wars that he saw he thought these things. Far as I know there is not reference to that... but I've wondered about it.

Now, my mind has wandered in text the way it does in real life way too long. I'll see if anybody thinks it's valid or if I'm just too politically charged.

[Wneighbor]

I think we have assumed those we confronted in the story were all male though...

I think the ones in the books were presented as all male too, of course there aren't many women mentioned by name in the books at all. But, the predominance of males in the book were another thing that reminded me of the Islamic culture. I kinda figured orcs treated their wimmin like the Islamics do.

There she goes on that political track again!

[LadyDoc]

Tolkien says orcs were "bred" from tortured elves, and that the Uruk Hai were a mixing of orcs and humans. It is interesting that Tolkien uses the word "bred" i.e. implying the breeding of animals i.e. based on a cold hearted intellectual breeding for perfection of the animal, instead of the more ancient and holy word "begotten", which implies impregnation in the act of love.

However, there are no orc "women", and it is interesting that Peter Jackson shows artificial wombs A LA "brave new world"...

Hollywood Jesus website has a good essay on all of this:

http://www.hollywoodjesus.com/lord_of_the_rings_feature_14.htm

"......Whether in Tolkien or in Jackson -- but perhaps most clear in Jackson’s movies -- this gets us into the territory of defining what it is that really makes an Orc orc-ish: misplaced allegiance. In the first place, Orcs are mistakenly driven by fear. For Tolkien, a Christian, this is inimical to a sound understanding of one’s purpose in the universe: a motivation toward praise and worship of the creator through love, which "casts out fear." Second, Orcs mistakenly revere the creation rather than the Creator. Whether it's Saruman, Sauron, the Balrog or their own Orc chieftans, all are the creation of Eru. And all Middle-Earth ultimately falls under the sway of its Creator; neither demons nor wayward wizards can supplant the intended majesty of Eru.

The Effects of Idolatry
And really, this discussion of Orcs should scuttle charges of racism or classism in Tolkien. Why? Because as far as Tolkien was concerned, Orcs were merely a fictionalization of a contemporary reality. He transformed his war experiences, for instance -- the visceral struggle between good and evil -- into "another form and symbol with Morgoth and Orcs" pitted against the Elves. Further, in a war-time letter to his son Christopher, Tolkien called the Orcs "as real a creation as anything in 'realistic' fiction." For Tolkien, it was easy to see that adapting the means of the enemy to defeat the enemy -- "attempting to conquer Sauron with the Ring," if you will -- bears, of necessity, evil fruit: "The penalty is, as you will know, to breed new Saurons, and slowly turn Men and Elves into Orcs." And their fate? Tolkien conceded the possibility that Orcs, like some human residents of our own world, might be "unredeemable" -- yet insisted that, in Middle-Earth, mercy should be shown to Orcs "even at cost," a moral vision distinctly lacking in Jackson's The Two Towers.

And so even among men of our own time we can see behavior worthy of Orcs: a prime motive of fear instead of love, and an esteem of creation elevated above devotion to the Creator. The net effect is division among men where God intended unity -- the root of all racism and classism. A house divided against itself cannot stand, as Jesus observed. One cannot serve two masters.

And so Tolkien’s Orcs really bring home the issue to us, personally. If we examine our own behavior, what do we find? Love, and devotion to God? Or fear, and perhaps devotion to self? Are we men as we were intended to be, or have we ourselves become Orcs? "

[Iris7]

The suicide bombers have families, children, fathers, mothers, an inner life, and a moral responsibility. I understand those people fairly well. They show standard human nature. They believe the Archangel Gabriel dictated the Koran to Muhammed. Understandable. Their everyday life is understandable.

I find the Orcs harder to understand.

[Alouette]

ORC WOMEN

[Iris7]

Let me think about that.

I simply cannot see anything like persons being willing to have children in the Orc world. Violence as the only reality. The only strength the ability to invoke fear. (How Nazi!!)

That much alienation from the Good should result in social collapse. Sodom and Gomorrah.

[RMDupree]

You know what bothered me about LOTR:TTT (the extended edition) regarding Orcs?

The regular Orcs meet the Uruks carrying Merry and Pippin in BROAD DAYLIGHT! Hello!? Books aside, didn't Haldir warn Aragorn in FOTR that the "new" Orcs could run in daylight as where the regular Orcs could not?

Things like that bother me, but I just chalk it up to movie imperfections.

[Restorer]

It is very clear from Tolkien's writings that orcs were degraded Elves in origin, as trolls were degraded Ents. But this origin is well over 10,000 years in the past by the time of LOTR.

I also read somewhere that the Elvish root of the word "orc" means "fear" or something like that. It was originally applied rather freely to a wide variety of Morgoth's monsters. These included such originaly "spirit" creatures as Sauron and the Balrogs and others, some of whom were much more powerful than the orcs of the third age.

Others have thought that Morgoth, and to a smaller extent Sauron, were able to so completely dominate the orcs when they were in power that the orcs would lose much of their individuality.

An interesting sidenote is that orcs, as descendants of elves, would be immortal. I believe that a couple of orcs in LOTR are having a conversation (at Cirith Ungol?) in which they discuss how they'd like to sneak off and set up for themselves as bandits. One of them implies that he was personally present when Sauron was overthrown by the Last Alliance, several thousand years earlier.

I think a more interesting question is posed by orcish economics. Look at the massive numbers in Moria. Obviously they don't produce food underground. Where is this food grown and how does it get to Moria? Who pays for it? LOTR mentions vast fields in south Mordor, worked by slaves. But those fields are a long way from Moria.

[Fire-Breathing_Freeper]

Um, well to begin with there are no orc women, never were. Or at least Tolkien said there were never any recorded ones.

[Lil'freeper]

One of the things that comes up in the Silmarillion, my copy of which I don't have readily handy, is the idea of "thralldom". In the twilight, when the elves emerged and dwelt under the stars, many were picked off by agents of Morgoth (Sauron's mentor) and brought to him. They fell under some kind of spell or hypnosis that numbed their free will and desires. They worked as slaves for his evil, but didn't mind because they were enthralled.

I agree with your idea that they were "made as Gollum was made", namely the influence of evil which has a way of dulling the eyes and tricking the soul, it seduces through lies and flattery, illusions and deceptions. How many people are trapped in grave sin and can't see it?

It's important to note that Tolkein's elves were hardly angelic creatures. They were subject to the same temptations humans were: greed, pride, lust, covetousness, hate to name a few. They swore ruinous, terrible oaths, warred against one another, and were seduced by evil. Galadriel was counted as a baddie at one time. Fortunately, after tens of thousands of years she wisened up a bit. (Her test with the ring of power makes much more sense if you know her whole history.)

I don't think orcs see themselves as ugly, fallen creatures. While they may not shower affection on their offspring- however they go about reproducing- neither would they ashamed of their young. I think they see only what their master tells them to see- that they are noble but unappreciated creatures, that the world is conspiring to rob them of life and land and power, that only their master cares for them. They are enthralled and nothing else matters.

[BradyLS]

That's a tall order. I think most of the answers here hit close to the mark, so I won't so anything against them. I will say that, as I undertstand it, Morgoth captured some of the early elves and, thorugh dark arts, twisted and corrupted them and bred from them the orcs we know from the story. It is said that Morgoth (nor Sauron or Saruman) could create living things. He could only twist and bend the living into creatures to suit his own purposes. Orcs are the twisted forms of Elves. Trolls the twisted forms of Ents.

[BenLurkin]

Well, first of they really liked music:

But seriously, Peter Jackson took too much liberty in his depiction of the Orcs in LOTR. The Orcs as Tolkien described them were unpleasant creatures, but not slasher film monsters.

His general description was that they were slanted eyed and swarthy, rather like black Chinese if you will. They came in a variety of sizes, and conversed in rather colloquial English.

Reading the snippets of Orc conversations you see that Tolkien granted them an ironic level of pathos and 'humanity' on a level with some of the other "races" of Middle Earth, only the Orcs come across as being hopelessly depraved in the final analysis.

[BenLurkin]

BTW, you're right.

The Uruk-Hai were not made out of mud by magic. IIRC, they were the result of Sauron cross-breeding Orcs and humans.

I hate to visualize that process.

Maybe he got help from the Raelians.

[Iris7]

I like the word "bred". Bred from Elves, hm. Reminds me of Ben Franklin, who used the word "bred" to describe the growth of young apprentices to journeymen. The apprentices were of course very young when apprenticed, and sent to a household away from their mother and families. They were "raised" in the same way a mother raises her children, but by the Master of the house and the Journeymen of the trade. Could Tolkien, who had a great fondness for what other people would call anachronistic language, have meant "bred" in that way? For instance, the orcs are only seen in military units, and without any of their women. Could Tolkien have taken the Janissaries as his model for the orcs?

Janissaries were very young Christian boys, four, five, and six years old, removed from their loving families by force by Moslem Turks, and shaped, bred, to become the Turks finest soldiers, the assault soldiers that go to certain death at command.

The Janissary fought well with one real lie that he held to be true, that Archangel Gabriel had indeed given Muhhamad God's work. This being so, one wonders what this lie of Sauron was.

[Iris7]

I suspect, with some horror, that Sauron's lie to the orcs ensuring the orc's obedience, is that Sauron is God, and that there is no other. And if Sauron does not claim to be God, Himself, then he claims that he is the only path to God.