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? "
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.