h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Just a small note on the subject of Orcs (one of whom seems to have graced us with his presents):

In a number of places in the twelve volumes of the History of Middle Earth, Christopher Tolkien discusses the develpment of his father's ideas concerning the origin and nature of the Orcs. The discussion is most detailed in "Morgoth's Ring". The Orcs were first seen as being created from rock by Melkor. There followed in Tolkien's writings a number of different "theories" of Orc origins which finally settled down into a variation of the "corrupted creatures of earth" and "twisted elves" theories. In either case, Tolkien's final conception was not of Orcs hatching from eggs or emerging full grown.

Sometime between 1955 and 1959, Tolkien wrote a synthesis of his ideas on the origin of the Orcs in which he tells us:


Their nature and origin require more thought. They are not easy to work into the theory and system.

(1) As the case of Aule and the Dwarves shows, only Eru could make creatures with independent wills, and with reasoning powers. But Orcs seem to have both: they can try to cheat Morgot/Sauron, rebel against him, or criticize him.
(2) ? Therefore they must be corruptions of something pre-existing.
(3)But Men had not yet appeared, when the Orcs already existed. Aule constructed the Dwarves out of his momory of the Music; but Eu would not sanction the work of Melkor so as to allow the independence of the Orcs. (Not unless Orcs were ultimately remediable, or could be amended and 'saved'?)
It also seems clear . . . that though Melkor could utterly corrupt and ruin individuals, it is not possible to contemplate his absolute perversion of a whole people, or group of peopls, and his making that state heritable . . . This latter must (if a fact) be an act of Eru.
In that case Elves, as a source, are bery unlikely. And are Orc s 'immortal', in the Elvish sense? Or trolls? It seems clearly implied in The Lord of the Rings that trolls existed in their own right, but were 'tinkered' with by Melkor. . .

In any case is it likely or possible that even the least of the Maiar would become Orcs? Yes: both outside Arda and in it, before the fall of Utumno. Melkor had corrupted many spirits -- some great, as Sauron, or less so, as Balrogs. The least could have been primitive (and much more powerful and perilous) Orcs; but by practising when embodied procreation they would ... become more and more earthbound, unable to return to spirit-state . . . until released by death (killing), and they would dwindle in force. When released they would, of course, like Sauron, be 'damned': i.e. reduced to impotence, infinitely recessive: still hating but unable more and more to make it effective physically (or would not a very dwindled dead Orc-state be a poltergeist?). . . .

In summary: I think it must be assumed that 'talking' is not necessarily the sign of the possession of a 'rational soul' or fea. The Orcs were beasts of humanized shape (to mock Men and Elves) deliberately perverted/converted into a more close resemblance to Men. Their 'talking' was really reeling off 'records' set in them by Melkor. Even their rebellions critical words -- he knew about them. Melkor taught them speech and as they bred they inherited this; and they had just as much independence as have, say, dogs or horses of their human masters. This talking was largely echoic (cf. parrots). . .

But Finrod probably went too far in his assertion that Melkor could not wholly corrupt any work of Eru, or that Eru would (necessarily) interfere to abrogate the corruption, or to end the being of His own creatures because they had been corrupted and fallen into evil.
It remains therefore terribly possible there was an Elvish strain in the Orcs. These may then even have been mated with beasts (sterile!) -- and later Men. Their life-span would be diminished. And dying they would go to Mandos and be held in prison till the End.


Morgoth's Ring, pp. 409-411


It reads somewhat like a Mediaeval Catholic treatise on Demonology (interesting, since Tolkien was a Catholic Mediaevalist)








('i am not above torturing a man i have just seen try and rape a woman'

I wonder if some of us would feel comfortable torturing someone as punishment for torturing someone.)

'presents' -> 'presence'

Two wrongs don't make a right, Gig.


az

in theory according to nature, men should have less rights than women when it comes to pain as we are the warrior of the speciec.
yes i know that some women can fight and i have heard that they have a higher pain threshold.
whether women want it or not is is the blood duty of every male to protect them.
i have the same problem innitialy about rape as i do about homo's , just a dodgy part of nature. the difference however is that no real harm comes between two concenting adults,( i reserve my opineon on the damage it does to the minds of the suseptible)

rape is the ultimate dictatorship and violation of rights and should be punished accordingly.

if our law systems were able to actualy cure violent crimes then this woulndt even be a roblem.

simply, if you can make it to the age of 20, beyond that u need to take a knife to it, if you are gonna do that much harm to another person, just to get a bit of sex.
come to the DAM. its only fifty euroes.

did you know it is more expensive to spoke in the dam than it is in england?
i heard its real cheap over canada, but never bought there.
(i only buy from legal scourses or from a people chain i know right through to the growing plants, i do this so noone can ever say my habbit contributes to he dru culture)
i hate the crime element in drugs.
weed is meaqnt to be about peace, and journey.
how can this be comfortable if someone had to get hurt for your smoke???

smoke

How does torturing a rapist protect women?

hi Gig,

What exactly is your problem with 'homos'? Do they threaten you somehow? Did you have a very religious upbringing that made you feel they were somehow 'not natural'?

<>

To repeat - do two wrongs make a right? Because you mentioned that torturing rapists would be your manner of dealing with them?


az

And here I was thinking we were terribly off topic...


Orcs... what happened to the ones not killed by the Free peoples? Did they take prisoners of war, or did they slaughter them or what? (I'm meaning in the Return of the King).

Good God! He's managed to condemn rape while remaining an insanely sexist and homophobic ass! How does he do it?

Kea:

I suspect slaughter, but I'll try to take a look to find something more specific in Tolkien's stuff. It may take a while, however. RL.

anhaga, maybe you can answer my last orc question - don't all orcs belong to and serve someone? Either Sauron or Saruman? Gig mentioned 'wild orcs', presumably bands of orcs that just existed. I thought all of them were slaves to one master or another.

az

I would suspect slaughter too - but don't orcs hide out in gloomy places and self-govern, if left to their own devices?

They seem to murder and take spoils on their own, Trin, unless under specific orders from their master.

But I'm still not sure about the concept of orcs living freely - it was always my perception that they were bred to be slaves.

az

Az: That seems to be what Tolkien is implying in the little bit above (that the Orcs are always in service). I have this nagging memory, however, of Orcs being without a master at some points, but I think this may be the times when their master is somehow in retreat, as in Sauron before between Mirkwood and Mordor, and, of course, the long period before his appearance in Mirkwood as the Necromancer. During that time, the Orcs of the Misty Mountains were effectively "wild", but they had once had a master and they would have one again.

Something to be remembered is that with the Orcs (as with most of his creation), Tolkien was desperately trying to reconcile desperately divergent themes from things he had written over the course of decades. Tolkien did not run a tight artistic ship. His creation has in common with much mythology the irreconcilabilty of most of its contents.

Bred to be slaves sounds right - but if their master disappears or is killed, they presumably don't just vanish.

>>His creation has in common with much mythology the irreconcilabilty of most of its contents.<<

With mythology, do we assume that it was once a complete and coherent whole which now appears fragmented because of the transmission of it down the ages, that only pieces of it have survived (even that unwritten assumptions of earlier ages are no longer recapturable)?

If so, was this something that Tolkien was deliberately trying to emulate, by leaving loose ends and unanswered questions?

kea and az:

Here's what Tolkien writes on p. 227 of The Return of the King (an answer to both your questions):


"The Captains bowed their heads; and when they looked up again behold! their enemies were flying and the power of Mordor was scattering like dust in the wind. As when death smites the swollen brooding thing that inhabits their crawling hill and holds them all in sway, ants will wander witless and purposeless and then feebly die, so the creatures of Sauron, orc or troll or beast spell-enslaved, ran hither and thither mindless, and some slew themselves, or cast themselves in pits, or fled wailing back to hide in holes and dark lightless places far from hope."

And then he goes on to describe the stiff-necked Men of Rhun and of Harad. . .

Seems that at this point Tolkien saw the orcs as the beasts he described in the piece I quoted at length earlier. The survivors drifted away like ants whose ant-hill has been destroyed. No longer reasoning, no longer a threat. One assumes simply beasts to be hunted down. (Didn't the Rohirrim do some hunting down of survivors earlier?)

"With mythology, do we assume that it was once a complete and coherent whole which now appears fragmented because of the transmission of it down the ages, that only pieces of it have survived (even that unwritten assumptions of earlier ages are no longer recapturable)?"

No. The only mythologies that have ever been complete and coherent at inception, or indeed, the only mythologies which have ever had a clear inception, are completely artificial ones. Greek myth, for example, from the earliest records, has always been contradictory and incoherent. Translation and transmission down the ages tends to smooth out the rough bits, selecting cannonical versions, etc.

Tolkien did write in a similar way. He produced a huge volume of themes that went in all directions and then gradually winnowed them down to The Lord of the Rings and the Silmarillion, which are more or less coherent. I suspect Tolkien was consciously working this way, as he was trying to construct a Mythology for England.

So, in mythology, lots of different versions, no single origin and so on, an organic body constantly shifting in tune with the times. So Tolkien - a single writer writing a single body of work - can only try to simulate this.

Doesn't this go back to the original problem here, then? If the tales which make up Tolkien's work were a genuine mythology then our age, now, concerned over certain underlying assumptions about race, could quite happily adjust them. Whereas, with text, a single author, no one can do this?