[Lalwendë]

Originally Posted by Raynor

I don't think that any orc could claim some special merit about the shirt, esspecially if said orc would own the shirt as a result of a fight, therefore disobedience. Moreover, it would look like only Shagrat was the one in touch with Lugburz, as he is the one who actually brings the shirt to Sauron (and is, well, slain, as quoted in the LotR Companion).

Sauron wouldn't care for such matters if he got that particular trinket. And Orcs would not be above a little lying - maybe a tall tale about an almighty struggle would only add to the glory. And even if Sauron did decide he was going to punish the "smug returning Orc with prize" for his disobedience, then that Orc wouldn't know that, he would assume he could easily get away with a small lie about something which happened in an out of the way corner of Mordor. Ultimately, Sauron wouldn't care:

And Orcs, they were useful slaves, but he had them in plenty. If now and again Shelob caught them to stay her appetite, she was welcome: he could spare them.

But that's not really part of this discussion. What I came here for was the following...

I thought I'd go back to The Choices of Master Samwise and that Orc chat to see what I could glean.

There's an interesting point about enemies and how they see one another:

And we've got to look out. Always the poor Uruks to put slips right, and small thanks. But don't forget: the enemies don't love us any more than they love Him, and if they get topsides on Him, we're done too.

These Orcs fully recognise that they are soldiers with a leader who is in control, but he is not in total control of them; they are not mindless 'slaves' as they are fully aware of their position and know of the possibility of independence. They even feel some resentment that it is them doing the fighting and not their leader (a common complaint amongst soldiers, and note how a leader who actively fights is all the more glorious and revered for it - in Tolkien's work you'll find: Aragorn, Eomer, Theoden. Outside: Sharpe, Nelson). Here Tolkien is showing us these enemy Orcs as being like any other soldier. He also shows us how the Orcs recognise that despite their feelings of resentment, they have to stay onside as their enemies will also show them no quarter; not only do they have to stay onside but they have to ensure that the 'boss' they resent will win the whole war. There's a message about War in that - if enemies cannot show some mercy to one another then it only serves to make them hate each other more and fight all the harder.

So then I was thinking about how the Orcs perceive their enemies, seeing as we're purely going on how the West see theirs, and we might find some illumination looking at it from the other perspective. Well we're lucky in that Tolkien tells us something of this in The Choices of Master Samwise:

"It's my guess you won't find much in that little fellow," said Gorbag. "He may have had nothing to do with the real mischief. The big fellow with the sharp sword doesn't seem to have thought him worth much anyhow--just left him lying: regular elvish trick."

Obviously they don't think highly of their enemy just as the West don't think highly of Sauron's forces, which is understandable. There's no equivalent of "Hug A Hoodie" in War. But this instance tells us that the Orcs believe the Elves to have a 'regular trick', i.e. typical behaviour. And that's to leave a fallen comrade when they have bigger goals to pursue. I wonder if there are any actual instances of this - the Elves are certainly not whiter than white. Even if Elves don't and never have done anything like this before, this is the perception of them that Orcs have.

So are the Orcs any better about fallen comrades?

D'you remember old Ufthak? We lost him for days. Then we found him in a corner; hanging up he was, but he was wide awake and glaring. How we laughed! She'd forgotten him, maybe, but we didn't touch him--no good interfering with Her.

They laugh when they find their comrade Ufthak strung up in Shelob's lair, possibly as he looks amusing (they may just have a dark sense of humour), possibly out of malice towards him. But he had been 'lost' which means he was missed, and it seems they could have been looking for him. The crucial point is why they leave him there and don't rescue him. Something to do with their understanding of Shelob, of not 'interfering'. She is intelligent and may seek revenge for her prey going missing? Leaving him there means one of them won't be eaten in turn? Anyway, what this suggests to me is that the Orcs are not always sporting. It's just not fair to leave a colleague strung up to be eaten, is it? That's an instance of Tolkien showing us that these Orcs are simply not sporting, that what they do is "Not Cricket".

I found another interesting bit in the discussion in this chapter too. That the Orcs themselves are afraid of the Nazgul, frightened of what they can do:

Those Nazgul 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, it's no game serving down in the city.

That's shockingly similar to what the Witch-King says to Eowyn, so it must be a very real threat, a real possibility. So the Orcs are very much 'whole' beings, and there is a possibility that their fea can be left naked and exposed - if they descend from Elves this would be possible by 'killing' them and then denying access to the Halls of Mandos; if they descend from Men it would be an abomination against Men's true nature. Anyway, that's not the point right now. The point is that Tolkien is possibly showing us there are different degrees of 'darkness', that even Orcs are frightened of something, even they are subject to the whims of the Nazgul and can be (and presumably sometimes are) hurt by them.