[The Saucepan Man]

Originally Posted by davem

If these Orcs are slaves they are willing slaves - but then why would Gandalf say he pities even Sauron's slaves? Or isn't he including Orcs in this?

I wouldn't say that they are willing, since that implies that they have a choice. Rather, they act in the way that they do (and delight in doing so) because they know know no other way - and, more worryingly perhaps, have no capacity to know any other way. On that basis, I can see how Gandalf might pity them.

This just leaves us with SpM's question - What is the difference between 'bad' Orcs & equally 'bad' men?

Since I do not believe that anyone, in our world, is born evil, and assuming that Orcs are, in Middle-earth, inherently evil, there is a world of difference. But, if we are to say that Orcs are evil as a result of environmental pressures (nurture rather than nature), then an analogy might be drawn with those whose abusive behaviour is a product of having been abused in childhood (the cycle of abuse) or fear of the consequences of disobedience (as in the holocaust). But, even then, the analogy breaks down when one considers that there are examples of those who have undergone the same pressures and yet not committed the same attrocities. There are few in this world who I would class as being, like Orcs, devoid of any vestige of 'humanity', and then we are getting into the realms of psychotic behaviour.

Perhaps its not that Tolkien messed up & couldn't work out a viable explanation for Orcs; perhaps it goes deeper, into issues of metaphysics, into the mystery of Good & Evil, & so, cannot be explained away. Good is & so is Evil - even if it is a 'corruption' it isn't nothing.

Yet the question remains: how can Good be good if it allows Evil to manifest itself in sentient beings which have no choice in the matter? I think that this troubled Tolkien.

But there are, as you say, no easy answers.