Orcseys - always Evil?

[davem]

Originally Posted by narfforc

Tolkien uses many myths as blue-prints for his own sub-creation,
so we see there is no point in Utopia without corruption, but then where the main criticism of Tolkien comes in, is his lack of Hell without redemption. There are lots of good gone bad elements, but where are the bad redeemed.

Of course, many Christians don't believe that Hell is an actual place of eternal torment, but simply a ceasing to be - non-existence.

This seems to be the case with both Sauron & Saruman, whose Fea seem to arise asshadows only to be blown away to nothing by a wind from the West (though its not clear whether this wind comes from Manwe or Eru.

The whole idea of worldly Utopia seems absent from Tolkien's creation. It is apparently an impossibility - at least as far as the possibility of any of the sentient races bringing it about is concerned. There is only the battle against Evil, which cannot ever be won. Evil can only be held at bay, or at best temporarily defeated so as to gain a respite.

In that sense both Sauron & Saruman are Utopians. They believe they can attain absolute victory & their own version of the 'Thousand Year Reich'. What's interesting is that those who desire to achieve a Utopia within M-e are seduced into Evil. Sauron & Saruman are the great idealists, the ones who want to bring about (what they consider to be) paradise on earth. But they seek to do this by rejecting Eru & replacing Him.

Those on the side of Good, however, are the ones who have rejected all possibility of achieving an absolute victory & eternal peace. The 'good guys' have accepted that life in the world is summed up by the concept of 'many defeats & many fruitless victories', of the 'long defeat'.

It is the affirmation of life in the face of death, even though death, in the end, will triumph, because what the 'Utopians' like Sauron, Saruman (& others, like Smeagol & even Ted Sandyman) want is actually stagnation, an unchanging state of affairs where their rule will be absolute. Life is change, for the bad as well as the good. As Gandalf says:

'Other evils there are that may come; for Sauron is himself but a servant or emissary. Yet it is not our part to master all the tides of the world, but to do what is in us for the succour of those years wherein we are set, uprooting the evil in the fields that we know, so that those who live after may have clean earth to till. What weather they shall have is not ours to rule.

Or in other words, 'all we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us'. It is that act of 'surrender' that is required of good folk in M-e, that acceptance that while death is inevitable, & peace can never be won permanently, the fight is necessary.

In this context I think Ted Sandyman is an interesting case. He too seeks order over chaos. Walking (& talking) trees are not simply fantastic as far as he is concerned, but more importantly are dangerous. They have to be mocked out of existence, replaced by sensible, logical things. Trees are a source of fruit, raw materials, or fuel - or that is what he demands they should be. The new Shire, under Sharkey, is a place of extreme logic, where if Ted himself is not to be in charge then someone who thinks like him will be. After all, your Utopia doesn't have to be aesthetically pleasing, it merely has to be a 'safe', unchanging, unthreatening place.

What the 'Utopians' fear is chaos - actually, what they fear, what they see as their enemy, is life itself. Sauron chooses a dead, blasted heath peopled by creatures no better than worker ants as his Utopia, Saruman chooses a world of 'metal & wheels'. Both desire life replaced by absolute control, by death in fact.

From this point of view Orcs are zombies, the living dead, as are the Nazgul & the Balrog. They are anti-life. As are all 'Utopians'. No-one is going to turn the world into Paradise. The good folk of Middle-earth are the ones who have realised that they can't build a 'Republic of Heaven' - all they can do is struggle to prevent 'Utopians' building a 'Republic of Hell'. And in that battle one must be prepared, if necessary, to make the ultimate sacrifice.

'I tried to save the Shire, and it has been saved, but not for me. It must often be so, Sam, when things are in danger: some one has to give them up, lose them, so that others may keep them.'

That's something Sauron, Saruman, Smeagol, Ted Sandyman, Wormtongue, the Nazgul, & all the rest of the Enemy could never say...

[Lalwendë]

They would at least 'be' real physical realities in the physical world, however evil they might prove, even 'mocking' the Children of God. They would be Morgoth's greatest Sins, abuses of his highest privilege, and would be creatures begotten of Sin, and naturally bad. (I nearly wrote 'irredeemably bad'; but that would be going too far. Because by accepting or tolerating their making - necessary to their actual existence - even Orcs would become part of the World, which is God's and ultimately good.)

Originally Posted by Thinlomien

Lalwende made some very interesting (and good points), but they didn't actually answer to the original question. If orcs shouldn't be judged the same way as humans does it have any effect on would an orc cope in a human/elf society. I would like to hear what do you have to say on this, Lalwende.

Or is the reason why an orc couldn't possibly live among humans that they are too different from humans, not that they're evil?

I think, looking at what Tolkien said in the quote above, an Orc was indeed by nature 'evil', but Tolkien would not go as far as saying that an Orc could never be 'redeemed'. So, taking this as a starting point, presumably an Orc could live with other races and conform to their moral code? The interesting question is whether anyone would be willing to try, and would they be willing to try with an adult Orc?

One thing that Tolkien does make clear, unlike the question of whether Orcs are by nature evil, is that in many ways, their behaviour is determined by their masters/master. It seems that Sauron utilises the familiar bad management practice of 'divide and conquer', pitting one type of Orc against the other type. He also tries to get loyalty by promising things, and by instilling fear - the Nazgul seem to have a certain notoriety even amongst Orcs!

I wonder if this is due to the time Sauron has spent effectively 'in hiding'? He has not been there to act as master to the Orcs at all times, and taking the 'Goblins' of the Hobbit as an example, they could indicate how Orcs organised themselves during times that they were independent of Sauron.

But whether they could have 'souls' or 'spirits' seems a different question; and since in my myth at any rate I do not conceive of the making of souls or spirits, things of an equal order if not an equal power to the Valar, as a possible 'delegation', I have represented at least the Orcs as pre-existing real beings on whom the Dark Lord has exerted the fullness of his power in remodelling and corrupting them, not making them. That God would 'tolerate' that, seems no worse theology than the toleration of the calculated dehumanizing of Men by tyrants that goes on today.

Here Tolkien seems to be suggesting that as the Orcs had their origins in Eru, as beings which were corrupted into 'Orcitude' (), they also had souls/Fear. As beings which reproduced, I would say that their offspring too must have had souls. We do not know, after all, what an Orc child may have been like. It may have been born in the original nature of the race to which its parents once belonged, it may not have, we cannot say. It is possible that this could have happened, however uncomfortable it may seem to us, as creation of a new race was not permitted, only the corruption of an existing one. If this speculative idea was indeed a possibility, then this might only serve to underline the evil of Morgoth and Sauron.