What did they think?

[Väinämöinen]

Originally Posted by mormegil

My feelings is that they felt personally and believed Sauron viewed them as superior to orcs in every way, with the exception of making good cannon fodder which orcs excelled at. Contrarily I think orcs viewed the humans as weak and not as useful as themselves.

I have always wondered more about Sauron and the orcs. After all, Morgoth created the orcs as a race, and Sauron was of a different temperament. Does anyone know of any specific passages from the Lord of the Rings or Unfinished Tales that mentions Sauron's view of the matter?

Undoubtedly Sauron took pleasure in cruelty, torment, terror. And with terror he thus enjoyed bringing about creatures to instill fear, to coerce his enemies. But in comparison to Melkor, the Morgoth, he was qualitatively a different Dark Lord altogether. The sheer rapacity of Morgoth cost him the War of the Jewels in the first place. To what extent did Morgoth's character as a Vala, as the most broadly gifted of the Valar, skew his relation to the orcs? He was not a maker like Aule, that enjoyed the making and the thing made, but wanted to be served.

And did not Sauron after the fall of Angband have more utopian desires? He was a Maia of Aule, if my memory serves me well...

My stereotypical understanding of how Tolkien characterizes the forces of evil in his mythopoeia is: they all hate each other because evil can't get along with itself (I'm not sure this is true)-- Orcs hate their masters, masters hate the orcs, masters privilege dark Numenoreans and lower Maiar, etc.

Any one, any one?

By the way, I'm new to this forum. But not to Tolkien's mythopoeia.