LotR -- Book 3 - Chapter 03 - The Uruk-Hai

[Inziladun]

Originally Posted by Formendacil

Anyway, this chapter is all about the orks, and the picture is vivid: orks are not pleasant. Yet, in connection with the comment of Master Felagund quoted above, I have to wonder if the Isengarders at least might not be clean. The white page, says Saruman, can be overwritten, and I say that the white car gets muddy easily, and I can't imagine the White Hand being much better. Yet the Uruk-hai, with their martial pride, seem likely to want to keep their emblems clear. Does this mean they're likely a rather clean people?

To touch on this one point, I don't see the Isengarders as being particularly clean. When in their custody, Pippin noted the "filthy jowl and hairy ear" of one of them. Aside from being physically stronger, and maybe a bit more disciplined than usual, they seem like other Orcs pretty much.

As for the badges, when Aragorn finds the shields of the dead Isengarders slain by Boromir, it is seen that they have "a strange device: a small white hand in the center of a black field; on the front of their iron helms was set an S-rune, wrought of some white metal".

The white hand on black could have been a way for Saruman to show a dominance of the White (his own twisted version of it) over the Black, represented by Sauron. Or, maybe an alliance between the two.

That the "S" was white would merely be in keeping with the hand's color.