From: "Strider" Newsgroups: rec.arts.books.tolkien Subject: Orc Redemption (the sources) Date: Tue, 21 May 2002 19:56:32 -0400 Organization: Posted via Supernews, http://www.supernews.com Message-ID: X-Priority: 3 X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Newsreader: Microsoft Outlook Express 6.00.2600.0000 X-MIMEOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V6.00.2600.0000 X-Complaints-To: newsabuse@supernews.com Lines: 412 Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news.mailgate.org!cyclone.bc.net!news-hog.berkeley.edu!newsfeed.berkeley.edu!ucberkeley!sn-xit-01!sn-post-01!supernews.com!corp.supernews.com!not-for-mail Xref: chonsp.franklin.ch rec.arts.books.tolkien:87525 I thought I would try to pull together some of the sources for my reflection on the interesting question of the redeemability of the Orcs. Here is what I have come up with so far. I welcome your suggestions and corrections. (Al Kimel) I begin with the published version of the LotR: 1) Treebeard: "Maybe you have heard of Trolls? They are mighty strong. But Trolls are only counterfeits, made by the Enemy in the Great Darkness, in mockery of Ents, as Orcs were of Elves." (TT, III:4, p. 89) 2) Frodo: "No, they [orcs] eat and drink, Sam. The Shadow that bred them can only mock, it cannot make: not real new things of its own. I don't think it gave life to the orcs, it only ruined them and twisted them; and if they are to live at all, they have to live like other living creatures. Foul waters and foul meats they'll take, if they can get no better, but not poison." (RotK, VI:1, p. 190) 3) Appendix F: "The Orcs were first bred by the Dark Power of the North in the Eldar Days. It is said that they had no language of their own, but took what they could of other tongues and perverted it to their own liking; yet they made only brutal jargons, scarcely sufficient even for their own needs, unless it were for curses and abuses. And these creatures, being filled with malice, hating even their own kind, quickly developed as many barbarous dialects as there were groups or settlements of their race, so that their Orkish speech was of little use to them in intercourse between different tribes." (RotK, p. 409) 4) Appendix F: "In their beginning far back in the twilight of the Elder Days, these [trolls] were creatures of dull and lumpish nature and had no more language than beasts. But Sauron made use of them, teaching them what little they could learn, and increasing their wits with wickedness. Trolls therefore took such language as they could master from the Orcs and in the Westlands the Stone-trolls spoke a debased form of the Common Speech. But at the end of the Third Age a troll-race not before seen appeared in southern Mirkwood. Olog-hai they were called in the Black Speech. That Sauron bred them none doubted, though from what stock was not known. Some held that they were not Trolls but giant Orcs; but the Olog-hai were in fashion of body and mind quite unlike even the largest of Orc-kind, whom they far surpassed in size and power. Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master; a fell race, strong, agile, fierce and cunning, but harder than stone. Unlike the older race of the Twilight they could endure the Sun, so long as the will of Sauron held sway over them." (RotK, p. 410). Are there other illuminating passages in LotR that we need to consider? On the basis of the above, I think we can safely infer the following: 1) Melkor and Sauron cannot create new, independent races. They can only corrupt and twist preexisting creatures. 2) LotR does not explicitly answer the question "Which creatures did the Dark Powers originally use to make and breed Orcs and Trolls?" 3) These texts neither affirm nor deny that Orcs and Trolls have free-will or souls, nor do they affirm nor deny their capacity to repent of evil and turn to the good. The following passages from JRRT's letters seem particularly relevant to the question of orc redemption: 1) Letter 144 (1954): "Orcs (the word is as far as I am concerned actually derived from Old English _orc_ 'demon', but only because of its phonetic suitability) are nowhere clearly stated to be of any particular origin. But since they are servants of the Dark Power, and later of Sauron, neither of whom could, or would, produce living things, they must be 'corruptions'. They are not based on direct experience of mine; but owe, I suppose a good deal to the goblin tradition (_goblin_ is used as a translation in *The Hobbit*, where _orc_ only occurs once, I think), especially as it appears in George MacDonald, except for the soft feet which I never believed in. The name has the form _orch) (pl. _yrch_). in Sindarin and _uruk_ in the Black Speech." (pp. 177-178) This passage confirms Tolkien's view that neither Melkor nor Sauron could have created a new race of living beings but rather has terribly corrupted pre-existing creatures. 2) Letter 153 (1954): "As for other points, I think I agree about the 'creation by evil'. But you are more free with the word 'creation' than I am. Treebeard does not say that the Dark Lord 'created' Trolls and Orcs. He says he 'made' them in _counterfeit_ of certain creatures pre-existing. There is, to me, a wide gulf between the two statements, so wide that Treebeard's statement could (in my world) have possibly been true. It is not true actually of the Orcs--who are fundamentally a race of 'rational incarnate' creatures, though horribly corrupted, if no more so than many Men to be met today. Treebeard is a _character_ in my story, not me; and though he has a great memory and some earthly wisdom, he is not one of the Wise, and there is quite a lot he does not know or understand. He does not know what 'wizards' are, or whence they came (though I do, even if exercising my subcreator's right I have thought it best in this Tale to leave the question a 'mystery', not without pointers to the solution). Suffering and experience (and possibly the Ring itself) gave Frodo more insight; and you will read in Ch 1 of Book VI the words to Sam. 'The Shadow that bred them can only mock, it cannot make real new things of its own. I don't think it gave life to the Orcs, it only ruined them and twisted them.' In the legends of the Elder Days it is suggested that the Diabolus subjugated and corrupted some of the earliest Elves, before they had ever heard of the 'gods', let alone of God. "I am not sure about Trolls. I think they are mere 'counterfeits', and hence (though here I am of course only using elements of old barbarous mythmaking that had no 'aware' metaphysic) they return to mere stone images when not in the dark. But there are other sorts of Trolls besides these rather ridiculous, if brutal, Stone-trolls, for which other origins are suggested. Of course (since inevitably my world is highly imperfect even on its own plane nor made wholly coherent--our Real World does not _appear_ to be wholly coherent either; and I am actually not myself convinced that, though in every world on every plane all must ultimately be under the Will of God, even in ours there are not some 'tolerated' sub-creational counterfeits!) when you make Trolls _speak_ you are giving them a power, which in our world (probably) connotes the possession of a 'soul'." (pp. 190-191). Tolkien confirms emphatically Frodo's claim that the orcs were corrupted by Melkor. He does not state unequivocally that they were originally elves, though he notes this belief expressed in the Legends of the Elder Days, but they must originally have belonged to a race of "rational incarnate" creatures. 3) Letter 153 (1954): "So in this myth, it is 'feigned' (legitimately whether that is a feature of the real world or not) that He gave special 'sub-creative' powers to certain of His highest created beings: that is a guarantee that what they devised and made should be given the reality of Creation. Of course within limits, and of course subject to certain commands or prohibitions. But if they 'fell', as the Diabolus Morgoth did, and started making things 'for himself, to be their Lord', these would then 'be', even if Morgoth broke the supreme ban against making other 'rational' creatures like Elves or Men. 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 Sin, and naturally bad. (I nearly wrote 'irredeemably bad'; 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.) 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 remodeling 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. There might be other' makings' all the same which were more like puppets filled (only at a distance) with their maker's mind and will, or ant-like operating under direction of a queen-centre." (p. 195) This is a very interesting text. On the one hand, JRRT appears to entertain the possibility that Morgoth could make other rational creatures like Elves or Men, though it would be a great sin; but on the other hand, he denies the ability of any Valar to give such creatures souls. Consequently, he says, he has represented the Orcs as corruptions of preexisting beings. Does this mean that Orcs have souls? Certainly the original Elves that were corrupted and twisted had souls, but what about their descendants? Would Eru necessarily honor their procreation by the gifting of souls? Or does the mere fact that Orcs speak (i.e., are rational creatures) mean that they are ensouled? Does JRRT's comments about Morgoth's creatures being "naturally bad" apply to Orcs, or is this merely a hypothetical comment referring to other kinds of creatures? JRRT does deny that any creature within the world is "irredeemably bad"--Being itself is always a good--but this distinction really does not tell us anything about whether Orcs or Dragons or Trolls or Balrogs really possess the freedom to repent of their evil and turn to the good. Even in Catholic theology, it is possible for a created being, whether an angel or human, to finally come to the point where they are no longer capable of repentance. That's what damnation is. 4) Letter 183 (1956): "In my story I do not deal in Absolute Evil. I do not think there is such a thing, since that is Zero. I do not think that at any rate any 'rational being' is wholly evil. Satan fell. In my myth Morgoth fell before Creation of the physical world. In my story Sauron represents as near an approach to the wholly evil will as possible." (p. 243) Though not directly addressed to the status of Orcs, JRRT's assertion that no rational being is "wholly evil" would certainly seem to apply also to Orcs, if Orcs are rightly considered as rational beings. 5) Letter 269 (1965), a reply to W. H. Auden's query whether the notion of the Orcs, an entire race was irredeemably wicked, was not heretical: "With regard to *The Lord of the Rings*, I cannot claim to be a sufficient theologian to say whether my notions of orcs is heretical or not. I don't feel under any obligation to make my story fit with formalized Christian theology, though I actually intended it to be consonant with Christian thought and belief, which is asserted somewhere, Book Five, page 190, where Frodo asserts that the orcs are not evil in origin. We believe that, I suppose, of all human kinds and sorts and breeds, though some appear, both as individuals and groups to be, by us at any rate, unredeemable...." (p. 355) Does JRRT deny the irredeemability of Orcs here? Why did he not simply reply to Auden that he had misinterpreted LotR? JRRT insists that the Orcs are not evil in origin, but that is not quite the same as saying that they are not irredeemable. Note also that Auden himself obviously understood the Orcs as irredeemably evil. Finally, we come to the Silmarillion and HoMe: 1) *The Silmarillion*: "So it came to pass, some years ere the coming of Orome, that if any of the Elves strayed far abroad, alone or few together, they would often vanish, and never return; and the Quendi said that the Hunter had caught them, and they were afraid.... But of those unhappy ones who were ensnared by Melkor little is known of a certainty. For who of the living has descended into the pits of Utumno, or has explored the darkness of the counsels of Melkor? Yet this is held true by the wise of Eressea, that all those of the Quendi that came into the hands of Melkor, ere Utumno was broken, were put there in prison, and by slow arts of cruelty and wickedness were corrupted and enslaved; and thus did Melkor breed the hideous race of the Orcs in envy and mockery of the Eldar, of whom they were afterwards the bitterest foes. For the Orcs had life and multiplied after the manner of the Children of Illuvatar; and naught that had life of its own, nor the semblance of life, could ever Melkor make since his rebellion in the Ainulindale before the Beginning: so say the wise. And deep in their dark hearts the Orcs loathed the Master whom they served in fear, the maker only of their misery. This maybe was the vilest deed of Melkor and the most hateful to Eru." (pp. 49-50). Christopher Tolkien helpfully traces the textual history of JRRT's treatment of the Orcs in *Morgoth's Ring*, HoMe, X (see especially, pp. 78, 123-124). 2) Text VIII, HoMe, X:408-413: In this very interesting text, JRRT outlines a view that Orcs are humanized beasts without souls: "In summary: I think it must be assumed that 'talking' is not necessarily the sign of the possession of a 'rational soul' or _fea_. The Orcs were _beasts_ of humanized shape (to mock Men and Elves) deliberately perverted/converted into a more close resemblance to Men. Their 'talking was really reeling off 'records' set in them by Melkor. Even their rebellious critical words--he knew about them. Melkor taught them _speech_ and as they bred they inherited this; and they had just as much independence as have, say, dogs or horses of their human masters. This talking was largely echoic (cf. parrots). In *The Lord of the Rings* Sauron is said to have devised a language for them." (pp. 410-411) "It will there be seen that the wills of Orcs and Balrogs, etc. are part of Melkor's power 'dispersed'. Their spirit is one of hate. But hate is non-cooperative (except under direct fear). Hence the rebellions, mutinies, etc. when Morgoth seems far off. Orcs are beats and Balrogs corrupted Maiar. Also (n.b.) Morgoth not Sauron is the source of Orc-wills. Sauron is just another (if greater) agent. Orcs can rebel against him without losing their own irremediable allegiance to evil (Morgoth). Aule wanted love. But of course had no thought of dispersing his power. Only Eru can give _love and independence_. If a finite sub-creator tries to do this he really wants absolute loving obedience, but it turns into robotic servitude and becomes evil." (p. 411) 3) Text IX, HoMe, X:413-414. "Since Melkor could not 'create' an independent species, but had immense powers of corruption and distortion of those that came into his power, it is probable that these Orks had a mixed origin. Most of them plainly (and biologically) were corruptions of Elves (and probably later also of Men). But always among them (as special servants and spies of Melkor, and as leaders) there must have been numerous corrupted minor spirits who assumed similar bodily shapes. (These would exhibit terrifying and demonic characters.) The Elves would have classed the creatures called 'trolls' (in *The Hobbit* and *The Lord of the Rings*) as Orcs--in characters and origin--but they were larger and slower. It would seem evident that they were corruptions of primitive human types." (p. 414) 4) Text X, HoMe, X:415-424. This is a lengthy text, the whole of which bears reading. In this text JRRT offers the judgment that Orcs were originally bred from humans. "Melkor was impotent to produce any living thing, but skilled in the corruption of things that did not proceed from himself, if he could dominate them. But if he had indeed attempted to make creatures of his own in imitation or mockery of the Incarnates, he would, like Aule, only have succeeded in producing puppets: his creatures would have acted only while the attention of his will was upon them, and they would have shown no reluctance to execute any command of his, even if it were to destroy themselves. "But the Orcs were not of this kind. They were certainly dominated by their Master, but his dominion was by fear, and they were aware of this fear and hated him. They were indeed so corrupted that they were pitiless, and there was no cruelty or wickedness that they would not commit; but this was the corruption of independent wills, and they took pleasure in their deeds. They were capable of acting on their own, doing evil deeds unbidden for their own sport; or if Morgoth and his agents were far away, they might neglect his commands. They sometimes fought [> They hated one another and often fought] among themselves, to the detriment of Morgoth's plans." (pp. 417-418) "[T]he Wise in the Elder Days taught always that the Orcs were not 'made' by Melkor, and therefore were not in their origin evil. They might have become irredeemable (at least by Elves and Men), but they remained within the Law. That is, that though of necessity, being the fingers of the hand of Morgoth, they must be fought with the utmost severity, they must not be dealt with in their own terms of cruelty and treachery. Captives must not be tormented, not even to discover information for the defense of the homes of Elves and Men. If any Orcs surrendered and asked for mercy, they must be granted it, even at a cost." (p. 419) "It is true, of course, that Morgoth held the Orcs in dire thralldom; for in their corruption they had lost almost all possibility of resisting the domination of his will." (p. 419) [Excuse the typos]