I appreciated this so much 😀 considering how the different origins for Orcs might influence their behavior and the corresponding attitudes of the "legitimate" Eruhini toward them is one of my favorite topics in the legendarium. I recall Tolkien mentioning (forgot exactly where) that even though Orcs were in practice essentially 'irredeemable' by normal means, Elves were still morally bound to abide by the 'rules of engagement,' no torturing captives for information or slaying those rare ones that surrendered. (So no baby Orc genocides for you, GRRM). There's also reference in the published Silmarillion to captured Elves so 'daunted' by fear of Morgoth that, just like later conceptions of Orcs, they were incapable of resisting his will even if they made it back home. So on the one hand, you have Elves still bound to treat Orcs as if their lives have value, even though the chances of them doing anything but further evil are so vanishingly small as to be essentially null. On the other hand, you have Elves with free will who have been so psychologically damaged and chained to Morgoth's will that they can't safely be welcomed back into society. Raises interesting practical problems for the leaders of the good side.
One of Tom Shippey's books points out a significant pair of quotes in "The Choices of Master Samwise" when Shagrat and Gorbag are talking about finding Frodo unconscious in Shelob's lair. Gorbag points out that there must have been a second intruder, probably a large elvish warrior who "doesn't seem to have thought him [Frodo] worth much anyhow -- just left him lying: regular Elvish trick." A bit later Shagrat tells of finding one of his troops, Ufthak, who'd been caught by Shelob: "hanging up he was, but he was wide awake and glaring. How we laughed!" To which Shippey says, "What can we say but 'Regular Orkish trick'?" Shippey's point is that the orcs know the same basic ethics as everyone else (you don't abandon your companion to a monster) but use it only as a way to blame other groups. This seems to imply that Iluvatar has given the orcs enough of a "fea" to know common ethical principles -- and to feel the need to deflect their cognitive dissonance onto others. Which is a regular Human trick.
I think's it's just a symptom of the corrupting influence of Morgoth, he's the prime-mover of evil so without his rebellion, these dilemmas would not exist. Now that they do, it's interesting to point them out but i'm not sure how much it's actually worth exploring them and their practical implications. Maybe we should just treat Tolkien's work as "heroic romances", where, i quote from the Unfinished Tales; "the mode of the narrative more important than it's purpose", (out of context), and the historical structure of his creation more as a means and not as an end. It's in the introduction of the book where Christopher deals with a letter from his father about this issue and it's suggestive that that is perhaps the proper way one should read the Lord of the Rings? (It specifically deals with Lotr there). I at least am inclined to view his works in general that way more and more, and his earliest works have a really archaic/tragic and beautiful flavor to it that do not warrant further exposition. If i want to dig deeper, than for me it's more about the philosophical framework, the underlining themes and values rather than the metaphysical make-up of the actual civilizations of Middle Earth/Arda.
The most consistent explanation of orc origins with the chronology presented in the Silmarillion would be the second essay from Tolkien. It makes the most sense to me. It fits with The Silmarillion that: 'Yet this is held true by the wise of Eressëa, that all those of the Quendi who came into the hands of Melkor, ere Utumno was broken, were put there in prison, and by slow arts of cruelty were corrupted and enslaved; and thus did Melkor breed the hideous race of the Orcs in envy and mockery of the Elves, of whom they were afterwards the bitterest foes. For the Orcs had life and multiplied after the manner of the Children of Ilúvatar; and naught that had life of its own, nor the semblance of life, could ever Melkor make since his rebellion in the Ainulindalë 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 it may be was the vilest deed of Melkor, and the most hateful to Ilúvatar.' I love the addition that Sauron is running the breeding program. It gives even more meaning to his other name, Gorthaur the Cruel. The alchemy of incarnated Maiar plus a Child of Eru or one of the corrupted beasts of Yavanna makes sense systematically as you can apply it to almost all of the servants of the Shadow (i.e: elves and men + Great Orc maia = orc species, serpent of Yavanna + Incarnated maia dragon = dragon species; ent + Earth related maia = troll species, etc.). It's a great work-around for not having the Secret Fire and it's blasphemy of epic proportion to boot. That seems to check all the boxes for Melkor, even more so by the time he is named Morgoth. I do think it follows that the vilest, most hateful deed of Melkor will of course, be used by Eru Ilúvatar to devise things more wonderful that lie far beyond the conception of Melkor or Sauron just as he promised. What that might be may have been beyond the imagination of Tolkien himself.
Agreed, that's the most consistent explanation, and it makes Melkor so much more evil while still running parallel to the real-world myths and lore that Tolkien was drawing on. Can you say "nephilim?"
I think The Silmarillion's explanation for the origin of the orcs is still the best one. Yes, orcs being former elves does raise some issues, but just the idea of elves themselves raises plenty of questions if you really think about it. Every time we see orcs in the story, they definitely have their own minds. I don't think Morgoth or Sauron would need to exercise this constant control over them. They are evil and follow the most powerful evil around. So, they naturally follow Morgoth or Sauron.
I think token head really kind of finished up by the time he got to the morgoths ring material, and just decided to give the whole thing a good firm polish with the time he had left
I appreciate your analysis of this thorny topic. For what it's worth, my having embraced the theory of orcs having once been elves in origin, I have imagined that they go to the Halls of Mandos after death, to places there set aside for them, the way dwarves and men do. That it is in their time in Mandos where they are healed of their tortured corruption by Morgoth, Sauron, and Saruman.
Tolkien's struggle with metaphysics - and with the lineages of the immortals - reminds me of the actual efforts that scholars devote to learning what religious beliefs the ancient Greeks held. Surely they held Hesiod in great esteem - yet Hesiod's Theogony is full of inconsistencies, almost as if the separate stories didn't need to be about the same beings. The same gods and heroes appear in Homer - the nearest thing that the ancient Greeks had to a Bible - and again, the stories diverge. By the time that even Ovid is trying to interpret them, it begins to be explained as, "The Thracians tell the story this way, and those of Sparta tell it that," and the myth begins to degenerate into legend - or so it appears to those accustomed to religion as reflecting revealed Truth. I sometimes think the ancients would laugh at this discussion and tell us, "they're gods. Why must they be consistent?"
@@maxion5109 They would take a look at today's major religions and laugh at our lack of self-consciousness. I mean, the Christian god is basically a paradox unto itself and any consistency there is, is achieved through the idea that the god is not bound by any such rules and humans inherently cannot understand the god's nature.
@@romaliop the Christian god isn't a paradox at all if one takes the devil into account. It is incredibly common for people to ignore Lucifer. It's what leads them to what they imagine to be a clever critique of Christianity i.e. if god is all good, how come there is such evil in the world? In fact, it's not only not clever but inane.
I like this video (beyond the specific subject matter), because I have found that many other Tolkien fans and historians often portray Tolkien as some sort of god that thought out every aspect of his universe with 0 inconsistencies whatsoever. In your video, you portray a different point of view, that more so shows and Tolkien’s creative process, rather than recognizing the existence of inconsistencies as a criticism. I think the process of reworking his ideas and fleshing out his world, though it led to some retcons people would rather pretend don’t exist, is admirable in its own way, and certainly interesting.
The way I figure it is that there have been many iterations of Orcs. The first may have been these humanoid beasts you speak of, likely a short lived failure. Next Morgoth makes orcs out of elves, these orcs may potentially be immortal though most by the Third Age are likely slain. Next possibly dwarves and then certainly Men are tried out as well. And all these different populations of diverse origin are now completely interbred into one highly divergent species. Natural lifespans likely varied greatly. Of course the average orc probally lived fast and died young due to in and outgroup violence and disease due to overcrowded and unsanitary living conditions. Which may have selected for strong immune systems.
That makes a lot of sense and would really be in keeping with the lore behind other origins of things like dragons. Something that I also have thought was that orc culture was basically like how we think of the concept of the school-to-prison pipeline: When an orc is born, it is not an inherently evil being and may even appear much like an elf or human baby with just a few variations given the factors to which orcs have had to adapt. That baby orc then goes 1 of 2 ways: 1. The environment, cultural pressures, and will of Sauron/Morgoth cause the orc to succumb to evil and it behaves the way it thinks it needs to in order to survive or feels is expected of it to be accepted/belong. 2. It does not succumb, rebels against what's expected of it, and is consequently murdered; or it escapes but lives a solitary and hidden existence somewhere remote because anyone who finds it will most likely kill it (as it does still look like a regular orc) and thus we never hear about these principled orcs.
Of the lifespan of the orcs... One 'hard' data point we have is that Bolg is the son of Azog. Azog is slain at the Battle of Azanulbizar, TA 2799. Bolg is slain at the Battle of the Five Armies in TA 2941, where he is actively fighting and it took Beorn to kill him. Now based on these numbers, the very youngest Bolg could be is around 141 years, and I have a hard time believing a (non-Dunedain) human managing to do that at. Of course the easiest explanation is that when Tolkien wrote the Hobbit, he didn't really pay that much attention yet to the years. Like the destruction of Gondolin and the damage the elves did in that defense was clearly still relatively fresh in the minds of the Goblins, whereas in the chronology as we have it, that would have happened around 6500 years ago.
Interesting! I find it strange to think of Orcs as corrupted beasts, but your explanations of it do raise good points, especially in regard to their individuality and autonomy. It's very possible that there were different kinds of Orcs, as you mentioned, throughout the Ages : maybe the Goblins of the North were closer to their "beastly" origins, while the Uruk-Hai and Great Uruks of Mordor would have been bred with Men (a terrifying thought indeed, for those with a vivid imagination! ^^) Either way, this is one of these topics I can't help but feel bittersweet about : had Tolkien had more time to develop his ideas, the various systems that make up the World of Arda, from Middle-Earth to Valinor, would be firmly established, leaving no contradictions. And yet, the fact he couldn't finish his work gives it a truly mythological aura. Maybe because it's "suggesting what could be" instead of simply explaining how things work. In a way, the Professor's works completed their mythological task in their incompleteness. And after all, he believed in a Heaven "where the good here unfinished is completed; and where the stories unwritten and the hopes unfulfilled, are continued"
I don't know. I still like the idea that orcs are corrupted elves. The dualistic nature between them is interesting. Elves = nature, beauty, creates things that appear magical (like the elven cloaks). Orcs = destruction, ugliness, makes things that destroy. The dwarves did not have "souls" until Eru'Iluvatar gave them life after Aule created them. However, elves already have a soul, and their children have souls. So a corrupted elf doesn't seem to need a "soul" granted to them because they already have it. Corrupted Men and creatures (like wolves, unless every mention of a wolf is really a Warg or an evil spirit in the shape of a wolf) have children and don't seem to need Eru'Iluvatar to continually grant them permission to have souls. Eru'Iluvatar seems to allow free will to a great extend, and only on rare occasions does he interfere with Arda. I think the "Orcs were elves" idea can still work, but as I mentioned earlier I am more inclined toward that explanation. Can Orcs live forever like the Elves? Well, how do Elves live forever? Is it "biological"? Some Elves, like Arwen, can renounce their immortality and have the same fate as Men.
+1 Corrupting Elves amongst all beings into Orcs just seems to make Morgoth's crime that much more vile. Orcs being Men simply loses some of the "awe" factor to my eyes. I, for one, am glad that Tolkien never finished to rewrite the Legendarium with manish Orcs and Christopher thus used the Elf origin in the Silmarillion. Although it all really was just WIP and he came back and forth on the subject, so it's not entirely impossible Tolkien could have made them Elves again before finally publishing "his" Silmarillion ...
I totaly agree with you. The idea of changing the canon so that the orcs are in fact corrupted men are just lame and pointless in a mythological view. I can also think that corrupted elves may loose immortality in some brutal evil way as a result of Morgoth's deformation - a kind of kost for changing the species. That's my solution of the problem.
I don't like the established idea that the Orcs were tortured into being Orcs. I think it would have been better if Melkor has seduced and exhorted them into failure. That the orcs are the product of a violent, ultra-degenerate cult that rose up around Melkor as an example. Like a furtherance of Aule's "sin" of creating the Dwarves in anticipation of the Elves. Melkor's Orcs would be in anticipation of Men - as long as his will endures in Arda, the orcs can "make their own fate" like Men were given to. But I like to think that even Morgoth couldn't *force* that on anyone. Indeed, I like to think that the blood-pacts of the selfish, jealous, and greedy, who came to him, played a role in *his* corruption. In that way, Melkor's pride, shame, and self-destruction, became the Ur-Example for them, but the *art* of corrupting oneself into another form of life would actually have been partly or even mostly *designed* by the original seduced elves.
My personal theory is based in the view of Tolkien that Evil like Morgotth cannot create but only corrupt. Perhaps he corrupted some elves bred them together in much the same way we bred wolves into dogs. He was cruel to them teaching them only horrid things as acceptable and all that is good as detestable. He then molded their forms to become more evil with his magics but internally at their very core there remains an Elven soul. So they could, hypothetically, do good but they would have to overcome the conditioning not only bred into their culture but also their form and the vile enchantments imprinted onto the very essence of what makes an Orc body an Orc body. He then continued to do to the Orcs what we do to Dog breeds and some get larger and some get smaller with different features.
it seems to me that orcs being of elf stock is perfectly within tolkeins themes if you follow it through. Melkors discord ultimately was always turned against him for the betterment of eru/creation. Eru was the consumate chessmaster (he defeated sauron with a few Hobbits). It seems obvious that there are more orcs by many orders of magnitude than there were ever elves. Thats a lot of elven souls (once free of corrupted flesh) that would never have existed but for Melkor. i like to think that after the Dagor Dagorlath those elves are freed from mandos and go out and help rebuild Arda, maybe after helping to kick morgoth into the kerb again. although its been decade or two since i last reread the book, im pretty sure that in Cirith ungol the orcs are talking about the battles in the last alliance as from personal memory....
I always in my own 'head-cannon' view orcs as starting out with Orc/Troll lesser maiar intermixed with captured elves and apes corrupted into proto-orc things, and the trolls following along a similar path . ...with Melkor furnishing the power, and Sauron doing the actual nuts-and-bolts tinkering of it....then adding men along the way into it, ...and finally Saruman "perfecting" it. So, you have proto-orc half maiar/apes, then then some elf, then some human... just totally corrupted ...things... that become 'orcs' by the time the Noldor arrive. And they don't live long, because they're totally corrupted, and die by combat BUT could live long if they're strong and survivors. And then Saruman fixes it more so that they can stand sunlight, etc., as 'super-orcs'. Because maiar of fire are better at 'tinkering' than Morgoth was.
This is a veru interesting video. I always think back to the music and think, had he lived today, he might have thought of the orcs in terms similar to drum Machines in modern music, preprogrammd to repeat some themes from with in the music. he might also have struggled a whole lifetime more trying to make everythin perfect and consistent in terms of his mythology and his own ideas on creation and secodary creation. Thanks and keep up the good work,
Thanks for the info. I didn't know there were other ideas floating around other than them being corrupted elves. And them being irredeemable being a deeply unfortunate but stark reality in the LOTR universe.
Thank you for the videio. It is interesting. I do wonder about the state of dragons in Tolkien. I mean sure they are corrupted spirits or creatures, but they have a mind of their own. I mean the dragons did their own thing after Morgoth was destroyed and didn't pay any heed to Sauron. What do you think?
I never felt comfortable with the idea of Orcs being corrupted Elves, it does bring a lot of problems. I can’t reconcile the idea of Elves being condemned to this with no possibility of redemption, also, Elves are really resilient against earth elements which doesn’t seem the case with orcs, they actually seem pretty easy to kill😂 . I am glad to hear this being discussed because it is completely expected that Tolkien himself would had seen all the problems that this arc would originate. Awesome analysis as usual!
Nah they seem pretty easy for the likes of aragon legolas, gilmlie etc but they merk normal men and women, although the hobbits in the fellowship seem to be able to go through many orcs like a knife to butter
I like to think that corrupted (through being utterly broken and ruined) elves were the proto-type for orcs. But that orcs are creatures spawned from dark sorcery, in imitation and mockery of those ruined elves. Which leads to the confusion even in middle earth itself that the orcs, or at least the first ones, were actually elves once. I think the ruined elf was merely an inspiration for the minds of these new life forms. So as Aule created the dwarves, Morgoth created the orcs. I also think that orcs can be produced in two ways, spawned through dark sorcery which is probably how the first orcs were made. And can create armies fast, that are more loyal to their masters/creators. Or they have gone native and live somewhat autonomously, and actually breed. Such as the orcs of the misty mountains and moria. Yet are still bound to the will of Morgoth and by extension Sauron, it's much less direct. They will march often unwillingly and would rather do their own thing. Yet that link going back to Morgoth remains in them.
earth elements? I mean, Saeros dies from falling off a riverbank so it’s not like elves are particularly that hard to kill. They generally have pretty good combat skills as a result of living forever, but they’re just as susceptible to accidents as anyone else. As for being irredeemable: I don’t think it’s necessary to assume that. LotR shows us that orcs *can* be badgered into acting semi-decently (Pippin puts up a stink about Merry being injured and the orc eventually gives him medicine). If they were able to get to Mandos, they’d be right as rain in oh…a few centuries. But Morgoth would have the power to just yoink them away from Mandos. Sauron would have to be a little more devious: but he could absolutely achieve the same result simply by convincing the orcs that whatever punishment he put them through before reincarnation was “nothing” compared to what Mandos would do. Classic villain move really. There would be a grain of truth in this perhaps, in that Mandos likely uses many techniques akin to torture. Tolkien speaks of the “duress” of Mandos, a word which he also uses for Angband. Furthermore, Mandos is described as “pitiless”. So perhaps there are in fact many instances where the only difference between what Mandos does, and what Sauron does is consent and intent. Before Mandos will do anything, a soul has to repent: i.e admit that they did wrong and ask for redemption. And, he’s only going to do what he knows is absolutely necessary to get this particular soul back to it’s natural state (which he knows because he paid attention to the Music). It’s likely not pretty though, especially in the cases of people who’ve done really really bad shit. Like, Maeglin is not having a good time, just saying. So it probably wouldn’t be hard for someone as cunning as Sauron to convince orcs to be more afraid of Mandos than of him. Which would certainly also explain their reluctant loyalty. So only after the fall of Sauron would the orc souls go to Mandos at last, and even after that it’d probably be a while before they repented. The idea that orcs are corrupted elves makes sense to me anyway. After all, Morgoth does corrupt several elves: including one to the point of willingly serving him. He also gets Fëanor, Celegorm and Maedhros to unwittingly serve his purposes. Which is pretty impressive given that they were light-elves and already centuries old when he first met them. If he’d had an elven child to work with, well, there’s no reason to think he couldn’t corrupt some elves.
I love seeing my favorite Tolkein channels -- Tolkien Lore, GirlNextGondor, The Red Book -- interacting! What an interesting follow-up to The Red Book's video! I had a question ready to post, but unfortunately lost it due to clumsy typing. Hopefully I'll remember it right when I try to type it up again here. In regards to "Orcish behavior"... beings of free will are described as behaving "Orcishly". Is "Orcish behavior" contingent upon the will now being dependent on Sauron or Morgoth's? Or could a being with free will who chose behave in a heinous manner like Eöl or Maeglin be considered "Orcish" in behavior? What acts would be deviant enough to cross over into "Orcishness"? Sorry if these are stupid questions. I am still working my way through Simarillion and Tolkien's other works that are not LOTR or the Hobbit. Most of my knowledge of the lore comes from awesome Tolkien channels.
Well as it happens, a partial answer to that question can be found in the abandoned LOTR sequel, “The New Shadow,” and GirlNextGondor did a video reading that story. Go check it out: ruclips.net/video/AmYUOPStSfY/видео.html
@@TolkienLorePodcast thanks. I couldn’t remember where I first heard of that concept plus the abandoned sequel. Thought it was here, but turns out my memory was wrong! I’ll watch (or rewatch, if I watched it before and forgot) that; thanks!
Very good work. However, it seems to me that you left out questions that go all the way back to the Hobbit. The characteristics of “goblins “ which he emphasizes that I see as pertinent are a very developed culture, including an evil but effective sense of humor, a love of music and a talent for poetry, all very elvish traits. He also mentions that they are quite clever, having invented many things that trouble the world today. Obviously Saruman got his blasting fire from them, not the other way round. We meet an Uruk personally in Grishnakh, and what does his knife reveal? A love of art. The handle is intricately carved. Not to your taste? De gustibus non disputandam. To conclude, I have always thought of them as long-lived, based on how old Bolg would have been by The Battle of Five Armies and on Gorbag’s “Like old times” comment. The last time orcs had the power to freeboot was when, 3000 years before? Perhaps this only complicates the answer, but these are thoughts to consider. Thanks.
Tolkien tried to wiggle out of a moral corner that he wrote himself into. The plot demanded getting rid of the bad guys, so all of the Orcs had to die, but oops, that's genocide, which is evil. So they're soulless golems and it doesn't matter, but oops, he already had them making moral choices. So they have souls and can make choices, but those souls were corrupted, but oops, then they don't have any choice, so they don't really have souls. Well, Morgoth overpowers them, but surely not all of them at once. Then oops, maybe they're redeemable. And on and on.
Nothing in LotR says all the orcs died. After the Ring was destroyed, "the creatures of Sauron, orc or troll or beast spell-enslaved, ran hither and thither mindless; and some slew themselves, or cast themselves in pits, or fled wailing back to hide in holes or dark lightless places far from hope." So some orcs survived, at least for a while, and you can't hold Gandalf or Aragorn responsible for the suicides.
@@garydmcgath Also, if the orcs were corrupted elves, then they would naturally fade away as a species over time for the same reason the elves had to leave Middle-Earth. I don't think it's far-fetched to think that Sauron also used his magic to artificially keep the orc population going in the third age similarly as the three Elven rings of power were used. So when Sauron and the ring were destroyed, it would explain how orcs could've almost immediately disappeared from the world.
Full of fallacies. False connection between having souls (a human thing) and ability to make moral choices. Also, even if, as it seems, orcs are hopelessly fallen, corrupted or just made the way they are, their nature can be exclusively evil AND still they can be held fully accountable for choosing evil. Nature a creature has does not excuse it from responsibility. However, I don't get any hints from my reading of Tolkein that Orcs have any worry, either actual or in their own minds, of eternal consequences and not merely based on them being psychopaths.
Man, as much as I love Tolkien's writing, this whole issue is a real case of the professor's tendency to get lost up his own rear end, especially as he grew older.
@ 8:13 The Idea of Orks being offspring of Mayar mingling with the mortal beings comes straight from the Bible Nephilim which is interesting as for example the Numenor is kind of like the Atlantis myth incorporated into his lore + the big flood from the Bible. :D
I always had the idea that orcs were melkors attempt at the children of iluvatar in the music of the ainur, as yavanna had for the ents, and aule had for the dwarves. And that they were brought into being with everything else. And that they, the orcs were never "adopted" by iluvatar so they could only function as long as nelkors will, or a substitute existed
Like Dwarves and Ents I believe they were doomed to fail in time, because they were subcreations of lesser beings. Only Iluvatar is able to create everlasting things
Gradually moving from seeing orcs like biological automata to at least semi-independent jerks who follow orders only when the brass is watching sounds a lot like a man who actually saw war up close...
The orcs remind me of nephilim in their various origin stories. It appears Tolkien hewed closer and closer to nephilim-lore with each new origin story he made for orcs.
As I remember it, Men were always Mortal, that being the Gift of Illuvatar unto Men. But that the concept of Death became shrouded in fear and darkness to Men after their moral fall of falling under Morgoth's power.
Great video. Unfortunately you didnt mention the drakes we got. They don't seem mechanical, so do drakes like Smaug have their own will or not? And if they do, how were their bodies imbued with the flame imperishable?
I may get into that in a separate video sometime but the point for this video was that they were, like the orcs, very different in the original conception.
If the will of Eru is supreme, and everything unfolds according to his plan (i.e. Melkor's changes to the Music of the Ainur being used to create even more wonders)... is Eru 'good'? Or is all the suffering and death and corruption and decay throughout the Legendarium according to his plan?
@@TolkienLorePodcast Indeed, and an area Tolkien would've been infinitely familiar with. In Catholicism, one could have a certain amount of sympathy for the devil who brought humanity knowledge and free will, but JRRT kinda sidestepped that by making Melkor and his minions into Just Plain Evil(tm). However, their actions must both ultimately be the will of the omnipotent, omniscient Creator by definition. Even so, I must confess a certain sympathy for the Balrog of Moria, he was just napping quietly for a few millenia when he was rudely awoken by that Fool of a Took. Bound to make anyone a bit cross!
This is what we get from The Silmarillion on this subject: 'Then Ilúvatar spoke, and he said: ‘Mighty are the Ainur, and mightiest among them is Melkor; but that he may know, and all the Ainur, that I am Ilúvatar, those things that ye have sung, I will show them forth, that ye may see what ye have done. And thou, Melkor, shalt see that no theme may be played that hath not its uttermost source in me, nor can any alter the music in my despite. For he that attempteth this shall prove but mine instrument in the devising of things more wonderful, which he himself hath not imagined.’ (Sil, The Ainulindale) I take from this passage that pain and suffering are the consequence of free will given to the Children of Eru and to the Ainur before them to some extent. Perhaps even necessary to devise the unimagined wonderful things that Eru Ilúvatar speaks of above. The Beginning, the End and the Themes in-between are going to be played out. In that, Eru's will cannot be thwarted, but there are many spaces left for corruption. When I read the passage above, it occurs to me that Melkor takes the admonishment as a challenge rather than a statement of fact and, the Silmarillion drama ensues...
@@TolkienLorePodcastTrue, but Tolkien would have been very much aware of Paradise Lost and similar works, and the reasons behind the exploration of such ideas. He sidestepped all of those with Melkor as just evil and no more. But to get back to my original thought (got a bit sidetracked), that does have an inherent contradiction with Eru being all-powerful and creator of all the Ainur that 'fell' - unless their fall was part of his design, too, and everything, good or ill, that occurred in the Legendarium would have to be, too.
The clue is in the word legendarium. All the written works are purported to be the tales of the Free Peoples. Which may not be accurate necessarily. He makes that clear repeatedly in Silmarillion and Unfinished Tales if you read them carefully.
I like Tolkien's way of writing and thinking in the sense that he allows himself to be unsure of things, but does it in a way that it still results in a compelling story. I personally don't see a problem with orcs being corrupted elves. The reason why they may be short lived could be due to the corruption itself. Corruption so deep that even the elven gift of eternal life is lost to them. That's my headcanon anyway.
When you consider that human beings were created to live forever, and even secular medical science acknowledges that it is theoretically possible, yet we are not precisely because of corruption, then yours is actually a very sensible conclusion. The idea that a corrupted form of something that is immortal should likewise be immortal in the end really just shows a twisted logic that many ppl have, maybe even most, idk.
@@treebeardtheent2200 Indeed, aging is not programmed into our genes yet we age anyway. Thank you for taking your time reading and responding to my comment =)
@@backonlazer791 Your first sentence above really says a lot and can be applied to vastly more things than the narrow topic of this video of course. Generally, my favorite stories, both fiction and non-fiction alike, have the distinct flavor of the authors telling a history, a story, and the story is drawn from experienced, observerved or retold events. It is not pushed. I think this is partly what Tolkein was getting at with his dislike of allegory. LOTR is stillnfull of allegory imo, but it is pulled by the reader, not pushed by the author aside from his having a working moral compass and not being afraid to let it show in his observations. Another way to express the idea is that great stories are discovered, not created. they unfold, often bit by bit, the way life happens, maybe according to plan, but not according to any plan of the story teller. Nevertheless, the storyteller does have some liberty in the manner of telling the story, just not too much, and not enough that it's ok to fill in all the blanks, answer all hanging questions, etc. Real life certainly doesn't answer all our questions, and neither do some great epic tales.
Orcs and Goblins have societies, languages, tactical reasoning, leaders, kings, etc... Being corrupted from Elves, they are immortal and reproduce like elves do. Nothing else could explain their numbers.
The origin of orcs is a very complicated topic... you did a good job at summarizing Tolkien's thoughts on it! Personally I find it difficult to believe that Orcs had fëar, be it mortal or immortal fëar. Because if that was the case not only would Eru give fëar to corrupted beings that were raised in hatred right from the start, but it makes the inaction of the Valar much worse. There are hundreds of thousands of heavily corrupted beings in Middle-earth, dying in large numbers, probably never daring to come to Mandos... most likely Middle-earth would be filled with tortured bodiless Orc souls. If the situation was that horrible I find it hard to believe neither the Valar nor the Orcs ever intervened on behalf of the Orcs. Animals, maybe mixed with human and elvish blood, and there and then with that of a lesser Maia, makes much more sense to me. 🤔
Great video!! I was never a big fan of Tolkien's orcs! I hated how they were mostly cannon fodder and obstacles for the heroes, who didn't have to feel guilty for mass slaughtering sentient beings. When I was reading the books I always skipped the fights with orcs, and when the movies became available on DVDs I skipped all scenes with prolongued orc tussles. I really disliked how these clearly humanoid and sentient creatures were often slaughtered as if this was nothing more than a mildly perilous outdoor sport. And it was also far too easy to kill them. In the "Hobbit" and in the LOTR trilogy the only heroes who were actually killed by orcs, were Boromir and Isildur! Boromir was killed because he was totally outnumbered by them, while Isildur was ambushed, and the One Ring betrayed him. That's it! I also never liked that Tolkien had made his orcs inherently evil. What about baby orcs? Is a good orc at least a remote possibility? I am aware that a more mature Tolkien became increasingly uncomfortable with how he had depicted his orcs. And he tried out various origins stories which could explain why Eru Illuvatar had tolerated the existence of orcs. But if orcs had not been constructed from scratch by Morgoth, and if they originated from elves or men who were merely corrupted by Morgoth, it raises the tricky question if orcs have souls and spirits. Tolkien was never able to resolve these conundrums because new concepts would have necessitated huge retcons of his earlier writings. He was not completely against a bit of retconning, and he had changed later editions of "The Hobbit" in order to make the story of how Bilbo found the One Ring compatible with the LOTR trilogy. But he could not change how he had written about orcs without making major alterations. And Tolkien never managed to solve this conundrum. Amazon's ROP adopted Tolkien's best known theory: the orcs originated from tortured and corrupted elves, although Tolkien had clearly discarded this theory in his later writings. But Peter Jackson's Saruman has introduced the tortured-elves narrative to a world wide audience, and the show-runners decided to include this theory in their vision of Middle Earth. I have to say, that I really appreciated the character of Adar who turns out to be one of the first proto-orcs. But he has still retained a lot of his elvishness which makes him a fascinating character. He is a flawed hero with a just cause, although his methods are questionable. But we can feel with him. He and his Uruks haven't chosen to be so different from their distant elvish ancestors, and Adar is not a blood thirsty sadist. He doesn't enjoy murdering anyone, although he doesn't hesitate to kill when it's necessary. But his main goal is the creation of a homeland for his Uruks which is compatible with their specific biological needs. There is nothing wrong with this per se, and I loved Adar's confrontation with Galadriel. The actor Joseph Mawle is terrific, and he managed to turn Adar into a believable character with whom we can actually sympathize even when we cannot condone his methods. Adar has become hands down my favorite character of Amazon's flawed project. Unfortunately he and his Uruks have not been present in the final episode of the first season. But I think, we will see him and his Uruks again in the second season, because HalRon needs to remove Adar in order to become the sole ruler of Mordor. Sauron and Adar hate each other, because Sauron has killed too many Uruks in his misguided Joseph-Mengele-like experiments, while Adar has killed Sauron’s previous physical body. That was probably hurtful, and it was a major set-back for Sauron since at the time he didn't have his ring which could have helped him to regroop faster. I expect that we might see a major confrontation between Adar and Sauron. However, it’s also possible that Adar doesn't realize that HalRon is actually his old foe Sauron, and HalRon might be able to ensnare Adar. And if Sauron will give him a ring of power, Adar might even turn into one of the Nazgul. I know that Tolkien said that all Nazgul have been humans before their rings turned them slowly into ringwraiths. But the show-runners have violated Tolkien's lore frequently. I would not be surprised if Adar will be turned into a Nazgul thousands of years after the original dark lord Morgoth turned Adar into a proto-orc!
@@TolkienLorePodcast Thanks I have always wondered that. It would be interesting to know if Morgoth was to somehow manage to return would Sauron just fall back in line or would he somehow try to overthrow him at that point?
@@hiddentape2911 It is a "Rule of Two" situation between the two. I start wondering if our understanding of Melkor/Morgoth and Sauron as "male" characters is correct.
I think it's a fascinating concept that Sauron is the real daddy of the Orcs, even if only due to carrying out the deed if not having mentally conceived of them.
My theory is that Morgoth and Sauron created the orcs' bodies in mockery of the elves, but could not create spirits for them. So instead, Morgoth kidnapped elves and tried to corrupt them (presumably through things like torture-or-be-tortured), and those he corrupted he killed and took their spirits and embodied them in orcs. When any orcs died, their spirits lived in the deep parts of Angband until they could be reimbodied in new orcs, similar to how Glorfindel returned (which would also explain the recurring orc leaders). It's even possible that Morgoth managed to claim the spirits of the few elves who chose to be evil (e.g., Eöl), perhaps because they were afraid to go to the Halls of Mandos and face their deeds. That would also explain why orcs are irredeemable---they're already damned, and the elves' version of Hell is being reincarnated as an orc until the end of the world. Aside from Tolkien's general cosmology, this is also consistent with the fact that Morgoth and Sauron are stated to have evil sprits on their side, and their versions of things like vampires are consistent with this sort of procedure. The only problems with this they are the question of whether orc-men hybrids have their own spirits and the fact that orcs have such large numbers. However, the first question is more of a question than a problem---maybe the hybrids have orc spirits, or maybe they have their own spirits that tend to evil because of their biology and upbringing (similar to a real-life human with psychiatric problems who was raised in an abusive home in an evil society), or maybe (as I believe) it can be either and depends on the exact proportions involved. Any of these options is feasible. Meanwhile, the second question is not intractable, as we don't know much about what was going on between the awakening of the elves and the First Age, nor do we know what was happening in other continents. Not to mention that Morgoth and Sauron could have used the captured elves to breed more elves to corrupt, effectively "farming spirits " for their orc army.
Something you may have covered that I have missed in these videos, but have you touched upon the Lord of the Rings: The Third Age video game yet? If not, there’s a plethora of weapons and shields used by the playable characters that are used and owned by other characters from the trilogy. If not, maybe look into it to see if it’s worth a video or two to make somewhere down the line??
@@TolkienLorePodcast true, but I’m sure someone’s done at least a wiki of certain weapons. And there are playthroughs here on RUclips to help refresh your memory. If nothing else, I can offer some assistance in doing some of the research. This game was very helpful to me growing up, even though it’s just an JRPG and not everyone enjoys the turn-based strategy without a more competitive element to it like Pokémon. Much like the extra material outside the four main books, I’d like to believe this is supplemental to the movies (given the direct usage of film footage in the game), give or take some liberties taken with certain battles. Thanks for replying. I wasn’t sure if you would. Not everyone does.
There is a line from Finrod & Andreth... “But never even in the night have we believed that he could prevail against the Children of Eru. This one he might cozen-or that one he might corrupt; but to change the doom of a whole people of the Children, to rob them of their inheritance: if he could do that in Eru's despite, then greater and more terrible is he by far than we guessed; then all the valor of the Noldor is but presumption and folly-nay, Valinor and the Mountains of the Pelóri are builded on sand.” Maybe Morgoth *was* that powerful at first.
When Tolkien says that Saruman bred Orcs and Men, and you wonder how that's possible, it's important to remember that Men doesn't mean _male_ humans specifically. If you consider the possibility of raiding villages and capturing _female_ humans for breeding, it becomes a lot more plausible -- horrifying, but plausible.
It could go the other way around too. A few years ago they rescued a shaved orangutan from a brothel. The depths that humanity will sink to is horrifying.
Concidering the Enemy's tendency to nefarious breeding programs, does anyone else think the mysterious disapearance of the Entwives had any connection to the Olog Hai?
My take is that orcs probably came from multiple sources. There was some unknown humanoid species that Morgoth corrupted and bred with the handful of corrupted elves he had, which over time created an entirely new life form, one that while maybe having some elf blood, was no longer an elf and did not have a fea. Later on, men were corrupted and added two the mix as well as some fallen Maiar who took the form of orcs. By the time we get to the 3rd Age none of the orcs currently alive were elves. Their ancestors were probably, but they are entirely their own thing and more closely resemble men.
I thought they were alchemical clones of elves/men/beasts DNA. Where their spirits came from was the mystery. Where did the dragon’s spirits come from?
The dwarves were Aule’s creations based on what he thought the children would be. Life was granted to them. Morgoth/Sauron had the DNA and may have used a similar process.
The same as Ents. It say Yevanna made them and spirits come into them. Maybe Morgoth just recycled the unbodied spirits of his defeated maiar in the bodies of Dragons. In this way the beasts obtained a mind and free will.
I feel the solution to Tolkien's conundrum was staring him in the face. 'Orc' has simply denoted quite different beings throughout history. Just like the Romans called all the nomadic step riders 'scythians' for hunders of years, regardless of their actual ethnicity, so was 'orc' applied to servants of the dark lords, regardless of their genetic origin. At first they might've been corrupt elves, weaker maiar and beasts; whether interbred or separate groups. Then dwarves, and finally men were added into the mix, resulting in an ever changing breed of servants for the dark lords. Their common denominator being not their genetics, but the fact that they were the footsoldiers of the dark lord.
So you probably don't want to but you need to do a video, or series, looking at the parallels & metaphors between the war in Ukraine & Tolkien's Legendarium. The latter is directly relevant on multiple levels to current events.
Here is the basic problem: 'you need a bunch of random bad guys which you don't want to feel bad about killing.' Add Tolkien's religion-based world view. Equals storytelling conundrum.
@@alanpennie8013 Haha…I had to look up ‘mooks’. I didn’t grow-up in the northeast so the only context I have heard that in is when someone is referred to in the movies as a ‘loveable mook.’ Not to many loveable Orcs.
I have to say love the video and detail. But you missed something. How Morgoth affected Arda through it Physically. He dominated it Physically because of his power second to Eru himself. Don't you think the Elves were affected in the corruption of the land? Morgoth least affected the sea.
I always tend to think of the Avari as the "anything is possible" race of elves that might account for whatsoever type of fay fairy creature that you might find in real-world folklore, it seems natural for me to assume that orcs in the beginning were, perhaps in part various tribes of Avari that were led astray, and that that the orcs that we see in the Lord of the rings are a far more cohesive and internally consistent group then would have been seeing in the earlier ages when they could have been any number of experiments in creating a race under the servitude of morgoth, in other words I think the orcs in The Lord of the rings make the most sense as the Mixed-Up descendants of any number of the explanations posited by JRR during his years of writing, perhaps even making the lifespans, biologies and capacities for autonomous thought variable from tribe to tribe and even from orc to orc
After all it is clear in The Lord of the Rings that orcs as a race are very ethnically diverse and that there is a tremendous amount of variety between Orcs
The problem with elves "miscegenation" is elves have children only if they do it willingly Humans can be "forced" to do so. It is a pity Tolkien has not left anything about a successful "male elf-human female" couple
I'd like to propose a theory, built on the premise of Andreth concerning Immortal Men: First, I dare to push back the Coming of Men, to the same night the Elves awoke in Cuivienen. But whereas the Elves were quickened to come up with words and name the world, Men had to form words themselves. The Voice pronounced judgement on shortening their lives, and the people wanted to tell the Giver of Gifts what happened. Remember there were even those who sought to silence the ones who mention the Voice. I am sure there were "priests" of the Giver, among the immortal Men, that encouraged dark worship. Who knows how long they were immortal? Perhaps the dark priests were cursed, and when the Voice demanded an explanantion for their rebellion (much like God asked Cain where his brother was) and the priests answered: Shall we answer to a formless Voice, which forsakes his people? Therefore have we forsaken Thee. And the Voice groaned and cursed them, putting a mark on their form and shortening their lives. But they worsened in their hate for the Voice and responded: Great is the curse Thou hast placed upon us, that all races shall hate us, and seek our destruction. But see us, o Voice of the Dark, that greater still shal be our refuse of Thee. Let Thine hand come upon us and we will plague those Thine children. And these dark priests, and their dark wives, were cast out, and rhe Immortal Men were yet seekibg solace, and the dark ones went westward. In an unmeasured time span, Elves came back to Beleriand, and met with the Orcs, a race corrupted early on (while Man was still deciding whom to worship) and history goes as given, and Men finally show up, after their Doom is put upon them. By the time the Fourth Age is come, and drawing from the chapter sketch of sequel to LOTR, that while no orc has been seen anymore, those that worked dark works were called the same, because they held their dealigs in the shadow; as though an ANCIENT SHADOW were resurfacing. But not the Shadow of Sauron, but of the original Dark Priests. That's my pitch.
I think this also addresses the rule that only Iluvatar can curse a race, and affect Life and Death. Melkor cannot create life, but he can corrupt the Dark Ones, and ensnare them in his service. They were faithful to him back when they were immortal. The descendants know the origin of Man and their kin, the Orcs, and so remember still their hate for Iluvatar. When Morgoth was cast out, some of the covenants they made with Morgoth, compelled them to commit suicide when theur lord was gone. By the Third Age, their origin was lost, and they murmured agaunst Sauron, and wished for a simpler life.
This is the trouble about world building If you don’t keep it vague you start asking "And visitors say: how does such a big city exist? What keeps it going? Since it's got a river you can chew, where does the drinking water come from? What is, in fact, the basis of its civic economy? How come it, against all probability, works? Actually, visitors don't often say this. They usually say things like, "Which way to the, you know, the...er...you know, the young ladies, right?"
What if first Orcs were Elves corrupted by Morgoth, and in the second breed Men corrupted by Sauron, and we have also Uruk-hai by Saruman, and probably some Maiar incarnated. There were many kinds of orcs, so it is possible that they could be, at least at some time, made in different ways.
Saruman biggest sin was the interbreeding of Man and Orcs This tells me he was the first to succeed in that endeavor This means, in ME we have descendants from Men, Elves, Maiar and Orcs.
I think a lot of these problems come from the canonical statement of ”Only Illuvatar can create sentient life.” But then how come orcs seem to display individual thoughts and some extent of free will (at least in unsupervised moments)? My guess is that the big elephant in the room is the question whether all orcs are irredeemably evil, and the follow-up question ”is orc genocide a moral good?”. Doesn’t it say somewhere (can’t find it in the appendices though) that as a King, Aragorn did much to reduce the orc populations in Gondor adjacent areas? Does that mean that he tracked down their camp sites and massacred their females and children? That is kinda hard to picture… But on the other hand, there was a lot less orc around after him. I dunno. My head canon is that the first statement isn’t actually so much a fact, as an article of faith. My understanding is that the Silmarillion is not absolute facts, but rather an in-world compendium of lore and stories that existed in Rivendell, and that was in turn written down by mostly hobbits, before Tolkien translated it to modern english. So elves like Elrond and Glorfindel would tell you that Morgoth absolutely did not have the power to create sentient species. But if you had started to nag them with questions about orcs, they would have gotten vague and haughty. My opinion, and this is just head canon, is that Morgoth did create the intelligent species of orcs, trolls, dragons, and maybe a few others. My opinion is that the arguments that Elrond would give falls into the ”no true scotsman” fallacy. ”If Morgoth did it, it doesn’t count as sentience.” Still doesn’t tell me if it is morally right to exterminate them though. I think dragons, in Middle Earth, should be murdered to death, every time. But what if you come across an orc that was found as a little bitty baby, adopted and raised by some really nice humans, and now wants to join the town guard? Or open a cobblers shop or something. I’d have liked to ask Tolkien what he thought about something like that, or if he could come up with any other story involving orc redemption? I suspect I’d have gotten different answers from him during different times of his life. Oh, and I do like the idea of ”orcs” as a kind of blueprint, a recipy that Morgoth invented. (Regardless of whether it involved torturing captive elves, crossbreeding them with monkeys or early monster men ainur or whatever.) And once the recipy is established, it can be repeated with captured humans, or tinkered with by his underlings and legacy bad guys. Anyway, really interesting video.
I’m not sure there’s anything specifically about Aragorn warring against orcs. There is a reference to him and Eomer warring together after the events of LOTR in the section on the House of Eorl, but it leaves it vague. Could be against the Corsairs for all we know.
I think regardless of where they come from, they are like the rings, whoever creates them puts something of themselves in to it, so while it appears to have a will and autonomy, ultimately it doesn't have a spirit of its own. There could be multiple ways to create orcs, but none of them have their own spirit or will. The ring doesn't have an independent will, but it appears to, it will betray a ring bearer without the maker knowing but it will desire to return to it's maker because it's part of it. So maybe Orcs could come from different places, corrupt Elves, fallen men, grown from the dirt, it doesn't matter, however you get an orc, it's forged like a ring is and the maker has to put something of itself in to them for it to appear to have any sort of autonomy.
Well that’s an interesting question. It doesn’t say Sauron had the same kind of direct control Morgoth had, though presumably he did based on the passage at the Black Gate just after Sauron realized the Ring was in Mount Doom. Certainly if he had that level of control over Grishnakh it didn’t translate to much in terms of knowledge, as it seems he had to report back and then get sent out again to catch up to Ugluk.
@@TolkienLorePodcast Grishnakh strikes me as quite independent - minded. But the jury's out on what he would have done if he'd actually gotten hold of The Ring.
If the elves had to leave due to the diminishment of divine power within middle earth, and both Morgoth and sauron were gone, the rings no longer maintaining divine influence across Middle earth, it is only logical to assume that orcs would diminish and fade away. Mortality would no longer apply even if they had been when sauron was around.
There are more baffling questions. What about the Goblins, or Cave-orcs? Who are the smalldwarrow, Mim's family? Do spiders come from outer space, if you consider that Ungolianth came from beyond the gates of night? Why was dragon fire more potent earlier in history? Do dragons degenerate? What are the nameless things and where do they come from? Have mountains personality and abilities like changing the weather?
I think, the idea of Sauron being the one to oversee the breeding of orks makes sense. He also is the maker of werewolfs and vampires. And as far as I understood, he made those creatures by putting mortal souls after torture into gigantic wolfs and bats. Kind of like he made the Nazgûl. Unliving but not dead souls, put into animals. Sauron was originally a servant of Aulë. So he was a creater. But more in an evil inventer, way.
I agree with your line of thought regarding Sauron being the one who actually implemented Morgoth's idea to create orcs. Morgoth seems to me to be generally chaotic, disorganized, and focused on destruction. I suspect Sauron was the one responsible for implementing a lot of Morgoth's ideas. I also suspect Sauron was the one responsible for keeping Morgoth's "organization" at least somewhat intact in between Morgoth's first being captured by the Valar and his escape back to Middle-Earth following the destruction of the Two Trees and the theft of the Silmarils. I read this idea in a comment in another video (sorry, I don't recall whose video it was) but the commenter suggested that a possible explanation for some of the creatures Morgoth bred would be fallen Maia breeding with various creatures, which, depending on the creature, could be responsible for everything from the most basic orcs all the way to dragons. I'm also curious about the notion of Men becoming mortal due to some great Fall in their distant past. How could this be reconciled with the idea that mortality was "The Gift of Men?"
One possible reconciliation is suggested by a letter Tolkien wrote in response to a priest who criticized him for bad theology, since death is a punishment. Tolkie responded by asking which of God’s punishments are not also gifts?
This question about the origins of orcs begs a question: what would happen if an orc baby were found by an elf or man or hobbit and raised in a loving home rather than a brutal orcish society?
I’m just gonna assume they’re god-cursed elves or men. Likely a mix, with long mortal lifespans but a capacity to age. Morgoth and Sauron corrupted them, but Eru could have punished those evil folk with heritable evil and permanent disfigurement. That also brings up one of my favorite theories: that some orcs and their bloodlines can be redeemed, aka break the curse that Eru put on them for being evil, and again look more like the beings they started out as, if permanently mutilated by evil.
If orcs are corrupted men, 1) the time of the awakening of men most certainly does have to be pushed back, and frankly I don't like that, I like the feel of the vast difference in time between the awakening of the firstborn and secondborn of Illuvatar--it feels much more grand and epic to have all that detailed elf story before men, and 2) then dead orcs do go to the Halls of Mandos and then on to the Timeless Halls or whatever Illuvatar decreed. Frankly I would be much more comfortable with Eru having given beast-maia-derived orcs the dwarf treatment out of boundless mercy, a characteristic of New Testament theology. At worst they would have their own minds and be rebellious against rogue Ainu; at best some would be redeemed. They'd still go to Mandos' Halls--I assume dwarves do that upon death--but the chronology of the Silmarillion is preserved and as a bonus Eru's MERCY gets a huge boost, more in line with New Testament thinking. Doesn't seem to come out of Tolkien's non-story writings, but I am keeping it as head canon.
If we take the words of Eru with Aule, in the Simarillion, at face value, "But I will not suffer this: that these should come before the Firstborn of my design, nor that thy impatience should be rewarded." We can assume the same for Melkor. I believe the Orcs were awakened after the Elves. Maybe, they were awakened when Melkor was captured by the Valar. And was Sauron the First to actually command them.
Great informative clip and some good questiosn raised and addressed but you might want to say _"..and what not .."_ a bit less! The Orcs do seem really problematic in being both enslaved to others and intrinsically evil, intelligent and indivdiual yet almost indistinguishable hordes and the idea of hybridisation between races (species?) being a bad thing has some rather disturbing implications racism~wise. What might good or at least neutral orcs be like left to themselves I wonder?
It’s explained that he’s cross-breeding to produce his army. It’s fairly obvious the brown fluid is there to speed the process up - perhaps they’re put in there at birth or as embryos. Natural processes wouldn’t be fast enough for the film’s time scale. It makes sense for the director to show that there are unnatural processes involved.
@@Enerdhil Saruman likes industrial progress. Factory farming seems quite appropriate - particularly given that his boss put in a bulk order and he was in a hurry. It’s not so different from the methods we use for stock breeding; we transfer the fertilised egg to a living host, whereas Saruman has obviously found a better way. Here’s a quote from an IVF paper: “For example, an animal produces about 4-5 offsprings in her life through normal reproduction, whereas through IVF technology the same can produce 50-80 offsprings in her life. Therefore, the IVF technology holds a great promise because a large number of animals may be produced and gene pool of animal population can also be improved.”
There are many inconsistencies and holes in Tolkiens mythology and maybe that is how supposed to be, it's a mythology most of which are stories whose truths are lost and distorted across time. Another are where are the multitude of Maiar that followed Melkor and followed him into Arda. Maybe they were defeated, except just like Sauron and other Maiar they are immortal so even if they were vanquished e.g. the Balrogs how come none ever returned after all Sauron only couldn't return when he lost the power he'd invested in the ring was lost when it was destroyed, yet all other of Melkors Maia seem to have been effectively "killed" whenever they were defeated.
The Maiar following Melkor become fixated in their preferred form and unable to change it. This means, when their form is destroyed, they cannot build it back if they can't go into the Hall of Mandos (like Melkor). Sauron could reform AFTER he lost the ability to change form at will because of the One Ring. Lost or not it allowed his spirit to endure a connection to ME and rebuild his body (but with no ring-finger)
@@diamondskull0739 What don't you understand? You need a sperm and an egg to create life, i.e. male and female. Cultural Marxist ideology is telling us there are over one hundred genders and men can have babies because trans men are still men even though they have the reproductive organs and chromosomes of a woman. Either you have been living under a rock or you believe their pseudo science.
@@stevemonkey6666 You see them emerge from a mud-like substance. That tells you almost nothing about how they were produced - you just see the final stage of the process.
"For the Orcs had life and multiplied after the manner of the Children of Iluvatar". The 'manner' meaning the way Elves and Men would procreate, meaning there are female Orcs.
This is why having seperate free will races created by other than a single entity innately is problematic. It also points out the issue of polytheism; who is the ultimate authority? And how are disputes handled without the destruction of all? And if there must be the transfiguration of a race to be permanently selfish, greedy, and fearful....to get orcs .. Then it must be man.
This is very interesting, and highlights a big difference between Tolkien and Rings of Power: Tolkien cared about inner consistency. His world makes sense, it has rules. The Amazon thing is just a hodgepodge.
In my imagination Tolkien wasn't only struggling with the idea of free will in orcs but also what makes people evil in real life. The prof probably witnessed far more savagery than I ever will but I've seen a bit myself. One of the causes could be said to be a fundamental misunderstanding of reality and our relationship to one and other. aka ignorance.
Yes, Middle-Earth has a metaphysics problem: Tolkien's Christianity/Catholicism. Creationism will always be problematic. Now, LotR still works as a story regardless of the various attempts to write a backstory. This is why I think trying to draw too much from the writings/notes of Tolkien that were not published in his lifetime is going to feel unsatisfactory. Tolkien's rewriting of his own backstories tells us that he could never really fix the problems he introduced by trying to keep his own beliefs in Eru and souls. That the elves could be reincarnated immediately leads to several problems, including whether the Orcs could be reincarnated. Trying to have orcs that could physically reproduce raises all sorts of questions. Orcs having pre-existence (Maia or whatever) gives another set of problems.
Explaining the Orcs would either require radical rewrites of Morgoth and how he brought his dark legions into existence, or it required radically changing the Elves. Having the Orcs come from corrupted or captured Elves violates the lore about Elves and their fea and their hroa, the Elvish fea will leave the hroa if the hroa is subject to rape or gross bodily violation. Since Morgoth could only bring about the Orcs by corrupting wholesome Children of Men, and since Orcs were around before the coming of men, this means Morgoth not only captured many Elves but tortured them terribly and also forced them to procreate- yet it is said that the fea would leave the body then endure rape or terrible mutilation.
I think that corrupted (in the sense of broken and ruined) elves, that were brought lower than anyone could imagine, into madness and psychopathy. Only to be raised anew with barely any shred of their former personality were the inspiration for orcs. Rather than being orcs themselves. And that orcs are their own thing, in the same way that dwarves, made by Aule are their own thing.
@@BVargas78 Yet Orcs were never created by Eru Illuvatar and Morgoth could not create new lifeforms, he could corrupt and twist them to mock the Ainur and the Children of Men.
@@skatemetrix What if by Morgoth not being able to create new life forms it just means that he could not create new life with a free will? While it is apparent that orcs are not automatons their personalities are quite limited. Admittedly though, i'm probably a little out my league, just throwing stuff out and seeing what sticks if anything. Only Tolkien really knew the true nature of orcs but I get the impression that even with himself, it was not something entirely set in stone. But a concept that was a bit fluid. i.e. are orcs reedemable? Which i think was something he pondered in his later letters.
@@BVargas78 If the Orcs are redeemable then its poses even greater contradictions in the mythology for it paints the Valar and Ainur in Valinor as even more uncaring and seemingly remote from the struggles of Middle Earth. My personal theory is that Morgoth broke the Elves he captured in Angband and, using his dark powers, forced the fea of the Elves to remain which meant the Elves could not depart from their bodies. The idea that Orcs were originally corrupted Elves or even breed from the Elves is my favourite idea because this is the most wicked and evil of all the proposed origins of the Orcs- which compliments the wicked nature of Morgoth.
Morgoth was inspired to breed orcs after attending a Hollywood production committee meeting.
That was Weinstein !!
😂
I appreciated this so much 😀 considering how the different origins for Orcs might influence their behavior and the corresponding attitudes of the "legitimate" Eruhini toward them is one of my favorite topics in the legendarium.
I recall Tolkien mentioning (forgot exactly where) that even though Orcs were in practice essentially 'irredeemable' by normal means, Elves were still morally bound to abide by the 'rules of engagement,' no torturing captives for information or slaying those rare ones that surrendered. (So no baby Orc genocides for you, GRRM). There's also reference in the published Silmarillion to captured Elves so 'daunted' by fear of Morgoth that, just like later conceptions of Orcs, they were incapable of resisting his will even if they made it back home.
So on the one hand, you have Elves still bound to treat Orcs as if their lives have value, even though the chances of them doing anything but further evil are so vanishingly small as to be essentially null. On the other hand, you have Elves with free will who have been so psychologically damaged and chained to Morgoth's will that they can't safely be welcomed back into society. Raises interesting practical problems for the leaders of the good side.
The bit about the “rules of engagement” is in the same Morgoth’s Ring materials, I think the third main text.
"I would not ensnare even an orc with a falsehood" -- Faramir.
One of Tom Shippey's books points out a significant pair of quotes in "The Choices of Master Samwise" when Shagrat and Gorbag are talking about finding Frodo unconscious in Shelob's lair. Gorbag points out that there must have been a second intruder, probably a large elvish warrior who "doesn't seem to have thought him [Frodo] worth much anyhow -- just left him lying: regular Elvish trick." A bit later Shagrat tells of finding one of his troops, Ufthak, who'd been caught by Shelob: "hanging up he was, but he was wide awake and glaring. How we laughed!" To which Shippey says, "What can we say but 'Regular Orkish trick'?" Shippey's point is that the orcs know the same basic ethics as everyone else (you don't abandon your companion to a monster) but use it only as a way to blame other groups. This seems to imply that Iluvatar has given the orcs enough of a "fea" to know common ethical principles -- and to feel the need to deflect their cognitive dissonance onto others. Which is a regular Human trick.
I think's it's just a symptom of the corrupting influence of Morgoth, he's the prime-mover of evil so without his rebellion, these dilemmas would not exist. Now that they do, it's interesting to point them out but i'm not sure how much it's actually worth exploring them and their practical implications. Maybe we should just treat Tolkien's work as "heroic romances", where, i quote from the Unfinished Tales; "the mode of the narrative more important than it's purpose", (out of context), and the historical structure of his creation more as a means and not as an end. It's in the introduction of the book where Christopher deals with a letter from his father about this issue and it's suggestive that that is perhaps the proper way one should read the Lord of the Rings? (It specifically deals with Lotr there). I at least am inclined to view his works in general that way more and more, and his earliest works have a really archaic/tragic and beautiful flavor to it that do not warrant further exposition. If i want to dig deeper, than for me it's more about the philosophical framework, the underlining themes and values rather than the metaphysical make-up of the actual civilizations of Middle Earth/Arda.
I think it would be really interesting to discuss the moral quandaries presented in Lord of the rings
The most consistent explanation of orc origins with the chronology presented in the Silmarillion would be the second essay from Tolkien. It makes the most sense to me. It fits with The Silmarillion that:
'Yet this is held true by the wise
of Eressëa,
that all those of the Quendi who came into the hands of Melkor, ere
Utumno was broken, were put there in prison, and by slow arts of cruelty were
corrupted and enslaved; and thus did Melkor breed the hideous race of the Orcs
in envy and mockery of the Elves, of whom they were afterwards the bitterest
foes. For the Orcs had life and multiplied after the manner of the Children of
Ilúvatar; and naught that had life of its own, nor the semblance of life, could ever
Melkor make since his rebellion in the Ainulindalë 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 it may be was the vilest deed
of Melkor, and the most hateful to Ilúvatar.'
I love the addition that Sauron is running the breeding program. It gives even more meaning to his other name, Gorthaur the Cruel. The alchemy of incarnated Maiar plus a Child of Eru or one of the corrupted beasts of Yavanna makes sense systematically as you can apply it to almost all of the servants of the Shadow (i.e: elves and men + Great Orc maia = orc species, serpent of Yavanna + Incarnated maia dragon = dragon species; ent + Earth related maia = troll species, etc.). It's a great work-around for not having the Secret Fire and it's blasphemy of epic proportion to boot. That seems to check all the boxes for Melkor, even more so by the time he is named Morgoth.
I do think it follows that the vilest, most hateful deed of Melkor will of course, be used by Eru Ilúvatar to devise things more wonderful that lie far beyond the conception of Melkor or Sauron just as he promised. What that might be may have been beyond the imagination of Tolkien himself.
Agreed, that's the most consistent explanation, and it makes Melkor so much more evil while still running parallel to the real-world myths and lore that Tolkien was drawing on. Can you say "nephilim?"
That's also more or less what I think.
It doesn't even need to be maia, it could be even lesser spirits.
18:07 Sauron's mind is that of an engineer whereas Morgoth has the mind of an artist.
One of your best! It was not just food for thought, it is a whole feast
I think The Silmarillion's explanation for the origin of the orcs is still the best one.
Yes, orcs being former elves does raise some issues, but just the idea of elves themselves raises plenty of questions if you really think about it.
Every time we see orcs in the story, they definitely have their own minds. I don't think Morgoth or Sauron would need to exercise this constant control over them. They are evil and follow the most powerful evil around. So, they naturally follow Morgoth or Sauron.
I think token head really kind of finished up by the time he got to the morgoths ring material, and just decided to give the whole thing a good firm polish with the time he had left
I appreciate your analysis of this thorny topic. For what it's worth, my having embraced the theory of orcs having once been elves in origin, I have imagined that they go to the Halls of Mandos after death, to places there set aside for them, the way dwarves and men do. That it is in their time in Mandos where they are healed of their tortured corruption by Morgoth, Sauron, and Saruman.
Tolkien's struggle with metaphysics - and with the lineages of the immortals - reminds me of the actual efforts that scholars devote to learning what religious beliefs the ancient Greeks held. Surely they held Hesiod in great esteem - yet Hesiod's Theogony is full of inconsistencies, almost as if the separate stories didn't need to be about the same beings. The same gods and heroes appear in Homer - the nearest thing that the ancient Greeks had to a Bible - and again, the stories diverge. By the time that even Ovid is trying to interpret them, it begins to be explained as, "The Thracians tell the story this way, and those of Sparta tell it that," and the myth begins to degenerate into legend - or so it appears to those accustomed to religion as reflecting revealed Truth. I sometimes think the ancients would laugh at this discussion and tell us, "they're gods. Why must they be consistent?"
yes, the ancients would laugh at our tidy-mindedness.
@@maxion5109 They would take a look at today's major religions and laugh at our lack of self-consciousness. I mean, the Christian god is basically a paradox unto itself and any consistency there is, is achieved through the idea that the god is not bound by any such rules and humans inherently cannot understand the god's nature.
@@romaliop the Christian god isn't a paradox at all if one takes the devil into account. It is incredibly common for people to ignore Lucifer. It's what leads them to what they imagine to be a clever critique of Christianity i.e. if god is all good, how come there is such evil in the world? In fact, it's not only not clever but inane.
If God were all-powerful, he'd stop the Devil so that doesn't really work. You're just kicking the can down the road.
I like this video (beyond the specific subject matter), because I have found that many other Tolkien fans and historians often portray Tolkien as some sort of god that thought out every aspect of his universe with 0 inconsistencies whatsoever. In your video, you portray a different point of view, that more so shows and Tolkien’s creative process, rather than recognizing the existence of inconsistencies as a criticism. I think the process of reworking his ideas and fleshing out his world, though it led to some retcons people would rather pretend don’t exist, is admirable in its own way, and certainly interesting.
You make excellent content sir, right up there with the biggest Tolkien channels. I enjoy the concepts you explore and perspectives you bring to mind!
Thanks!
The way I figure it is that there have been many iterations of Orcs. The first may have been these humanoid beasts you speak of, likely a short lived failure. Next Morgoth makes orcs out of elves, these orcs may potentially be immortal though most by the Third Age are likely slain. Next possibly dwarves and then certainly Men are tried out as well. And all these different populations of diverse origin are now completely interbred into one highly divergent species. Natural lifespans likely varied greatly. Of course the average orc probally lived fast and died young due to in and outgroup violence and disease due to overcrowded and unsanitary living conditions. Which may have selected for strong immune systems.
I feel the same way all that you have a much more clear and concise way of saying it 😂
@@j-henry7391 👏👏👏👏
This makes perfect sense, thank you for explaining!
That makes a lot of sense and would really be in keeping with the lore behind other origins of things like dragons.
Something that I also have thought was that orc culture was basically like how we think of the concept of the school-to-prison pipeline:
When an orc is born, it is not an inherently evil being and may even appear much like an elf or human baby with just a few variations given the factors to which orcs have had to adapt. That baby orc then goes 1 of 2 ways:
1. The environment, cultural pressures, and will of Sauron/Morgoth cause the orc to succumb to evil and it behaves the way it thinks it needs to in order to survive or feels is expected of it to be accepted/belong.
2. It does not succumb, rebels against what's expected of it, and is consequently murdered; or it escapes but lives a solitary and hidden existence somewhere remote because anyone who finds it will most likely kill it (as it does still look like a regular orc) and thus we never hear about these principled orcs.
I really like that idea
Of the lifespan of the orcs...
One 'hard' data point we have is that Bolg is the son of Azog. Azog is slain at the Battle of Azanulbizar, TA 2799. Bolg is slain at the Battle of the Five Armies in TA 2941, where he is actively fighting and it took Beorn to kill him. Now based on these numbers, the very youngest Bolg could be is around 141 years, and I have a hard time believing a (non-Dunedain) human managing to do that at.
Of course the easiest explanation is that when Tolkien wrote the Hobbit, he didn't really pay that much attention yet to the years. Like the destruction of Gondolin and the damage the elves did in that defense was clearly still relatively fresh in the minds of the Goblins, whereas in the chronology as we have it, that would have happened around 6500 years ago.
Even when I was a teenager reading these books I did myself think it curious that the orcs qould have such clear memories of the swords of Gondolin.
@@jonathonfrazier6622
Orc poetry must be epic.
@@alanpennie8013 It's like Klingon opera.
@@alanpennie8013 - Almost as bad as Vogon poetry.
"O freddled gruntbuggly!"
Interesting! I find it strange to think of Orcs as corrupted beasts, but your explanations of it do raise good points, especially in regard to their individuality and autonomy. It's very possible that there were different kinds of Orcs, as you mentioned, throughout the Ages : maybe the Goblins of the North were closer to their "beastly" origins, while the Uruk-Hai and Great Uruks of Mordor would have been bred with Men (a terrifying thought indeed, for those with a vivid imagination! ^^)
Either way, this is one of these topics I can't help but feel bittersweet about : had Tolkien had more time to develop his ideas, the various systems that make up the World of Arda, from Middle-Earth to Valinor, would be firmly established, leaving no contradictions. And yet, the fact he couldn't finish his work gives it a truly mythological aura. Maybe because it's "suggesting what could be" instead of simply explaining how things work. In a way, the Professor's works completed their mythological task in their incompleteness. And after all, he believed in a Heaven "where the good here unfinished is completed; and where the stories unwritten and the hopes unfulfilled, are continued"
Love your intros melon nin they really do start your videos off right
I found Red Bookś channel yesterday to my surprise.. I like the questions that he pose .Ofcourse you still remain no.1 in my eyes.
I don't know. I still like the idea that orcs are corrupted elves. The dualistic nature between them is interesting. Elves = nature, beauty, creates things that appear magical (like the elven cloaks). Orcs = destruction, ugliness, makes things that destroy. The dwarves did not have "souls" until Eru'Iluvatar gave them life after Aule created them. However, elves already have a soul, and their children have souls. So a corrupted elf doesn't seem to need a "soul" granted to them because they already have it. Corrupted Men and creatures (like wolves, unless every mention of a wolf is really a Warg or an evil spirit in the shape of a wolf) have children and don't seem to need Eru'Iluvatar to continually grant them permission to have souls.
Eru'Iluvatar seems to allow free will to a great extend, and only on rare occasions does he interfere with Arda. I think the "Orcs were elves" idea can still work, but as I mentioned earlier I am more inclined toward that explanation.
Can Orcs live forever like the Elves? Well, how do Elves live forever? Is it "biological"? Some Elves, like Arwen, can renounce their immortality and have the same fate as Men.
+1 Corrupting Elves amongst all beings into Orcs just seems to make Morgoth's crime that much more vile. Orcs being Men simply loses some of the "awe" factor to my eyes.
I, for one, am glad that Tolkien never finished to rewrite the Legendarium with manish Orcs and Christopher thus used the Elf origin in the Silmarillion. Although it all really was just WIP and he came back and forth on the subject, so it's not entirely impossible Tolkien could have made them Elves again before finally publishing "his" Silmarillion ...
I totaly agree with you. The idea of changing the canon so that the orcs are in fact corrupted men are just lame and pointless in a mythological view.
I can also think that corrupted elves may loose immortality in some brutal evil way as a result of Morgoth's deformation - a kind of kost for changing the species. That's my solution of the problem.
I don't like the established idea that the Orcs were tortured into being Orcs. I think it would have been better if Melkor has seduced and exhorted them into failure. That the orcs are the product of a violent, ultra-degenerate cult that rose up around Melkor as an example.
Like a furtherance of Aule's "sin" of creating the Dwarves in anticipation of the Elves. Melkor's Orcs would be in anticipation of Men - as long as his will endures in Arda, the orcs can "make their own fate" like Men were given to.
But I like to think that even Morgoth couldn't *force* that on anyone. Indeed, I like to think that the blood-pacts of the selfish, jealous, and greedy, who came to him, played a role in *his* corruption.
In that way, Melkor's pride, shame, and self-destruction, became the Ur-Example for them, but the *art* of corrupting oneself into another form of life would actually have been partly or even mostly *designed* by the original seduced elves.
My personal theory is based in the view of Tolkien that Evil like Morgotth cannot create but only corrupt. Perhaps he corrupted some elves bred them together in much the same way we bred wolves into dogs. He was cruel to them teaching them only horrid things as acceptable and all that is good as detestable. He then molded their forms to become more evil with his magics but internally at their very core there remains an Elven soul. So they could, hypothetically, do good but they would have to overcome the conditioning not only bred into their culture but also their form and the vile enchantments imprinted onto the very essence of what makes an Orc body an Orc body.
He then continued to do to the Orcs what we do to Dog breeds and some get larger and some get smaller with different features.
This👌🏻
So if some magic user were to try to "cure" an orc so to say, it would kill the orcs body but redeem its soul? So to speak?
it seems to me that orcs being of elf stock is perfectly within tolkeins themes if you follow it through. Melkors discord ultimately was always turned against him for the betterment of eru/creation. Eru was the consumate chessmaster (he defeated sauron with a few Hobbits). It seems obvious that there are more orcs by many orders of magnitude than there were ever elves. Thats a lot of elven souls (once free of corrupted flesh) that would never have existed but for Melkor. i like to think that after the Dagor Dagorlath those elves are freed from mandos and go out and help rebuild Arda, maybe after helping to kick morgoth into the kerb again. although its been decade or two since i last reread the book, im pretty sure that in Cirith ungol the orcs are talking about the battles in the last alliance as from personal memory....
I always in my own 'head-cannon' view orcs as starting out with Orc/Troll lesser maiar intermixed with captured elves and apes corrupted into proto-orc things, and the trolls following along a similar path . ...with Melkor furnishing the power, and Sauron doing the actual nuts-and-bolts tinkering of it....then adding men along the way into it, ...and finally Saruman "perfecting" it.
So, you have proto-orc half maiar/apes, then then some elf, then some human... just totally corrupted ...things... that become 'orcs' by the time the Noldor arrive.
And they don't live long, because they're totally corrupted, and die by combat BUT could live long if they're strong and survivors.
And then Saruman fixes it more so that they can stand sunlight, etc., as 'super-orcs'.
Because maiar of fire are better at 'tinkering' than Morgoth was.
Great video man!
This is a veru interesting video. I always think back to the music and think, had he lived today, he might have thought of the orcs in terms similar to drum Machines in modern music, preprogrammd to repeat some themes from with in the music. he might also have struggled a whole lifetime more trying to make everythin perfect and consistent in terms of his mythology and his own ideas on creation and secodary creation. Thanks and keep up the good work,
Thanks for the info. I didn't know there were other ideas floating around other than them being corrupted elves. And them being irredeemable being a deeply unfortunate but stark reality in the LOTR universe.
Thank you for the videio. It is interesting.
I do wonder about the state of dragons in Tolkien. I mean sure they are corrupted spirits or creatures, but they have a mind of their own. I mean the dragons did their own thing after Morgoth was destroyed and didn't pay any heed to Sauron. What do you think?
Dragons are pretty clearly evil Maiar.
@@TolkienLorePodcast So they are like the balrogs, corrupted maiar spirits?
Yep.
I just stared watching the red book - Really good lotr content.
I never felt comfortable with the idea of Orcs being corrupted Elves, it does bring a lot of problems. I can’t reconcile the idea of Elves being condemned to this with no possibility of redemption, also, Elves are really resilient against earth elements which doesn’t seem the case with orcs, they actually seem pretty easy to kill😂 . I am glad to hear this being discussed because it is completely expected that Tolkien himself would had seen all the problems that this arc would originate. Awesome analysis as usual!
Nah they seem pretty easy for the likes of aragon legolas, gilmlie etc but they merk normal men and women, although the hobbits in the fellowship seem to be able to go through many orcs like a knife to butter
I like to think that corrupted (through being utterly broken and ruined) elves were the proto-type for orcs. But that orcs are creatures spawned from dark sorcery, in imitation and mockery of those ruined elves. Which leads to the confusion even in middle earth itself that the orcs, or at least the first ones, were actually elves once. I think the ruined elf was merely an inspiration for the minds of these new life forms. So as Aule created the dwarves, Morgoth created the orcs. I also think that orcs can be produced in two ways, spawned through dark sorcery which is probably how the first orcs were made. And can create armies fast, that are more loyal to their masters/creators. Or they have gone native and live somewhat autonomously, and actually breed. Such as the orcs of the misty mountains and moria. Yet are still bound to the will of Morgoth and by extension Sauron, it's much less direct. They will march often unwillingly and would rather do their own thing. Yet that link going back to Morgoth remains in them.
earth elements? I mean, Saeros dies from falling off a riverbank so it’s not like elves are particularly that hard to kill. They generally have pretty good combat skills as a result of living forever, but they’re just as susceptible to accidents as anyone else.
As for being irredeemable: I don’t think it’s necessary to assume that. LotR shows us that orcs *can* be badgered into acting semi-decently (Pippin puts up a stink about Merry being injured and the orc eventually gives him medicine). If they were able to get to Mandos, they’d be right as rain in oh…a few centuries. But Morgoth would have the power to just yoink them away from Mandos. Sauron would have to be a little more devious: but he could absolutely achieve the same result simply by convincing the orcs that whatever punishment he put them through before reincarnation was “nothing” compared to what Mandos would do. Classic villain move really. There would be a grain of truth in this perhaps, in that Mandos likely uses many techniques akin to torture. Tolkien speaks of the “duress” of Mandos, a word which he also uses for Angband. Furthermore, Mandos is described as “pitiless”. So perhaps there are in fact many instances where the only difference between what Mandos does, and what Sauron does is consent and intent. Before Mandos will do anything, a soul has to repent: i.e admit that they did wrong and ask for redemption. And, he’s only going to do what he knows is absolutely necessary to get this particular soul back to it’s natural state (which he knows because he paid attention to the Music). It’s likely not pretty though, especially in the cases of people who’ve done really really bad shit. Like, Maeglin is not having a good time, just saying. So it probably wouldn’t be hard for someone as cunning as Sauron to convince orcs to be more afraid of Mandos than of him. Which would certainly also explain their reluctant loyalty. So only after the fall of Sauron would the orc souls go to Mandos at last, and even after that it’d probably be a while before they repented. The idea that orcs are corrupted elves makes sense to me anyway. After all, Morgoth does corrupt several elves: including one to the point of willingly serving him. He also gets Fëanor, Celegorm and Maedhros to unwittingly serve his purposes. Which is pretty impressive given that they were light-elves and already centuries old when he first met them. If he’d had an elven child to work with, well, there’s no reason to think he couldn’t corrupt some
elves.
@@golwenlothlindel All that info about Mandos is fascinating, thanks!
I love seeing my favorite Tolkein channels -- Tolkien Lore, GirlNextGondor, The Red Book -- interacting!
What an interesting follow-up to The Red Book's video!
I had a question ready to post, but unfortunately lost it due to clumsy typing. Hopefully I'll remember it right when I try to type it up again here.
In regards to "Orcish behavior"... beings of free will are described as behaving "Orcishly". Is "Orcish behavior" contingent upon the will now being dependent on Sauron or Morgoth's? Or could a being with free will who chose behave in a heinous manner like Eöl or Maeglin be considered "Orcish" in behavior? What acts would be deviant enough to cross over into "Orcishness"?
Sorry if these are stupid questions. I am still working my way through Simarillion and Tolkien's other works that are not LOTR or the Hobbit.
Most of my knowledge of the lore comes from awesome Tolkien channels.
Well as it happens, a partial answer to that question can be found in the abandoned LOTR sequel, “The New Shadow,” and GirlNextGondor did a video reading that story. Go check it out: ruclips.net/video/AmYUOPStSfY/видео.html
@@TolkienLorePodcast thanks. I couldn’t remember where I first heard of that concept plus the abandoned sequel. Thought it was here, but turns out my memory was wrong! I’ll watch (or rewatch, if I watched it before and forgot) that; thanks!
Very good work. However, it seems to me that you left out questions that go all the way back to the Hobbit. The characteristics of “goblins “ which he emphasizes that I see as pertinent are a very developed culture, including an evil but effective sense of humor, a love of music and a talent for poetry, all very elvish traits. He also mentions that they are quite clever, having invented many things that trouble the world today. Obviously Saruman got his blasting fire from them, not the other way round. We meet an Uruk personally in Grishnakh, and what does his knife reveal? A love of art. The handle is intricately carved. Not to your taste? De gustibus non disputandam.
To conclude, I have always thought of them as long-lived, based on how old Bolg would have been
by The Battle of Five Armies and on Gorbag’s “Like old times” comment. The last time orcs had the power to freeboot was when, 3000 years before?
Perhaps this only complicates the answer, but these are thoughts to consider. Thanks.
As a worldbuilder I get it.
Even if I haven't had the problem of turning robots into anglicans
Tolkien tried to wiggle out of a moral corner that he wrote himself into. The plot demanded getting rid of the bad guys, so all of the Orcs had to die, but oops, that's genocide, which is evil. So they're soulless golems and it doesn't matter, but oops, he already had them making moral choices. So they have souls and can make choices, but those souls were corrupted, but oops, then they don't have any choice, so they don't really have souls. Well, Morgoth overpowers them, but surely not all of them at once. Then oops, maybe they're redeemable. And on and on.
Nothing in LotR says all the orcs died. After the Ring was destroyed, "the creatures of Sauron, orc or troll or beast spell-enslaved, ran hither and thither mindless; and some slew themselves, or cast themselves in pits, or fled wailing back to hide in holes or dark lightless places far from hope." So some orcs survived, at least for a while, and you can't hold Gandalf or Aragorn responsible for the suicides.
Honestly the question of the orcs is the first thing that comes to mind if someone were to ask me if Tolkien ever messed something up in his works 😅
@@garydmcgath Also, if the orcs were corrupted elves, then they would naturally fade away as a species over time for the same reason the elves had to leave Middle-Earth. I don't think it's far-fetched to think that Sauron also used his magic to artificially keep the orc population going in the third age similarly as the three Elven rings of power were used. So when Sauron and the ring were destroyed, it would explain how orcs could've almost immediately disappeared from the world.
@@romaliop Orcs failed like Dwarves failed with time. Same for Ents and Trolls.
Full of fallacies. False connection between having souls (a human thing) and ability to make moral choices.
Also, even if, as it seems, orcs are hopelessly fallen, corrupted or just made the way they are, their nature can be exclusively evil AND still they can be held fully accountable for choosing evil. Nature a creature has does not excuse it from responsibility.
However, I don't get any hints from my reading of Tolkein that Orcs have any worry, either actual or in their own minds, of eternal consequences and not merely based on them being psychopaths.
Man, as much as I love Tolkien's writing, this whole issue is a real case of the professor's tendency to get lost up his own rear end, especially as he grew older.
11:26 When exactly did he write the thing on "being able to talk is not exactly a sign of having a fëa" - wrote JRRT when?
It’s in Morgoth’s Ring, though it doesn’t seem to be an idea he settled on.
@@TolkienLorePodcast But didn't Christopher Tolkien annotate on what year the idea was from?
Oh, possibly, but I don’t recall off hand and the volume isn’t to hand at the moment.
@@TolkienLorePodcast OK, but would it have been after LotR was published?
Yeah, I think all the stuff in Morgoth’s Ring was, or at least all the stuff in that section.
@ 8:13 The Idea of Orks being offspring of Mayar mingling with the mortal beings comes straight from the Bible Nephilim which is interesting as for example the Numenor is kind of like the Atlantis myth incorporated into his lore + the big flood from the Bible. :D
I always had the idea that orcs were melkors attempt at the children of iluvatar in the music of the ainur, as yavanna had for the ents, and aule had for the dwarves. And that they were brought into being with everything else. And that they, the orcs were never "adopted" by iluvatar so they could only function as long as nelkors will, or a substitute existed
Like Dwarves and Ents I believe they were doomed to fail in time, because they were subcreations of lesser beings.
Only Iluvatar is able to create everlasting things
Gradually moving from seeing orcs like biological automata to at least semi-independent jerks who follow orders only when the brass is watching sounds a lot like a man who actually saw war up close...
The orcs remind me of nephilim in their various origin stories. It appears Tolkien hewed closer and closer to nephilim-lore with each new origin story he made for orcs.
As I remember it, Men were always Mortal, that being the Gift of Illuvatar unto Men. But that the concept of Death became shrouded in fear and darkness to Men after their moral fall of falling under Morgoth's power.
That’s what we get from the Silmarillion, but in the Athrabeth we learn that Men believe they weren’t always mortal.
@@TolkienLorePodcast ahh. I gotta go back and brush up.
Great video. Unfortunately you didnt mention the drakes we got. They don't seem mechanical, so do drakes like Smaug have their own will or not? And if they do, how were their bodies imbued with the flame imperishable?
I may get into that in a separate video sometime but the point for this video was that they were, like the orcs, very different in the original conception.
If the will of Eru is supreme, and everything unfolds according to his plan (i.e. Melkor's changes to the Music of the Ainur being used to create even more wonders)... is Eru 'good'? Or is all the suffering and death and corruption and decay throughout the Legendarium according to his plan?
Now you’re getting into some deep theology. 😅
@@TolkienLorePodcast Indeed, and an area Tolkien would've been infinitely familiar with. In Catholicism, one could have a certain amount of sympathy for the devil who brought humanity knowledge and free will, but JRRT kinda sidestepped that by making Melkor and his minions into Just Plain Evil(tm). However, their actions must both ultimately be the will of the omnipotent, omniscient Creator by definition.
Even so, I must confess a certain sympathy for the Balrog of Moria, he was just napping quietly for a few millenia when he was rudely awoken by that Fool of a Took. Bound to make anyone a bit cross!
This is what we get from The Silmarillion on this subject:
'Then Ilúvatar spoke, and he said: ‘Mighty are the Ainur, and mightiest
among them is Melkor; but that he may know, and all the Ainur, that I am
Ilúvatar, those things that ye have sung, I will show them forth, that ye may see
what ye have done. And thou, Melkor, shalt see that no theme may be played
that hath not its uttermost source in me, nor can any alter the music in my
despite. For he that attempteth this shall prove but mine instrument in the
devising of things more wonderful, which he himself hath not imagined.’ (Sil, The Ainulindale)
I take from this passage that pain and suffering are the consequence of free will given to the Children of Eru and to the Ainur before them to some extent. Perhaps even necessary to devise the unimagined wonderful things that Eru Ilúvatar speaks of above. The Beginning, the End and the Themes in-between are going to be played out. In that, Eru's will cannot be thwarted, but there are many spaces left for corruption. When I read the passage above, it occurs to me that Melkor takes the admonishment as a challenge rather than a statement of fact and, the Silmarillion drama ensues...
I’m not aware of any Catholic line of thought that would allow for sympathy for the devil. That’s a Miltonian innovation I think.
@@TolkienLorePodcastTrue, but Tolkien would have been very much aware of Paradise Lost and similar works, and the reasons behind the exploration of such ideas. He sidestepped all of those with Melkor as just evil and no more.
But to get back to my original thought (got a bit sidetracked), that does have an inherent contradiction with Eru being all-powerful and creator of all the Ainur that 'fell' - unless their fall was part of his design, too, and everything, good or ill, that occurred in the Legendarium would have to be, too.
The clue is in the word legendarium. All the written works are purported to be the tales of the Free Peoples. Which may not be accurate necessarily. He makes that clear repeatedly in Silmarillion and Unfinished Tales if you read them carefully.
Nice! Next question: What happens to orcs when they die or are are killed?
I like Tolkien's way of writing and thinking in the sense that he allows himself to be unsure of things, but does it in a way that it still results in a compelling story. I personally don't see a problem with orcs being corrupted elves. The reason why they may be short lived could be due to the corruption itself. Corruption so deep that even the elven gift of eternal life is lost to them. That's my headcanon anyway.
When you consider that human beings were created to live forever, and even secular medical science acknowledges that it is theoretically possible, yet we are not precisely because of corruption, then yours is actually a very sensible conclusion.
The idea that a corrupted form of something that is immortal should likewise be immortal in the end really just shows a twisted logic that many ppl have, maybe even most, idk.
@@treebeardtheent2200 Indeed, aging is not programmed into our genes yet we age anyway. Thank you for taking your time reading and responding to my comment =)
@@backonlazer791 Your first sentence above really says a lot and can be applied to vastly more things than the narrow topic of this video of course.
Generally, my favorite stories, both fiction and non-fiction alike, have the distinct flavor of the authors telling a history, a story, and the story is drawn from experienced, observerved or retold events. It is not pushed. I think this is partly what Tolkein was getting at with his dislike of allegory. LOTR is stillnfull of allegory imo, but it is pulled by the reader, not pushed by the author aside from his having a working moral compass and not being afraid to let it show in his observations.
Another way to express the idea is that great stories are discovered, not created. they unfold, often bit by bit, the way life happens, maybe according to plan, but not according to any plan of the story teller. Nevertheless, the storyteller does have some liberty in the manner of telling the story, just not too much, and not enough that it's ok to fill in all the blanks, answer all hanging questions, etc. Real life certainly doesn't answer all our questions, and neither do some great epic tales.
Orcs and Goblins have societies, languages, tactical reasoning, leaders, kings, etc... Being corrupted from Elves, they are immortal and reproduce like elves do. Nothing else could explain their numbers.
The origin of orcs is a very complicated topic... you did a good job at summarizing Tolkien's thoughts on it!
Personally I find it difficult to believe that Orcs had fëar, be it mortal or immortal fëar. Because if that was the case not only would Eru give fëar to corrupted beings that were raised in hatred right from the start, but it makes the inaction of the Valar much worse. There are hundreds of thousands of heavily corrupted beings in Middle-earth, dying in large numbers, probably never daring to come to Mandos... most likely Middle-earth would be filled with tortured bodiless Orc souls. If the situation was that horrible I find it hard to believe neither the Valar nor the Orcs ever intervened on behalf of the Orcs.
Animals, maybe mixed with human and elvish blood, and there and then with that of a lesser Maia, makes much more sense to me. 🤔
Great video!!
I was never a big fan of Tolkien's orcs! I hated how they were mostly cannon fodder and obstacles for the heroes, who didn't have to feel guilty for mass slaughtering sentient beings. When I was reading the books I always skipped the fights with orcs, and when the movies became available on DVDs I skipped all scenes with prolongued orc tussles. I really disliked how these clearly humanoid and sentient creatures were often slaughtered as if this was nothing more than a mildly perilous outdoor sport. And it was also far too easy to kill them. In the "Hobbit" and in the LOTR trilogy the only heroes who were actually killed by orcs, were Boromir and Isildur! Boromir was killed because he was totally outnumbered by them, while Isildur was ambushed, and the One Ring betrayed him. That's it!
I also never liked that Tolkien had made his orcs inherently evil. What about baby orcs? Is a good orc at least a remote possibility?
I am aware that a more mature Tolkien became increasingly uncomfortable with how he had depicted his orcs. And he tried out various origins stories which could explain why Eru Illuvatar had tolerated the existence of orcs. But if orcs had not been constructed from scratch by Morgoth, and if they originated from elves or men who were merely corrupted by Morgoth, it raises the tricky question if orcs have souls and spirits.
Tolkien was never able to resolve these conundrums because new concepts would have necessitated huge retcons of his earlier writings. He was not completely against a bit of retconning, and he had changed later editions of "The Hobbit" in order to make the story of how Bilbo found the One Ring compatible with the LOTR trilogy. But he could not change how he had written about orcs without making major alterations. And Tolkien never managed to solve this conundrum.
Amazon's ROP adopted Tolkien's best known theory: the orcs originated from tortured and corrupted elves, although Tolkien had clearly discarded this theory in his later writings. But Peter Jackson's Saruman has introduced the tortured-elves narrative to a world wide audience, and the show-runners decided to include this theory in their vision of Middle Earth.
I have to say, that I really appreciated the character of Adar who turns out to be one of the first proto-orcs. But he has still retained a lot of his elvishness which makes him a fascinating character. He is a flawed hero with a just cause, although his methods are questionable. But we can feel with him. He and his Uruks haven't chosen to be so different from their distant elvish ancestors, and Adar is not a blood thirsty sadist. He doesn't enjoy murdering anyone, although he doesn't hesitate to kill when it's necessary. But his main goal is the creation of a homeland for his Uruks which is compatible with their specific biological needs. There is nothing wrong with this per se, and I loved Adar's confrontation with Galadriel. The actor Joseph Mawle is terrific, and he managed to turn Adar into a believable character with whom we can actually sympathize even when we cannot condone his methods.
Adar has become hands down my favorite character of Amazon's flawed project. Unfortunately he and his Uruks have not been present in the final episode of the first season. But I think, we will see him and his Uruks again in the second season, because HalRon needs to remove Adar in order to become the sole ruler of Mordor. Sauron and Adar hate each other, because Sauron has killed too many Uruks in his misguided Joseph-Mengele-like experiments, while Adar has killed Sauron’s previous physical body. That was probably hurtful, and it was a major set-back for Sauron since at the time he didn't have his ring which could have helped him to regroop faster. I expect that we might see a major confrontation between Adar and Sauron. However, it’s also possible that Adar doesn't realize that HalRon is actually his old foe Sauron, and HalRon might be able to ensnare Adar. And if Sauron will give him a ring of power, Adar might even turn into one of the Nazgul.
I know that Tolkien said that all Nazgul have been humans before their rings turned them slowly into ringwraiths. But the show-runners have violated Tolkien's lore frequently. I would not be surprised if Adar will be turned into a Nazgul thousands of years after the original dark lord Morgoth turned Adar into a proto-orc!
Was Morgoth's influence still in effect post his exile or was it solely Saurons influence from that point onwards?
Some influence from Morgoth was still there but the extent of it isn’t really clear.
@@TolkienLorePodcast Thanks I have always wondered that. It would be interesting to know if Morgoth was to somehow manage to return would Sauron just fall back in line or would he somehow try to overthrow him at that point?
@@hiddentape2911
It is a "Rule of Two" situation between the two.
I start wondering if our understanding of Melkor/Morgoth and Sauron as "male" characters is correct.
I think it's a fascinating concept that Sauron is the real daddy of the Orcs, even if only due to carrying out the deed if not having mentally conceived of them.
My theory is that Morgoth and Sauron created the orcs' bodies in mockery of the elves, but could not create spirits for them. So instead, Morgoth kidnapped elves and tried to corrupt them (presumably through things like torture-or-be-tortured), and those he corrupted he killed and took their spirits and embodied them in orcs. When any orcs died, their spirits lived in the deep parts of Angband until they could be reimbodied in new orcs, similar to how Glorfindel returned (which would also explain the recurring orc leaders). It's even possible that Morgoth managed to claim the spirits of the few elves who chose to be evil (e.g., Eöl), perhaps because they were afraid to go to the Halls of Mandos and face their deeds. That would also explain why orcs are irredeemable---they're already damned, and the elves' version of Hell is being reincarnated as an orc until the end of the world.
Aside from Tolkien's general cosmology, this is also consistent with the fact that Morgoth and Sauron are stated to have evil sprits on their side, and their versions of things like vampires are consistent with this sort of procedure.
The only problems with this they are the question of whether orc-men hybrids have their own spirits and the fact that orcs have such large numbers. However, the first question is more of a question than a problem---maybe the hybrids have orc spirits, or maybe they have their own spirits that tend to evil because of their biology and upbringing (similar to a real-life human with psychiatric problems who was raised in an abusive home in an evil society), or maybe (as I believe) it can be either and depends on the exact proportions involved. Any of these options is feasible. Meanwhile, the second question is not intractable, as we don't know much about what was going on between the awakening of the elves and the First Age, nor do we know what was happening in other continents. Not to mention that Morgoth and Sauron could have used the captured elves to breed more elves to corrupt, effectively "farming spirits " for their orc army.
I don’t think Melkor could hold an elf’s spirit against its will though.
Something you may have covered that I have missed in these videos, but have you touched upon the Lord of the Rings: The Third Age video game yet? If not, there’s a plethora of weapons and shields used by the playable characters that are used and owned by other characters from the trilogy.
If not, maybe look into it to see if it’s worth a video or two to make somewhere down the line??
I have that game, but the last time I played it was ages ago and I don’t have the time these days for such a long game lol
@@TolkienLorePodcast true, but I’m sure someone’s done at least a wiki of certain weapons. And there are playthroughs here on RUclips to help refresh your memory. If nothing else, I can offer some assistance in doing some of the research.
This game was very helpful to me growing up, even though it’s just an JRPG and not everyone enjoys the turn-based strategy without a more competitive element to it like Pokémon.
Much like the extra material outside the four main books, I’d like to believe this is supplemental to the movies (given the direct usage of film footage in the game), give or take some liberties taken with certain battles.
Thanks for replying. I wasn’t sure if you would. Not everyone does.
There is a line from Finrod & Andreth...
“But never even in the night have we believed that he could prevail against the Children of Eru. This one he might cozen-or that one he might corrupt; but to change the doom of a whole people of the Children, to rob them of their inheritance: if he could do that in Eru's despite, then greater and more terrible is he by far than we guessed; then all the valor of the Noldor is but presumption and folly-nay, Valinor and the Mountains of the Pelóri are builded on sand.”
Maybe Morgoth *was* that powerful at first.
That’s one issue he was reconsidering post-LOTR.
Why couldn't the corruption process itself take away the immortality?
A question left unanswered unfortunately, though the most likely explanation is that death is the “gift of men” and Elves don’t get it.
When Tolkien says that Saruman bred Orcs and Men, and you wonder how that's possible, it's important to remember that Men doesn't mean _male_ humans specifically. If you consider the possibility of raiding villages and capturing _female_ humans for breeding, it becomes a lot more plausible -- horrifying, but plausible.
It could go the other way around too. A few years ago they rescued a shaved orangutan from a brothel. The depths that humanity will sink to is horrifying.
@@jonathonfrazier6622 - Reminds us of "Facts Concerning the Late Arthur Jermyn and His Family" by H.P. Lovecraft.
@@tominiowa2513 that it does indeed.
@@jonathonfrazier6622: ewwwwwwwwww
However, female humans would be easier to restrain than female Orcs, so I'm sticking to my original hypothesis.
@@deusexaethera It could happen either way of course, but I doubt orc women would require restraint.
The relationship of Azog and Bolg, as father and son, implies a mother?
How about a mix of elves and nameless things?
Concidering the Enemy's tendency to nefarious breeding programs, does anyone else think the mysterious disapearance of the Entwives had any connection to the Olog Hai?
Scary thought.
In my mind the orcs are elves bred with Melkor's equivalent of dwarves that were never given an inner spirit.
My take is that orcs probably came from multiple sources. There was some unknown humanoid species that Morgoth corrupted and bred with the handful of corrupted elves he had, which over time created an entirely new life form, one that while maybe having some elf blood, was no longer an elf and did not have a fea. Later on, men were corrupted and added two the mix as well as some fallen Maiar who took the form of orcs.
By the time we get to the 3rd Age none of the orcs currently alive were elves. Their ancestors were probably, but they are entirely their own thing and more closely resemble men.
I thought they were alchemical clones of elves/men/beasts DNA. Where their spirits came from was the mystery. Where did the dragon’s spirits come from?
The dwarves were Aule’s creations based on what he thought the children would be. Life was granted to them. Morgoth/Sauron had the DNA and may have used a similar process.
Dragons are pretty clearly Maiar.
The same as Ents. It say Yevanna made them and spirits come into them.
Maybe Morgoth just recycled the unbodied spirits of his defeated maiar in the bodies of Dragons.
In this way the beasts obtained a mind and free will.
I feel the solution to Tolkien's conundrum was staring him in the face. 'Orc' has simply denoted quite different beings throughout history. Just like the Romans called all the nomadic step riders 'scythians' for hunders of years, regardless of their actual ethnicity, so was 'orc' applied to servants of the dark lords, regardless of their genetic origin. At first they might've been corrupt elves, weaker maiar and beasts; whether interbred or separate groups. Then dwarves, and finally men were added into the mix, resulting in an ever changing breed of servants for the dark lords. Their common denominator being not their genetics, but the fact that they were the footsoldiers of the dark lord.
So you probably don't want to but you need to do a video, or series, looking at the parallels & metaphors between the war in Ukraine & Tolkien's Legendarium. The latter is directly relevant on multiple levels to current events.
Not really something I’m interested in.
Amazon should hire you to consult on their show
That would be a fascinating job but not one I’m really qualified for 😅
Here is the basic problem: 'you need a bunch of random bad guys which you don't want to feel bad about killing.' Add Tolkien's religion-based world view. Equals storytelling conundrum.
Orcs are mooks.
But we get to spend a fair amount of time with a few of them and so come to feel a degree of sympathy
@@alanpennie8013 Haha…I had to look up ‘mooks’. I didn’t grow-up in the northeast so the only context I have heard that in is when someone is referred to in the movies as a ‘loveable mook.’ Not to many loveable Orcs.
@@charlesmartin1121
I was thinking of the mooks in role - playing games.
(Or the hapless stormtroopers in Star Wars).
@@alanpennie8013 Or they could be like the Moops (you have to be an old guy like me or a connoisseur of fine TV comedy shows to get that reference).
@@charlesmartin1121
It was a new word for me.
Many thanks.
I have to say love the video and detail. But you missed something. How Morgoth affected Arda through it Physically. He dominated it Physically because of his power second to Eru himself. Don't you think the Elves were affected in the corruption of the land? Morgoth least affected the sea.
How does Tolkien explain Were Worms?
He doesn’t, in characteristic style lol
I always tend to think of the Avari as the "anything is possible" race of elves that might account for whatsoever type of fay fairy creature that you might find in real-world folklore, it seems natural for me to assume that orcs in the beginning were, perhaps in part various tribes of Avari that were led astray, and that that the orcs that we see in the Lord of the rings are a far more cohesive and internally consistent group then would have been seeing in the earlier ages when they could have been any number of experiments in creating a race under the servitude of morgoth, in other words I think the orcs in The Lord of the rings make the most sense as the Mixed-Up descendants of any number of the explanations posited by JRR during his years of writing, perhaps even making the lifespans, biologies and capacities for autonomous thought variable from tribe to tribe and even from orc to orc
After all it is clear in The Lord of the Rings that orcs as a race are very ethnically diverse and that there is a tremendous amount of variety between Orcs
The problem with elves "miscegenation" is elves have children only if they do it willingly
Humans can be "forced" to do so.
It is a pity Tolkien has not left anything about a successful "male elf-human female" couple
I'd like to propose a theory, built on the premise of Andreth concerning Immortal Men:
First, I dare to push back the Coming of Men, to the same night the Elves awoke in Cuivienen. But whereas the Elves were quickened to come up with words and name the world, Men had to form words themselves.
The Voice pronounced judgement on shortening their lives, and the people wanted to tell the Giver of Gifts what happened. Remember there were even those who sought to silence the ones who mention the Voice. I am sure there were "priests" of the Giver, among the immortal Men, that encouraged dark worship.
Who knows how long they were immortal? Perhaps the dark priests were cursed, and when the Voice demanded an explanantion for their rebellion (much like God asked Cain where his brother was) and the priests answered: Shall we answer to a formless Voice, which forsakes his people? Therefore have we forsaken Thee.
And the Voice groaned and cursed them, putting a mark on their form and shortening their lives. But they worsened in their hate for the Voice and responded: Great is the curse Thou hast placed upon us, that all races shall hate us, and seek our destruction. But see us, o Voice of the Dark, that greater still shal be our refuse of Thee. Let Thine hand come upon us and we will plague those Thine children.
And these dark priests, and their dark wives, were cast out, and rhe Immortal Men were yet seekibg solace, and the dark ones went westward.
In an unmeasured time span, Elves came back to Beleriand, and met with the Orcs, a race corrupted early on (while Man was still deciding whom to worship) and history goes as given, and Men finally show up, after their Doom is put upon them.
By the time the Fourth Age is come, and drawing from the chapter sketch of sequel to LOTR, that while no orc has been seen anymore, those that worked dark works were called the same, because they held their dealigs in the shadow; as though an ANCIENT SHADOW were resurfacing. But not the Shadow of Sauron, but of the original Dark Priests.
That's my pitch.
I think this also addresses the rule that only Iluvatar can curse a race, and affect Life and Death. Melkor cannot create life, but he can corrupt the Dark Ones, and ensnare them in his service. They were faithful to him back when they were immortal. The descendants know the origin of Man and their kin, the Orcs, and so remember still their hate for Iluvatar. When Morgoth was cast out, some of the covenants they made with Morgoth, compelled them to commit suicide when theur lord was gone. By the Third Age, their origin was lost, and they murmured agaunst Sauron, and wished for a simpler life.
This is the trouble about world building
If you don’t keep it vague you start asking "And visitors say: how does such a big city exist? What keeps it going? Since it's got a river you can chew, where does the drinking water come from? What is, in fact, the basis of its civic economy? How come it, against all probability, works? Actually, visitors don't often say this. They usually say things like, "Which way to the, you know, the...er...you know, the young ladies, right?"
What if first Orcs were Elves corrupted by Morgoth, and in the second breed Men corrupted by Sauron, and we have also Uruk-hai by Saruman, and probably some Maiar incarnated. There were many kinds of orcs, so it is possible that they could be, at least at some time, made in different ways.
Saruman biggest sin was the interbreeding of Man and Orcs
This tells me he was the first to succeed in that endeavor
This means, in ME we have descendants from Men, Elves, Maiar and Orcs.
My impression is that Orcs used to be Elves. But through constant genetic manipulation and inbreeding they lost their immortality.
I think a lot of these problems come from the canonical statement of ”Only Illuvatar can create sentient life.”
But then how come orcs seem to display individual thoughts and some extent of free will (at least in unsupervised moments)?
My guess is that the big elephant in the room is the question whether all orcs are irredeemably evil, and the follow-up question ”is orc genocide a moral good?”. Doesn’t it say somewhere (can’t find it in the appendices though) that as a King, Aragorn did much to reduce the orc populations in Gondor adjacent areas? Does that mean that he tracked down their camp sites and massacred their females and children? That is kinda hard to picture… But on the other hand, there was a lot less orc around after him.
I dunno.
My head canon is that the first statement isn’t actually so much a fact, as an article of faith. My understanding is that the Silmarillion is not absolute facts, but rather an in-world compendium of lore and stories that existed in Rivendell, and that was in turn written down by mostly hobbits, before Tolkien translated it to modern english. So elves like Elrond and Glorfindel would tell you that Morgoth absolutely did not have the power to create sentient species. But if you had started to nag them with questions about orcs, they would have gotten vague and haughty.
My opinion, and this is just head canon, is that Morgoth did create the intelligent species of orcs, trolls, dragons, and maybe a few others. My opinion is that the arguments that Elrond would give falls into the ”no true scotsman” fallacy. ”If Morgoth did it, it doesn’t count as sentience.” Still doesn’t tell me if it is morally right to exterminate them though. I think dragons, in Middle Earth, should be murdered to death, every time. But what if you come across an orc that was found as a little bitty baby, adopted and raised by some really nice humans, and now wants to join the town guard? Or open a cobblers shop or something.
I’d have liked to ask Tolkien what he thought about something like that, or if he could come up with any other story involving orc redemption? I suspect I’d have gotten different answers from him during different times of his life.
Oh, and I do like the idea of ”orcs” as a kind of blueprint, a recipy that Morgoth invented. (Regardless of whether it involved torturing captive elves, crossbreeding them with monkeys or early monster men ainur or whatever.) And once the recipy is established, it can be repeated with captured humans, or tinkered with by his underlings and legacy bad guys.
Anyway, really interesting video.
I’m not sure there’s anything specifically about Aragorn warring against orcs. There is a reference to him and Eomer warring together after the events of LOTR in the section on the House of Eorl, but it leaves it vague. Could be against the Corsairs for all we know.
It seems highly unlikely that the Orcs of the Lord of the Rings are the same as Morgoths Orcs, even if all of them do indeed descend from them.
Qui Gon said the ability to speak doesn't make one intelligent. Is this what's implied about the Orcs?
I think regardless of where they come from, they are like the rings, whoever creates them puts something of themselves in to it, so while it appears to have a will and autonomy, ultimately it doesn't have a spirit of its own.
There could be multiple ways to create orcs, but none of them have their own spirit or will. The ring doesn't have an independent will, but it appears to, it will betray a ring bearer without the maker knowing but it will desire to return to it's maker because it's part of it.
So maybe Orcs could come from different places, corrupt Elves, fallen men, grown from the dirt, it doesn't matter, however you get an orc, it's forged like a ring is and the maker has to put something of itself in to them for it to appear to have any sort of autonomy.
Was Grishnach one of the orcs directly under Sauron's Control?
Well that’s an interesting question. It doesn’t say Sauron had the same kind of direct control Morgoth had, though presumably he did based on the passage at the Black Gate just after Sauron realized the Ring was in Mount Doom. Certainly if he had that level of control over Grishnakh it didn’t translate to much in terms of knowledge, as it seems he had to report back and then get sent out again to catch up to Ugluk.
@@TolkienLorePodcast I even heard a strange rumor that Grishnach tried to save Marry and Pippin
That’s strange alright lol
@@TolkienLorePodcast
Grishnakh strikes me as quite independent - minded.
But the jury's out on what he would have done if he'd actually gotten hold of The Ring.
the real question is who made the flies in mordor?
Have you read Genesis chapter 6 and the Book of Enoch?
Genesis yes, Enoch no.
If the elves had to leave due to the diminishment of divine power within middle earth, and both Morgoth and sauron were gone, the rings no longer maintaining divine influence across Middle earth, it is only logical to assume that orcs would diminish and fade away. Mortality would no longer apply even if they had been when sauron was around.
There are more baffling questions. What about the Goblins, or Cave-orcs? Who are the smalldwarrow, Mim's family? Do spiders come from outer space, if you consider that Ungolianth came from beyond the gates of night? Why was dragon fire more potent earlier in history? Do dragons degenerate? What are the nameless things and where do they come from? Have mountains personality and abilities like changing the weather?
The parallels between you explaining the lore of lord of the rings and a Sunday school teacher interpreting the bible is uncanny
I like to think orcs are immortal even though Tolkien has stated various ideas on this.
Human beings without our corruption are immortal, so it's pretty much a no-brainer that Orcs are mortal, just a question of how mortal.
I think, the idea of Sauron being the one to oversee the breeding of orks makes sense. He also is the maker of werewolfs and vampires. And as far as I understood, he made those creatures by putting mortal souls after torture into gigantic wolfs and bats. Kind of like he made the Nazgûl. Unliving but not dead souls, put into animals.
Sauron was originally a servant of Aulë. So he was a creater. But more in an evil inventer, way.
On an unrelated note, we're currently growing human brain cells in rats.
I agree with your line of thought regarding Sauron being the one who actually implemented Morgoth's idea to create orcs. Morgoth seems to me to be generally chaotic, disorganized, and focused on destruction. I suspect Sauron was the one responsible for implementing a lot of Morgoth's ideas. I also suspect Sauron was the one responsible for keeping Morgoth's "organization" at least somewhat intact in between Morgoth's first being captured by the Valar and his escape back to Middle-Earth following the destruction of the Two Trees and the theft of the Silmarils.
I read this idea in a comment in another video (sorry, I don't recall whose video it was) but the commenter suggested that a possible explanation for some of the creatures Morgoth bred would be fallen Maia breeding with various creatures, which, depending on the creature, could be responsible for everything from the most basic orcs all the way to dragons.
I'm also curious about the notion of Men becoming mortal due to some great Fall in their distant past. How could this be reconciled with the idea that mortality was "The Gift of Men?"
One possible reconciliation is suggested by a letter Tolkien wrote in response to a priest who criticized him for bad theology, since death is a punishment. Tolkie responded by asking which of God’s punishments are not also gifts?
This question about the origins of orcs begs a question: what would happen if an orc baby were found by an elf or man or hobbit and raised in a loving home rather than a brutal orcish society?
I would have thought that corrupting the Dwarves would be a good source for the origin of the orcs. Did Tolkien ever consider that?
I don’t think there’s any evidence of it.
Dwarves could be evil but they couldn't be corrupted like that according to the lore.
I’m just gonna assume they’re god-cursed elves or men. Likely a mix, with long mortal lifespans but a capacity to age.
Morgoth and Sauron corrupted them, but Eru could have punished those evil folk with heritable evil and permanent disfigurement.
That also brings up one of my favorite theories: that some orcs and their bloodlines can be redeemed, aka break the curse that Eru put on them for being evil, and again look more like the beings they started out as, if permanently mutilated by evil.
If orcs are corrupted men, 1) the time of the awakening of men most certainly does have to be pushed back, and frankly I don't like that, I like the feel of the vast difference in time between the awakening of the firstborn and secondborn of Illuvatar--it feels much more grand and epic to have all that detailed elf story before men, and 2) then dead orcs do go to the Halls of Mandos and then on to the Timeless Halls or whatever Illuvatar decreed. Frankly I would be much more comfortable with Eru having given beast-maia-derived orcs the dwarf treatment out of boundless mercy, a characteristic of New Testament theology. At worst they would have their own minds and be rebellious against rogue Ainu; at best some would be redeemed. They'd still go to Mandos' Halls--I assume dwarves do that upon death--but the chronology of the Silmarillion is preserved and as a bonus Eru's MERCY gets a huge boost, more in line with New Testament thinking.
Doesn't seem to come out of Tolkien's non-story writings, but I am keeping it as head canon.
If we take the words of Eru with Aule, in the Simarillion, at face value, "But I will not suffer this: that these should come before the Firstborn of my design, nor that thy impatience should be rewarded."
We can assume the same for Melkor.
I believe the Orcs were awakened after the Elves.
Maybe, they were awakened when Melkor was captured by the Valar.
And was Sauron the First to actually command them.
If the orcs were animals uplifted to human level intelligence, what animals were they uplifted from?
Great informative clip and some good questiosn raised and addressed but you might want to say _"..and what not .."_ a bit less!
The Orcs do seem really problematic in being both enslaved to others and intrinsically evil, intelligent and indivdiual yet almost indistinguishable hordes and the idea of hybridisation between races (species?) being a bad thing has some rather disturbing implications racism~wise. What might good or at least neutral orcs be like left to themselves I wonder?
I don't think Peter Jackson's Uruk-hai being born out of sludge makes any sense whatsoever. How does mud get pregnant anyhow? 🤔
It’s explained that he’s cross-breeding to produce his army. It’s fairly obvious the brown fluid is there to speed the process up - perhaps they’re put in there at birth or as embryos. Natural processes wouldn’t be fast enough for the film’s time scale. It makes sense for the director to show that there are unnatural processes involved.
@@adamzain6770
If PJ did that to show how trolls are born, I would've okay with it, but Uruk-Hai? Dumb....
@@Enerdhil Saruman likes industrial progress. Factory farming seems quite appropriate - particularly given that his boss put in a bulk order and he was in a hurry. It’s not so different from the methods we use for stock breeding; we transfer the fertilised egg to a living host, whereas Saruman has obviously found a better way. Here’s a quote from an IVF paper:
“For example, an animal produces about 4-5 offsprings in her life through normal reproduction, whereas through IVF technology the same can produce 50-80 offsprings in her life. Therefore, the IVF technology holds a great promise because a large number of animals may be produced and gene pool of animal population can also be improved.”
@@adamzain6770
Tolkien would agree with that. And they still call that organic meat, M.I. rite?
They are the Shadow of Morgoth.The unfixable Marring of Arda.The Most Terrible of His Blasphemys.
There are many inconsistencies and holes in Tolkiens mythology and maybe that is how supposed to be, it's a mythology most of which are stories whose truths are lost and distorted across time. Another are where are the multitude of Maiar that followed Melkor and followed him into Arda. Maybe they were defeated, except just like Sauron and other Maiar they are immortal so even if they were vanquished e.g. the Balrogs how come none ever returned after all Sauron only couldn't return when he lost the power he'd invested in the ring was lost when it was destroyed, yet all other of Melkors Maia seem to have been effectively "killed" whenever they were defeated.
The Maiar following Melkor become fixated in their preferred form and unable to change it.
This means, when their form is destroyed, they cannot build it back if they can't go into the Hall of Mandos (like Melkor).
Sauron could reform AFTER he lost the ability to change form at will because of the One Ring.
Lost or not it allowed his spirit to endure a connection to ME and rebuild his body (but with no ring-finger)
Are there lady Orcs?
Yes. It is hard to breed without male and female of the species. Of course, leftist scientists will tell you men can have babies.😂🤣😆🤪
@@diamondskull0739
What don't you understand? You need a sperm and an egg to create life, i.e. male and female. Cultural Marxist ideology is telling us there are over one hundred genders and men can have babies because trans men are still men even though they have the reproductive organs and chromosomes of a woman. Either you have been living under a rock or you believe their pseudo science.
In the Lord of the ring movies orcs are made from mud in Isengard. They don't need orc girls for that
@@stevemonkey6666 You see them emerge from a mud-like substance. That tells you almost nothing about how they were produced - you just see the final stage of the process.
"For the Orcs had life and multiplied after the manner of the Children of Iluvatar". The 'manner' meaning the way Elves and Men would procreate, meaning there are female Orcs.
This is why having seperate free will races created by other than a single entity innately is problematic.
It also points out the issue of polytheism; who is the ultimate authority? And how are disputes handled without the destruction of all?
And if there must be the transfiguration of a race to be permanently selfish, greedy, and fearful....to get orcs ..
Then it must be man.
This is very interesting, and highlights a big difference between Tolkien and Rings of Power: Tolkien cared about inner consistency. His world makes sense, it has rules. The Amazon thing is just a hodgepodge.
In my imagination Tolkien wasn't only struggling with the idea of free will in orcs but also what makes people evil in real life. The prof probably witnessed far more savagery than I ever will but I've seen a bit myself. One of the causes could be said to be a fundamental misunderstanding of reality and our relationship to one and other. aka ignorance.
Hmm… funny, Russians do really fit the description or orcs
Yes, Middle-Earth has a metaphysics problem: Tolkien's Christianity/Catholicism. Creationism will always be problematic. Now, LotR still works as a story regardless of the various attempts to write a backstory. This is why I think trying to draw too much from the writings/notes of Tolkien that were not published in his lifetime is going to feel unsatisfactory. Tolkien's rewriting of his own backstories tells us that he could never really fix the problems he introduced by trying to keep his own beliefs in Eru and souls. That the elves could be reincarnated immediately leads to several problems, including whether the Orcs could be reincarnated. Trying to have orcs that could physically reproduce raises all sorts of questions. Orcs having pre-existence (Maia or whatever) gives another set of problems.
How is a Christian framework a metaphysical problem?
First!!
Explaining the Orcs would either require radical rewrites of Morgoth and how he brought his dark legions into existence, or it required radically changing the Elves. Having the Orcs come from corrupted or captured Elves violates the lore about Elves and their fea and their hroa, the Elvish fea will leave the hroa if the hroa is subject to rape or gross bodily violation.
Since Morgoth could only bring about the Orcs by corrupting wholesome Children of Men, and since Orcs were around before the coming of men, this means Morgoth not only captured many Elves but tortured them terribly and also forced them to procreate- yet it is said that the fea would leave the body then endure rape or terrible mutilation.
I think that corrupted (in the sense of broken and ruined) elves, that were brought lower than anyone could imagine, into madness and psychopathy. Only to be raised anew with barely any shred of their former personality were the inspiration for orcs. Rather than being orcs themselves. And that orcs are their own thing, in the same way that dwarves, made by Aule are their own thing.
@@BVargas78 Yet Orcs were never created by Eru Illuvatar and Morgoth could not create new lifeforms, he could corrupt and twist them to mock the Ainur and the Children of Men.
@@skatemetrix What if by Morgoth not being able to create new life forms it just means that he could not create new life with a free will? While it is apparent that orcs are not automatons their personalities are quite limited.
Admittedly though, i'm probably a little out my league, just throwing stuff out and seeing what sticks if anything. Only Tolkien really knew the true nature of orcs but I get the impression that even with himself, it was not something entirely set in stone. But a concept that was a bit fluid. i.e. are orcs reedemable? Which i think was something he pondered in his later letters.
@@BVargas78 If the Orcs are redeemable then its poses even greater contradictions in the mythology for it paints the Valar and Ainur in Valinor as even more uncaring and seemingly remote from the struggles of Middle Earth. My personal theory is that Morgoth broke the Elves he captured in Angband and, using his dark powers, forced the fea of the Elves to remain which meant the Elves could not depart from their bodies. The idea that Orcs were originally corrupted Elves or even breed from the Elves is my favourite idea because this is the most wicked and evil of all the proposed origins of the Orcs- which compliments the wicked nature of Morgoth.