Are Orcs Immortal?
 

*Read this first* http://www.dagorhir.com/cgi-bin/ulti...c&f=7&t=000378
Like I said, I've never heard this before

Oooh! Good question Gorin! I need to go see where in The Silmarillion Dominus was quoting from. I do not remember reading that, but it has been awhile since I read The Silmarillion.
I would think that the last of them were destroyed when the ring was destroyed.
Anyone else?

This idea was part of what I was thinking when I asked my question about whether orcs can be uncorrupted. I think that the answer is yes, orcs are as immortal as elves. That was a great insight into Shagrat and Gorbag! I'll have to look at that.

This thread is much more informative than the website that was give. Orcish Fear The assumption that orcs are imortal, or even elves for that matter, is actually somewhat questionable. In the conversation between Shagrat and Gorbag neither them actually say that they actually remember the battle of the Last Alliance, they merely liken the situation at hand to it. Perhaps they merely heard or learned about the battle, and did not actually live during the second age. A better example of Orcs being immortal is the Great Goblin and several other orcs reconizing Orcist and Glamdring, which were swords forged during the first age. [img]smilies/smile.gif[/img] Read the post, it is very interesting.

Okay, Thingol, I read the entire post (admittedly scanned a portion of it). If Saulotus is right, it is still inevitable that the evil lords Morgoth and Sauron would have captured SOME Elves and mixed them into the pot of Orcdom, even if the vast majority is a combination of beast, Maia, and men. Teh upshot is that and Orc's lifespan and ultimate doom probably depends on the dominant ancestry of that Orc.

I confess that I do not care for the hermeneutics apparently required to intepret what Tolkien "must have wanted", due to the fact that his thought changed. It is well to point out that just because an idea was his last, does not make it his best. The whole Galadriel conundrum comes to mind in this regard. For philosophical reasons Tolkien was getting set to make Galadriel a SISTER of FEANOR, rather than a cousin (niece?). This would have been a mistake. He did his best work when he allowed the languages and the stories to develop naturally.

The Orcish leader of the Battle of the Five Armies was Bolg son of Azog. Azog had been killed by Dain 142 years previously. Not proof of immortality, but it does seem that orcs had longer lifespans than ordinary men. [img]smilies/smile.gif[/img]

I just had to (uncharacteristically) add something a little off topic.
Excellent call, littleman - although of course just an opinion, it's one that I strongly believe in. Tolkien's created world was so real, so founded in fact-like fiction rather than just make-believe, that it could be allowed to grow organically. This would also mean that it would be possible to faithfully create in-depth stories about some of his world's inhabitants, like Arvedui or Helm.

Your quote can also help express my opinion in one of the facets of the Orc Debate. JRRT had already decided that Orcs were corrupted Elves. Already fairly developed, this might have fitted in better than any subsequent theory he may have come up with. Admittedly I haven't read any of the later HOME books, but I think that Christopher Tolkien was much more qualified than any of us to put The Silmarillion together. Perhaps the theory of origins of Orcs as Elves was the latest or the most developed one. Just an idea.

Thanks for saying so, doug*platypus. Man! I forgot I said that! But I'm glad I did. I stick by it.

By the way, anybody seen that old thread, "Tolkien's Best Orc"? I can't seem to find it in search. (Sorry about being off topic)

(reviving an old thread [img]smilies/smile.gif[/img])
According to some of Tolkiens later sources, the Orcs were supposed to be Men, corrupted by the Dark Lord, if I remember correct. Thus he was planning to make Men having awakened earlier...

Yes they were percieved to have awoken in the great march of the Eldar, and they were rooted on an island, due to great rains. There are some long-lived Orcs, like Bolg, over 150 mehtinks. Could he have been a Boldog or an descendnat of one?

TOlkien never actually say right out that Orcs are immortal, but I believe thaey are. Orcs were elves, but twisted and warped into Orcs. ALso, there were always lots and lots of them. I think why we don't find Orcs from the 1st or 2cnd ages is because they usually got killed in a fight or some other way. I saw someone say that the Great Goblin (The Hobbit) recognized Glamdring+Orcrist. NOt necessarily. He just may have heard of them, as most of the Orcs probably would. Tolkien says they recognized the swards, but he may mean the recognized what swords the swords were.

Actually, Tolkien does state that the Orcs aren't immortal, and that they were twisted men (there were also two other texts, but the first was filled with notes, and the second was abandoned) [img]smilies/smile.gif[/img]


(somewhere in Morgoths Ring, I think)

[ January 30, 2003: Message edited by: Falagar ]

Where does he say that Orcs are mortal. In Morgoth's ring Tolkien philosphies about the origin of Orcs. It seems that Tolkien was not satisfied with the idea that Orcs were corrupted elves because it leads to all kinds of problems such as immortality. And what happend when an Orc was slain. Did he go to Mandos. On the other hand, if Orcs derived from Men then the awakening of Men must have been much earlier than the arrival of Noldor in Middle-Earth. Tolkien never resolved this problem

"They [the Orcs] could be slain, and they were subjekt to disease, but apart from these ills, they died and were not immortal, even according to the manner of the Quendi; indeed they appear to have been by nature short-lived compared with the span of Men of higher races, such as the Edain"

I tend to use Tolkiens later sources, even though he never got time to rewrite/revice (if indeed he planned to revise it) it before he died.

[ January 30, 2003: Message edited by: Falagar ]

i beilieve this to be way out of the question. the awakeining of men when have been shortly after, or at the same time, as the elves. and that means they could not have had the time to move from the East, Unless of course, the place of their awakening was to be changed as well. but still, that just cause too many problems. way too many...

On the Orcish immortality theory - does the question of where their spirits go when their physical bodies die really have to present a problem?

If they were Elves originally, couldn't their spirits go to the Halls of Mandos, giving them an opportunity to repent their evil Orcish lives?

I find it interesting how many of us (I include myself) take kindly to the idea that the Halls of Mandos are a place where orcs, gollum, and any other creatures of Middle Earth get a last chance to repent and "make it to the good place". Nowhere does Tolkien suggest this. I would wager that he expected a fate similar to that of Sauron and Saruman for all evildoers.

I wouldn't have thought that Gollum, or any Humans/Hobbits, would be eligible for entry to the Halls of Mandos. I was suggesting that Orcs might be admitted on the basis that they (or their forbears) were originally Elves.

And at the risk of starting another general debate on free will ( [img]smilies/eek.gif[/img] ), their ancestors never really had much of a choice, did they? They were just taken by Melkor and corrupted by him.

[ January 31, 2003: Message edited by: The Saucepan Man ]

If orcs are evil through and through, which I assume they were as you never hear of one repenting, then how can they have a soul? I dont think orcs would have gone to Mandos, thats in Valinor after all- would you want orcs corrupting the place?

I think that I read somewhere that the remnent had to be got after the war: they werent bound to the ring like Sauron.

[ January 31, 2003: Message edited by: Lyra Greenleaf ]