What comes to ”revising” the silmarillion, which issue arises if the nature of orcs is pondered upon, I think theese issues revisions lack Tolkiens authority though some think they have it. Tolkien was the ultimate perfectionist. I have some opinions of a son going digging through ones fathers wastebasket and publishing things this perfectionist did not and perhaps NEVER INTENDED TO. Parts of those are likely to be discarded musings or consepts. Like all people, Tolkien refined his stories and thought things over at later date. He thought of things he did not quite like and things that perhaps could have or should have been differently. Nevertheless, if I have understood things right, his second thoughts of orcish origins are know only from the wastebasket archaeology and publication of semi private letters. I tend to think that the story of Arda includes only what Tolkien published or at most what he finished into stories that would have obviously been published had he had the life of an elf. After all, it is logically inconsistant to give him authority to define all other things EXEPT what to include in the saga.
Also it is valid and interresting philosophical question whether author owns text to change it after it has been published. At what point does a story cease to be ”mine” and become ”ours.” I think Tolkien also expressed some opinion of this and may have actually decided NOT TO publish anything to change the origin of orcs despite changing ones own mind. We perhaps have the wastebasket-archaeology branch of Oxford to give us something to debate over, but not Tolkien. Tolkiens perfectionism to my understanding extended up to the point of trying to create The Perfect Story, even omitting some things the writer personally would like to have been differently, for the sake of the consistency of the story.
So, I start from the basic idea that men awoke to the sunlight, whether or not Tolkien at some latter poit thought about other beginings in some private letters. It also FITS and is consistent with other story, may I say. ”Starlight remained forever in the eyes of eleves”, for example ”as they woke to it.” So men did not wake to it. Eleves see under the starlight because they lived under it. Men do not because they only lived under the sun and the moon. Men were second children of the one to awaken... as dwarves were children of Aule (by the mercy of the one). ETC.
So if theese assumptions hold, orcs cannot have been men.
I doubt that they could have been kelvar, for they are obviously capable of having culture. They have inteligence and so on. In the hobbit, Tolkien tells us what they are like and he says they are most intelligent in all kinds of nasty and efective things up to and including building machines. Orcs might not have souls... but they do have lots of intelligence.
They cannot have been maiar either. It seems to me that maiar have one thing in common. To my understanding, amongst themselves, maiar do not have little maiar. They do not procrate, multiply, have kids. Orcs seem to procreate rather fast (”after this and that war orcs satrted to multiply in the mountains X and Y again...” [img]smilies/wink.gif[/img]. What comes to orcs being something of a same order like ents, dragons, werewolves or... Luthien. That is crossbreeds resulting from powerful spirits taking mortal form and procreating with mortals or things of mortal land.... well they seem to lack the sheer power usually associated with such (noble/hideous) creatures. This is what trolls may have been. Also such crossbreeds seem slow to procreate.
The cannot have been any kind of golems either. Golems do not ponder the possibility of desertion from Mordor and their masters to go on doing some independent banditry. They do not fight their leaders when ****ed off like in cirith ungol. Orcs had independent wills. We do not hear one single orcs words who had NOT shown capasity to defying authority in the books.
In Tolkien and general fantasy, evil can never create.
We are left with possibility of twisted eleves. This one also seems to FIT.
Silmarillion states that Morgoth kept eleven slaves in the mines of Angband. If they returned, they came back broken beings... but not as orcs. I think the best interpretation is the one found in for example the middle earth roleplaying game supplements. No living orc has or had ever been elf. Ofsprings were born in slavery to the eleves of the moriquendi broken in spirit by tortures unspeakable. Ofsprings were born to them. And more generations to them. Inbreeding, dangerous chemichals of the mines causing deformities, mythic reprisals for things like cannibalism forced on them by Morgoth, sheer evil wills twisting and corrupting power, all of this Morgoth used to his pleasure. Generation by generation Morgoths evil twisted them more and more heinously by all the force of a fallen Vala. This continued through all the years between the rise of the stars and the war between Valar and Morgoth. Basically orcs are collection of everything that is not good in elvish genetic stock and then all the faults Bauglir could inflict. They have long since ceased to be eleves, but eleves hate them so much because they see reflection of their own inner inpurities magnified. Orcs hate eleves because eleves fight them. They have no recollection of what their foreparents were, they cannot become that anymore. As far as distanced from what they were meant to be, as Saruman was in the end (and then some), they propably go to nothingness when they die. They may be immortal by their genes as Morgoth was only working with the worst of what was available in the eleven breeding stock to begin with, and there was no raw-materale for ageing. Orcs propably have average lifespan of few violent, sickly and hungry decades though. Strong and cunnig orcish ruler might live forever though becoming more cunnig and powerful feeding on the best manflesh caughts and killing his rivals.
Of cource various mights could have later upgraded the slave race a bit by mixing human genes to the pool. With the rate orcs multiply, but the end of third age all orcs might have a drop of human blood in them. Maybe the bigger ones have most.
Janne Harju
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