[Gwaihir the Windlord]

Right, I've got something extremely important to say a bit later on in this post, so please read it. [img]smilies/smile.gif[/img]

'When it comes to our own views of Tolkien's world, then we can make Tolkien an equal observer all we want.'(Nils)

Is that not precisely what we are doing here? As I said, this thing is a personal idea of Tolkien's, and does not neccessarily have much to do with his work. Of course, not an equal observer, as his word obviously has more power than anyone else's when it does concern his work.

'being denied any possibility of redemption does not, for me, square with the concept of Iluvatar as a benevolent and wholly good Creator.'(Saucepans)

Yet evil, I believe, is present in Eru as well. Redemption may be for the Orcs -- it may be for everything in the end -- or then again, they may be wiped out and thus the good in Illuvatar's mind triumph ultimately over the evil. But I think, rather, that the creations -- directly or otherwise -- of Illuvatar perhaps follow linear paths, so that the flowering of his mind (through which came about everything) reach a final flourishing in all forms. (Forgive me if this is hard to follow).

Ok, this is the pre-mentioned 'important bit'.

Saucepans, you are right -- the though of an Orc ever accomplishing something other than evil is an incredibly difficult one. As for the supposed setting-free of the Orcs that people are talking about, as evidence that they were not fully irredeemable, I think that the quote may be mistaken. This is what it says in the RotK;

And the King pardoned the Easterlings that had given themselves up, and sent them away free, and he made peace with the peoples of Harad; and the slaves of Mordor he released and gave to them all the lands about Lake Nurnen to be their own.

Actually, when I first read the Lord of the Rings years ago I did not assume for a moment that this was talking about the Orcs. 'Slaves' is what it is talking about. We know that Morgoth kep slaves (usually called 'thralls'; we also know that Sauron had huge tributaries from the South and the East, who may indeed have brought him, among their other gifts, labourerse -- they were certainly barbaric enough to give slaves as gifts. If not, Sauron may have taken them from his surrounding lands simply by force. The 'slaves', I believe, were Men.

I am supported in this reckoning by the lengthy article, 'Men of Darkness' (http://people.wiesbaden.netsurf.de/~lalaith/Tolkien/Men_of_Darkness.html if you want to see it).

(of Khand) But its strategically crucial location made it sometimes victim, sometimes ally of both Rhún or Harad to neither of which it properly belonged, and its immediate proximity to Mordor made it particularly vulnerable to its dreadful neighbour. Certainly Khand accounted for a lot of the "fresh slaves" imported to Nurn.

Nurn, of course, was where the vast farms and managed land were that helped supply Mordor, the ones that Sam and Frodo 'knew nothing of' when they wondered what Orcs ate. It is probable that these lands were managed by Men rather than Orcs, and as probable that they were slaves under Easterling of Haradic governers. Held to Sauron, like the Orcs and like the thralls were to Morgoth, in fear. The Sea of Nurnen was the land they lived in already, so it was the ideal land for Aragorn to give as a gift to them. It was also in close proximity to Khand, which (as the article says) is probably where the slaves came from.

So I don't think Aragorn found anything redeemable in the Orcs, either. He would have most likely destroyed them in Mordor in his rides East with the Rhohirrim. The Orcs are considered, rightly, fair game for anyone, and after Sauron's downfall they had no place in the world.