[Kuruharan]

We get to see orkish leadership qualities at their finest in this chapter.

Mordor is in effect a prison. What is very odd here is that Tolkien says of Sauron: "he had few servants but many slaves of fear". This suggests that of the population of Mordor, the majority did not choose to be there. Who lives in Mordor? Is the population primarily Orcish? Do we assume that Orcs tend to willingly offer their loyalty to Sauron? I wonder where the Orcs lie in the definition of who is a servant and who is a 'slave of fear'; the Orcs have been shown to have minds of their own in the chapters which take place in the Pass of Cirith Ungol so I wonder if following Sauron is innate or a choice? If it is a choice, then this suggests that Mordor's population must also include a majority of peoples who are enslaved in some way, who are not Orcs. But if the Orcs might have been enslaved by their fear then this suggests that the Orcs are not inherently bad people, they do bad deeds but how much of it is by choice?

The orcs are referred to in the Sil as secretly hating their masters.

And deep in their dark hearts the Orcs loathed the Master whom they served in fear, the maker only of their misery.

You can see traces of this in Shagrat and Gorbag. Their conversation was mildly mutinous.

Whatever you make of this, there can be no question but that they hated the Free Peoples more and wanted to fight and kill them. The orcs would do so even when they were not under Sauron's direct control. To a certain extent, I think they fight because they do want to, even though they hate the one who is leading them.