|
Whenever I read The Lord of the Rings and sometimes the Silmarillion, I get the feeling that the border between Man/Elf and Orc is less well defined than one might think. For example:
Faramir, in the RotK thinks that Gollum is some kind of scout-orc. Gollum, in my mental image, looks nothing like the stereotypical orc, or even the scout orc. It suggests that there are more breeds of orc than just Uruk, Uruk-Hai, Snaga etc. and that it is easier to mutate Men and Elves than we might have thought.
There are mentions of "half-orcs" and "goblin-men" when dealing with Saruman. Saruman was not the first to experiment with Orcs so we can assume Melkor and other dark powers tried this too, and probably made half-breeds which were more peaceful, and super-breeds which were more ferocious and reckless. I could imagine a kind of half-man, half-orc race which lived a rough and tribal existence, with less of the civilised qualities other men had. These men would still have peaceful ideas in their heads and could be integrated somewhat (and interbred) into society.
Massive armies of orcs seem to spring from almost nowhere, especially in the cases of Saruman and Mordor. To create the armies so quickly the sorcerors must have bred already wild men, slaves and other sub-species into the "pure" orc strain. The purer orcs would be the slave-masters and leaders, but the underlings of the armies and the orcs who have been depicted as more independant in Tolkien's books must have been the ones with man- and half-man-blood in them. I could see Gorbag as a stronger, more man-blooded orc.
I don't see redemption as easy. While the orcs were adapting to their new values, there would undoubtedly be instances of their violent nature getting the better of them, for which they would have to be punished, which would brutalise them further and lead to shunning and killing of their race in the end. I do see redemption possible, but it would not work in real life because men do not care for orcs, and orcs do not care for men.
|