Orcseys - always Evil?

[Thinlómien]

Originally Posted by A Little Green

I might want to criticise him in this a little (or is it forbidden here? )

No, it isn't.

Originally Posted by ALG

If orcs are indeed the brutal, all-evil, almost-thoughtless killing machines Tolkien shows them like

I'd agree about them being brutal, but not about them being all-evil or almost-thoughtless - there's far too much personality (and even sympathicity, bless me!) in Tolkien's Orcs to classify them that way.

Now, rereading this thread, I started to wonder what causes Orcs to be evil. My own thoughts and many replies here suggest that this evil is caused by Morgoth. Now, would Eru have been able to undo this Evil? Or to "cure" it by giving Orcs Fëar? I think he would. No we know he didn't want to mess with Valar's or Melkor's business. But isn't it quite outrageous of him to leave a whole race to suffer from inherent evil just because of his principle of not interfering? I mean, he gave souls to Aulë's Dwarves. Why didn't he treat Melkor's Orcs differently?

Now I know Melkor had forsaken Eru and not merely rebelled against him like Aulë - and he was "evil" while Aulë was not. Thus it would make sense that Eru would "favour" Aulë's creations and not Melkor's. Yet did he ever think of orcs? Did he ever pity them, tormented poor Elves and their children, and thereby his children as well, eh? Do Dwarves have any more right to souls than Orcs? Wasn't Eru unfair here?

A lot of questions and no answers. Sounds like philosophy.

I like davem's and Lal's point about Orcs as such that they can't be compared to humans. Should we take this point a bit further and stop thinking of Orcs as people and merely consider them an aspect of Evil in Tolkien's works?

Now that is an interesting thought, yet I'm not sure I can accept it. What about those glimpses of humanity in Orcs? What about the passage Hookbill quoted? Does it disprove the theory of orcs merely as an aspect of evil?

I don't know. It could. But it could also hint that even Tolkien's relatively black-and-white world there's no such thing as complete evil. It could be a "proof" that even evil people (=orcs) dream of a simpler life under no evil bosses (even though their concept of simple life and pleasure is morally questionable to us). But yet again, I don't know. Can we reduce a race to the level of a mere aspect of evil? This is the intriguing and troubling nature of Tolkien's works, one that his admirers see, but those who criticise him of writing black-and-white & morally simple fantasy don't.