Are orcs actually evil?

[MaultheStoor]

See, a lot of people never think "Well, this monster I just mowed down might actually have feelings." Can there honestly be such thing as a "good" Orc?

[A Little Green]

Just a few thoughts to stir the pot...

I like to explain orcs by socio-cultural reasons, mainly because I loathe the idea of a race being ultimately evil (manly because I hate the idea of good and evil ). The moral values and upbringing methods in an orc society differ much from what we call acceptable or normal or good. In the same manner a human child (hopefully) learns from his surroundings that killing and hurting others is wrong, an orc child learns that it's right. The surroundings from which an orc child learns are originally created by Sauron or Morgoth or whoever, and repeated by other orcs around the child because they have been brought up the same way. Similarly the children of the free peoples are, I would think, taught to hate orcs.

So what is the difference? Why are the heroes never bothered by the amount of slaughter they do, or rather, why are we never bothered by it? Why are they still not evil in any way? Okay, they don't take joy in violence and they are on the defending side...

But somehow that isn't sufficient for me. True, we could justify the heroes' hatred for orcs by what orcs have done to their families or homes or freedom or whatever, but aren't we then doing the precisely same thing that those people who eg. hate all supporters of a certain religion because some 0.00000001% of them are terrorists who happened to kill someone, or those who hate all inhabitants of a country because their leader is a brute?

Of course LotR is an epic fantasy novel, almost like a fairytale, and I'm probably making a mistake in comparing it to things happening in this world. After all, Middle Earth is a world of its own, a fantasy world, and in such places I suppose good and evil can exist even if they didn't in this one. (Especially if it is a symbolic story or especially if the author needs a way for describing war in his books without making his heroes seem cruel because they kill others... )

[Sauron the White]

from A Little Green

The moral values and upbringing methods in an orc society differ much from what we call acceptable or normal or good. In the same manner a human child (hopefully) learns from his surroundings that killing and hurting others is wrong, an orc child learns that it's right. The surroundings from which an orc child learns are originally created by Sauron or Morgoth or whoever, and repeated by other orcs around the child because they have been brought up the same way. Similarly the children of the free peoples are, I would think, taught to hate orcs.

Its the lack of public education for little Orclings. They were all home schooled and truly believe that they are the center of the universe.

[Eönwë]

Well, remember. TOlkien believed in Redemption he was Catholic, and Christianity talks a lot about forgiveness, so I'm sure Tolkien thought that Orcs were not pure evil. In fact, probably no-one, not even Melkor is 100% evil (depending on how you view Ungoliant)

[skip spence]

If any Orcs surrendered and asked for mercy, they must be granted it, even at a cost. This was the teaching of the Wise, though in the horror of the War it was not always heeded. Morgoth's Ring, HoMe X, 419

I believe the question of whether orcs were irredeemably evil or not gave Tolkien a lot of headache. If orcs indeed were corrupted forms of elves and/or men they then would have had a 'fea' granted by Eru and a rational mind capable of moral choices, as others already have pointed out.

But consider the above quote in the light of what happened during the first battles of Beleriand. During the second battle, the elves were said to have routed the orc hosts so severly that "no more than a handful of leaves" returned to Angband. During the third battle the orc host was destroyed "to the last and least".

If orcs were rational beings and not mindless beasts, this would've be a terrible crime. Surely at some point before their ultimate annihilation the orcs must have realised they were uttterly defeated and asked for mercy or at least tried to flee. Yet they were slaughtered to the last man.

I'm sure Tolkien had this in mind when he later on tried to device other orgins of orcs to replace 'the corrupted elves'-one. Yet he realised that it wasn't belivable to say they were just mindless beasts. They were not. IMO Tolkien really tried to make up a plausable theory on how they could've been beasts, but never quite managed it. He really wanted them to be beasts but realised that they couldn't be, not without contradicting much of what he already had written. There's just no way that Melkor could have made intelligent and rational humaniods out of beasts, without granting him the gift of original creation, and this was out of the question.

[The Sixth Wizard]

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.

[skip spence]

Good point The Sixth Wizard.

In fact, If orcs and men are interbreedable, they must be the same race biologically, if their offspring are able to reproduce. That would make orcs no more (or at least, not much more) different to men than, for example, ethnic Chinese are to eskimoes. And doesn't Tolkien talk about modern day orcs too? Wow, I never really thought about that before. Orcs are men. Simple as that.

[Morthoron]

Originally Posted by The Sixth Wizard

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.

You are right, VI, Saruman certainly was not the first to dabble with Orcs; in fact, a common misconception (engendered by the movies no doubt) was that Saruman created the Uruk-Hai. This is not the case, as Sauron had created the fighting Uruk several centuries earlier.

In regards to Orc-Men and Half-Orcs, it is certainly reasonable to believe that the 'squint-eyed Southerner' in FotR had more mannish stock in him than orkish, and thus was better able to assimilate unnoticed in Bree.