Orcs and Elves (and Men and Animals)

[Galadriel55]

I want to throw out a response from the "who really wrote the book" series, for the fun and ingenuity of it. Of course, if Tolkien wrote the book, then the question is why did he change his mind about Orcs so many times. But if Tolkien is merely the "translator"... Well, then we must ask where the primary sources of the text are coming from. Say, for instance, that the Professor stumbles upon some records in chronological order. What may he find? There could have been different speculations voiced by different people at different periods in time. A little fanciful illustration:

You are Quendi. Quendi are living creatures that speak, that are sentient - the only creatures who are so, and thus different from animals. If you are sentient, then you are Quendi. The world makes sense and it is beautiful.

Then you start meeting strange creatures. They feel wrong, they don't feel like they belong in the world, they are not in harmony with the rest of it. You can tell that they have an evil intent, and are driven by an evil will. They come in different forms, and do different things. Sometimes your friends disappear, and you assume the evil creatures got them. But they are sentient, they can speak too. Whence come the evil Speakers? They must have been created by that evil force that drives them to spread his power through the world. Certainly they did not awake with the Firstborn, they ought to have very different beginnings, one in light and one in darkness.

But then you learn of the Valar, perhaps even meet the Valar yourself. You learn that there is indeed an evil power who drives these creatures, and he is Melkor. Yet you also learn of his fall, and that he has lost the power to create, left only with the power to corrupt. And again you ask yourself, whence came the evil creatures under his dominion? And you remember again the comrades that have been lost, and a horrible thought occurs to you. You thought your friends were slain, but if instead they were captured, and corrupted into a dark reflection of their essence? The Orcs had to come from somewhere, and if they were not created, they must trace their origins - indeed! - to Cuivienen, as unlike as they are to all the Quendi who remained so in truth.

But time moves on, and yet another race makes its way into the western lands, a race you've heard very little of. The Mortals, the Aftercomers. Supposedly the Children of Iluvatar, jus like the Quendi. And they speak, and they are sentient. But they are weird. They hold onto the world just barely, and are not quite in harmony with it. They have many different customs, and not all of them are good. They are rash, and when their thought is lacking they behave not unlike Orcs might. In fact, they might be a lot more like Orcs than Quendi are. Then here is an explanation for the birth of the Orcs, one that could not have been known previously, for you have not yet known of the Aftercomers. It is not the Quendi who were twisted into the polar opposite of their being; rather, it is Men, who required only the slightest push to turn them into Orcs. Morgoth, as you now call the evil Power, must have found them way before they came into Beleriand, and way before even the Valar were aware of their awakening.

But you get to know Men better. You heard of Men committing acts of bravery and loyalty that would put an Elf to shame. You heard that two most beautiful Elven princesses fell in love with mortal men and wed them, joining the two races. There were Elves who worked hard to keep the bond between Elves and Men; Finrod, perhaps, was the first, and Elrond Halfelven might be the last. You've seen Men raise kingdoms that are perhaps less splendid than the Elven cities of old, but more durable. You see that while they might be more malleable than Elves, they still yearn for goodness, not for darkness. And you begin to doubt your theory again.

Perhaps you will never know how Morgoth bred the Orcs, whose hapless forms he twisted to his purpose. Surely it cannot just be a mindless animal, for Orcs are sentient, and animals are not, and whatever else you may think, you can never accept that Morgoth could have created a hroa, much less a fea. Neither do you believe that these creatures were meant to exist in Iluvatar's song. Was it Quendi, perhaps the lost ones from the dawn of time? Or Men, found and captured before the rest of the world knew of their existence? Surely not the Naugrim, for there is not much resemblance between the proud, hardworking, and reserved race and the hasty, treacherous, cruel Orcs. You will never learn the answer. Maybe you might have, if you knew the right questions to ask back then, in the days before the Sun. But it is too late now. Morgoth is gone beyond the Circles of the World, and the Quendi too are fading. You are among the last to linger, but you too shall leave this land soon. But this writing, these musings, you shall leave in Middle-earth. Let some future generation answer the question that you have not solved in your time.

...A little too fanciful, perhaps, but I think not impossible. What would have been the within-world explanations for the Orcs' existence, if you have to work in an internally consistent legendarium where things have an in-universe explanation, rather than just the meta "because Tolkien said so"? I know that in the end the meta explanation is the only one that really counts, but it's fun to imagine. And characters had to have some explanation that went well with their consequent actions. For instance, if the Elves always believed that Orcs are corrupted Elves, would they not try to, dunno, help them, uncorrupt them? Either in the beginning, before they met the Valar, or in the Fourth Age, when there were no named powers openly acting in the world, no Morgoth to strive against? Since the Elves gave up on the Orcs permanently, they had to hold a belief consistent with that decision. And this too can be playing in to Tolkien's decision - how can he have Orcs that are/were Elves, but have the kind and brave Elves not even consider healing them, at any point in history?

[Huinesoron]

Originally Posted by Galadriel55

Say, for instance, that the Professor stumbles upon some records in chronological order. What may he find? There could have been different speculations voiced by different people at different periods in time. A little fanciful illustration:

...A little too fanciful, perhaps, but I think not impossible.

And very well supported in the text, because the last major text on Orcs (HoME X:V:X, pleasingly) is exactly this kind of document:

So far as can be gleaned from the legends that have come down to us from our earliest days, it would seem that the Quendi had never yet encountered any Orcs of this kind before the coming of Orome to Cuivienen.

Much like the occasional Numenorean scholar author, the Elvish writer of this piece (written in the Fourth Age, because she talks about Saruman's experiments in the past tense) has fiercely strong opinions that she presents in the guise of facts.

This view of the origin of the Orcs [that they were corrupted Men] thus meets with difficulties of chronology. But though Men may take comfort in this, the theory remains nonetheless the most probable.

She mentions most of the theories - independent creation of Melkor, spirits/phantoms, Maiar (handled separately), and of course corrupted Men - but is utterly silent on the question of Elves. Except...

But even before this wickedness of Morgoth [the corruption of Men into Orcs] was suspected the Wise in the Elder Days taught always that the Orcs were not 'made' by Melkor, and therefore were not in their origin evil.

... which is a direct reference to the Annals of Aman, the last pre-Myths Transformed account, which states that it "is held true by the Wise of Eressea" that Orcs are corrupted Elves. So yeah, the most complete late text is explicitly an opinion-ridden denunciation of both mortal Men and their arrogance, and the naivity of old-timer Elves.

(Incidentally X:V:X is also where the idea that Elves would always take an Orcish surrender offer, though Orcs rarely offered, comes from.)

~

Glancing over the other Myths Transformed texts, I feel like the shift from the simple "they're elves" version came about because of the Athrabeth. Finrod tells Andreth that he cannot believe that Morgoth could change the Doom and nature of a whole people. In that text he was referring to her claim that Men were not supposed to be Mortal, but Tolkien seems to have realised it applied equally to making Orcs inheritably evil. Everything from then on was an attempt to write himself out of that contradiction, by making them either no longer Eruhini, or so crushed by Morgoth's spirit and will that they weren't entirely rational creatures any more.

hS