Orcseys - always Evil?

[Son of Númenor]

I did a search on this topic and found this excellent response to the question at hand:

Originally Posted by Sharkû

"They [sc. orcs] would at least 'be' real physical realities in the physical world, however evil they might prove, even 'mocking' the Children of God. They would be Morgoth's greatest Sins, abuses of his highest privilege, and would be creatures begotten of Sin, and naturally bad. (I nearly wrote 'irredeemably bad'; but that would be going too far. Because by accepting or tolerating their making – necessary to their actual existence – even Orcs would become part of the World, which is God's and ultimately good.)" (Letter 153)

"I actually intended it to be consonant with Christian thought and belief, which is asserted somewhere, Book Five, page 190,1 where Frodo asserts that the orcs are not evil in origin." (Letter 269)

What else is there to say?
I believe we have had this discussion at least once before, but for this thread's sake, let me add that while the notion of orcs being corrupted Elves may have been the idea at the time of Tolkien's writing of LotR, later theories should be given more importance here.

What the quotes tell us is that there is of course perfection, but it lies solely with the Creator (and one might say therefore in creation as a whole). Because of the gravity of the origin of orcs, which does not change with a different idea of their beginnings, they are indeed "naturally bad".
Furthermore, it is stated somewhere that orcs in fact loathed their own existance.

(From Inherent Evil)

[narfforc]

Please allow me to put a twist on this. In The Silmarillion, Tolkien writes: For the Orcs had life and multiplied after the manner of the Children of Iluvatar. This could mean Elves or Men, however it probably means Elves. So when they die what happens to their spirit, does it go to Mandos as an Elf?, for the lifeforce within is given by Eru not Melkor. Is that lifeforce then cleansed of evil by Eru, and given back what was stolen from it ie: It's true form? What would become of The Half-Orcs of Saruman or The Uruk-hai of Sauron, surely they are just another form of Peredhil, what choice are they given. In Tolkiens world there is no hell, and no-one to govern it, Morgoth has been banished, so are the spirits of those corrupted by birth, beyond help, where do they go. Morgoth, Sauron, Saruman and maybe other renegade Ainur, have been placed in the void, they chose their path, the Orcs of The Third Age did not, are all the spirits of the Orcs with Morgoth?. Someone has to fight The Dagor Dagorath, IF Tolkien is saying that by accident of birth your spirit is damned, then yes Orcs are always evil, yet nothing is born evil, not even Sauron, so say's Gandalf. Then is it Nature or Nurture. My own view is that most of the corruption was genetic, then some brain-washing. Our own recent past tells us that the indocrinated Nazi's could be re-educated, and as for what the Orcs looked like, no-one in our politically correct world, would like to tell me that looks count, would they?

[Kath]

But neither Nature or Nurture can explain why humans grow to be the way they are alone. Only by combining the two do you get a reasonable explanation, so it is likely that the same would be true for orcs.

Therefore if an orc was orphaned as a child and brought up by humans it would retain some of the innate things that make it an orc, that have been there since birth, such as the way it looks (to some extent as though that is genetic it can be affected by the environment) or how quickly it picks things up. However, things like the language it speaks, the morals it learns, those are nurture and are dependent on the family it is brought up in.

So if it were brought up in an 'evil' human family it would be 'evil, but if it were brought up in a 'good' human family it should be 'good' as well. But if things such as temper and basic knowledge of right and wrong are innate there would be times when it would appear evil.

[Eldar14]

But temperament and things of that sort are still nature. A person's entire personality is NOT based on nurture, but a lot of it is also based on nature.

For example, dogs make good pets. For hundreds of years humans carefully selected the more obediant dogs and bred them to create a race of obediant pets. Most dogs, when you feed them, would never bite your hand. Most dogs wouldn't decide to maul their owner one day.

However, if one of us were to get a newly born lion cub, and raise it exactly as we would a dog, or a wild hyena pup, we would be fools to believe that we could safely feed it, or safely take it in public with us after it grows up. They have an inherent nature for violence, and you can't nurture that out of a creature.

It is very happy and nice to believe that people and creatures aren't born with parts of their personality decided, and anyone has a chance to be whatever their parents raising them want them to be, but it's naive. Part of a person's disposition and good nature are decided before they are born, as an element of their genetics. Sometimes 'good' families raise a 'bad' child, and sometimes 'bad' families raise a 'good' child.

[Gothmog]

Eldar14 provided a good example with the dogs and lions (even if a comparison with a wolf might be closer to the elf/human vs orc relationship). But one thing is missing. There are lion cubs, or wolf cubs, that are raised by animalkeepers and I've seen lion behave like peaceful kittens. They have a inherent nature for violence, yes, but they can control it. And there are dogs that bite their owners, just like there are elves and men that turn more or less evil. Yes, elves too make stupid things that hurt their own.

I won't tell you that raising an orc baby as your own won't lead to complications. The violent nature and misery of their race is probable partly genetic, but with the right upbringing where morale and normal values are a part of their life, even orcs can be turned into something functional in the "good" society. To pick a fight with one of these orphan-orcs may not be a very good idea, but if they're kept away from things that will trigger their instincts, I think they deserve the chance.

To say that Orcs are irreversible evil and forever lost doesn't fit very well with the view of a forgiving God that most Christians have. See also the quote Son of Númenor provided; Orcs are not irredeemably bad.

Fact is nurture has such a big impact on an organism that it would be strange if an Orc couldn't adapt itself to society. Not even clones or identical twins behave identical. For example: cows with the exact same genetic material take on different roles in a group. The first cloned cat (Copy Cat ) was a copy of it's mother, but it's personality was different.

If an orpanaged orc would be happy is another question. To know what "it" is and carry with it the "misery of it's race" and inherited hate could be to much to bear...

Forth tolkiengas! orcrist wielder at your service, may your beards grow large and never fall. I think i am one of the newer posters, in fact this is my very first post reply, concerning this particular issue, i am not quite sure that there are even orcseys!! i have never read in any of the J R R works (i have not read the letters yet tough) and correct me if i am wrong or if i am missing something important, that orcs have "childhood". Of course it is obvious to imagine that the must be younger at some point of their lives, but nothing that can be compared to a "childhood" i think. and there is no quote that i know of that might create that impression... i dont know maybe they are created and breeded by artcrafts, because as far as i can recall, it is in very short periods of time that both sauron and saruman "amassed" a very large army wich makes me think that they must be using some kind of dark and malicious power to rise so many orcs (should it be uruk-hai or regular orcs ) in a not-large ammount of time, therefore i dont really think there is enough time to "breed" an orc just like you would rise a human being or an elf or a fellow dwarf. If were are all just speculating, then i would agree with most of you, in the fact that a little orc can be rised i a way or another, depending of whom is to raise that little orc (burarrum), but i do agree with the perspective that no matter how "well" raised is that orc, there always will be a little part of him that will be "evil" inherent and as a part of him...
Greetings.

[Kath]

Ooh orcrist wielder may have a good point. We're assuming there are orc children. As far as we know they may not. We know they are corrupted Elves or a mixture of elves and goblin men. Perhaps this would be impossible.

But, that is perhaps a matter for a different thread.

[Eomer of the Rohirrim]

A topic oft spoken about. Try the search function if you want to know more about Goblin kids.

Gollum used to eat them, remember.