What did they think?

[LadyBrooke]

Originally Posted by Inziladun

As for the "maker" of Orcs, The Silmarillion seems to make it clear that they were the design of Morgoth.

To clarify - the question I was trying to answer was not who made the Orcs - Morgoth is of course the one who did, but rather I interpreted the original question as asking would Sauron have been opposed or unwilling to make servants of his own, if Morgoth had not already made them, which was what I was getting at with the Nazgul - clearly, Sauron has no problem creating his own servants.

Originally Posted by Galadriel55

TSo indeed the making of the Dwarves cannot be compared to the making of the Orcs. Aule a) made his own creation and b) gave it up for Eru. Melkor a) marred Elves and b) did the most hateful deed to Eru (there's also a quote about this but I can't find it).

Well, technically, compared means to note both similarities and differences between things...so, they can be compared. They're not the exact same thing of course, but then again, what is in this mythology. The thing I was driving at, is that both of them wanted something of their own. The difference, of course, lies in how they handled it when confronted with their crime, and what they made them out of. However, they both rebel against Eru, but Aule repents.

And what is a creation? Could the orcs not be called creations of Morgoth, as he did in fact create them from elves? Whether the original material is elves or whatever Aule made his out of, the end result is a new race. Of course, that's not even considering the fact that Tolkien never made up his mind about how the orcs came into being - in the earliest myths, in BoLT, they're made from stone and slime. At various other places, they're bred from animals (Morgoth's Ring), men, maiar....