Origins of the Great Goblin

[Galin]

I also think the old idea was in place when Tolkien wrote the chapter Treebeard [Orcs were made in mockery of Elves, but made by Morgoth out of stone and 'hatred' rather, not from Elves].


I can't date [precisely] when Tolkien penned Frodo's comments however [from The Land of Shadow IIRC], which seem to represent the major shift in thinking -- but when Tolkien returned to The Annals of Aman in the early 1950s, as first written the old concept was still in place. Then, and still in this phase of writing, comes the darker tale told in Eressea noted by Pengolodh [Orcs from Elves], but The Lord of the Rings -- the main story -- had already been written by this time.

As Troelsfo noted. Hello!

Tolkien's latest texts, after going over a number of variations when Orcs from Elves didn't seem to work well enough for him [although he still considered this], are about Orcs created from Men, with an adjusted chronology. This is text X, Morgoth's Ring. Christopher Tolkien will then mention two later notes which might only possibly raise the question as to whether or not Tolkien was once again changing his mind and moving away from Orcs created from Men -- these two later notes do not actually deny the main conception described in Text X however -- one note, for example, concerns only the point that JRRT spelled the word orks instead of orcs; and this may mean nothing more than a change in spelling rather than reflect another change in conception.

And in any case, an equally late note [to The Druedain, Unfinished Tales] once again has Elves stating that Morgoth made Orcs from various kinds of Men.

Well Troelsfo noted most of this anyway, but yes, so far I would agree that the old concept was in place during the writing of The Lord of the Rings, with Frodo's comments seemingly pointing to a change of mind at one stage -- possibly a change of mind again for the Annals -- or maybe Tolkien simply first 'updated' what was already there, without really giving too much thought...

... to updating

[Troelsfo]

Originally Posted by Galin

I also think the old idea was in place when Tolkien wrote the chapter Treebeard [Orcs were made in mockery of Elves, but made by Morgoth out of stone and 'hatred' rather, not from Elves].

Thank you, Galin (Hello!). One thing that I omitted in the earlier account is the influence of the McDonaldesque goblins of The Hobbit — when he began The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien would at some point have had to face the incongruities between the orcs/goblins of the earlier mythology and the goblins of The Hobbit — no matter how far we stretch things, I cannot see the the early Orcs as neither singing nor innovating (even innovating machines of war and torture). The later view of the Orcs bring them much better into line with the published goblins in The Hobbit.

Originally Posted by Galin

I can't date [precisely] when Tolkien penned Frodo's comments however [from The Land of Shadow IIRC], which seem to represent the major shift in thinking

That statement (“The Shadow that bred them can only mock, it cannot make: not real new things of its own.”) is in ‘The Tower of Cirith Ungol’ about which Christopher Tolkien notes that his “father returned to the story of Frodo and Sam more than three years after he had ‘got the hero into such a fix’ (as he said in a letter of November 1944, VIII.218) ‘that not even an author will be able to extricate him without labour and difficulty.’” (Sauron Defeated (HoMe 9), part 1 ch. II, p.18). In their J.R.R. Tolkien Companion and Guide: Chronology, Christina Scull and Wayne Hammond explain, under the entry for 14 August — 14 September 1948, that Tolkien in period used his son Michael's farm in Woodcote as a retreat while Michael and family were on holiday, and that he there

makes two drafts for ‘The Tower of Kirith [later Cirith] Ungol’ (bk. VI, ch. 1 as published). He soon abandons the first, [...]; he makes significant changes and additions in the second, which as he proceeds becomes rough and in places only an outline. He then writes a fair copy, [...], which reaches to the end of the chapter. [...]. At some point he makes a second fair copy manuscript, and places with it the page from the first draft with the drawing of the Tower [...]

Minor details have been cut by me (‘[...]’)
Frodo's statement enters at the earliest in the first fair copy manuscript, denoted D in Christopher Tolkien's explanations in Sauron Defeated.

So all in all we can say within a week or so when precisely Tolkien made that statement: during his stay at Payables Farm in Woodcote, he would continue through to the abandoned epilogue, so I think it is a fair guess that he would have finished drafting ‘The Tower of Cirith Ungol’ during the first week of his stay.

Originally Posted by Galin

but when Tolkien returned to The Annals of Aman in the early 1950s, as first written the old concept was still in place. Then, and still in this phase of writing, comes the darker tale told in Eressea noted by Pengolodh [Orcs from Elves], but The Lord of the Rings -- the main story -- had already been written by this time.

I had completely forgotten about this in The Annals of Aman, thank you! Christopher Tolkien's comment to §127 of The Annals of Aman is quite lucid despite the additional complications brought about by Tolkien's shifting about of the timing of Morgoth's creation of the Orcs (in the last pre-LotR version of the Quenta Silmarillion, denoted the ‘QS’ in the History of Middle-earth series, Morgoth “brought into being the race of the Orcs” in mockery of the Elves after the Darkening of Valinor and his return to Middle-earth).

Originally Posted by Galin

Tolkien's latest texts, after going over a number of variations when Orcs from Elves didn't seem to work well enough for him [although he still considered this], are about Orcs created from Men, with an adjusted chronology. This is text X, Morgoth's Ring.

Aye — there are three texts on Orcs, VIII through X, and they are very much worth reading, particularly (at least in my opinion) for the philosophical deliberations. This, along with some other contemporary texts — particularly the Athrabeth Finrod ah Andreth, show what Christopher Tolkien means when, in the foreword to The Silmarillion, he writes that in his father's later writings “mythology and poetry sank down behind his theological and philosophical preoccupations: from which arose incompatibilities of tone.” But that's an aside ... well, perhaps it is still tangentially connected, as the basic interest and intention is now completely different: Tolkien is now no longer preoccupied with the creation of mythology, but rather with theology and philosophy, making his mythology “the vehicle and depository of his profoundest reflections.” We are, in other words, trying to use writings to answer one type of question, while Tolkien wrote these things in an attempt to answer some fundamentally different questions, and his answers may well be incommensurable to the questions we are asking.

[Galin]

Originally Posted by Troelsfo

That statement (“The Shadow that bred them can only mock, it cannot make: not real new things of its own.”) is in ‘The Tower of Cirith Ungol’...

Ah thank you Troelsfo. I mixed things up there [I think I mixed up The Land of Shadow with another quote in which the term Uru-hai is mentioned, but that's a different ball of twine]. Anyway you are correct, that's the statement I meant [Frodo's statement] and where it can be found.

... about which Christopher Tolkien notes that his “father returned to the story of Frodo and Sam more than three years after he had ‘got the hero into such a fix’ (as he said in a letter of November 1944, VIII.218) ‘that not even an author will be able to extricate him without labour and difficulty.’” (Sauron Defeated (HoMe 9), part 1 ch. II, p.18). In their J.R.R. Tolkien Companion and Guide: Chronology, Christina Scull and Wayne Hammond explain, under the entry for 14 August — 14 September 1948, that Tolkien in period used his son Michael's farm in Woodcote as a retreat while Michael and family were on holiday, and that he there Minor details have been cut by me (‘[...]’)
Frodo's statement enters at the earliest in the first fair copy manuscript, denoted D in Christopher Tolkien's explanations in Sauron Defeated.

So all in all we can say within a week or so when precisely Tolkien made that statement: during his stay at Payables Farm in Woodcote, he would continue through to the abandoned epilogue, so I think it is a fair guess that he would have finished drafting ‘The Tower of Cirith Ungol’ during the first week of his stay.

Good digging! I'm perhaps wrong -- or didn't dig deep enough myself -- but I have a vague memory of not finding Frodo's statement in any of the draft texts represented in HME, so that while one could date the writing of this chapter with some certainty, does it remain possible that this statement [specifically] was a later addition at some unknown point?

I don't have Sauron Defeated at hand at the moment, but when you write: '... Frodo's statement enters at the earliest in the first fair copy manuscript, denoted D in Christopher Tolkien's explanations in Sauron Defeated.'

... does this rule out that it entered later? I'm just wondering if we could possibly have a scenario like:

A) Tolkien writes out the chapter but it doesn't yet include this statement [old idea still in place]

B) Tolkien begins new version of the Annals [Annals of Aman] [old idea still in place]

C) Darker tale from Eressea enters in revision to the Annals of Aman [Orcs thought to be from Elves]

D) At some point before the main story of The Return of the King goes to print, Tolkien adds Frodo's statement to this chapter.


That would seem [to me] a bit more 'tidy' as far as the external chronology goes, in conjunction with this change in thinking... but again I'm not sure it's possible and may be missing something.

[Troelsfo]

Originally Posted by Galin

Good digging! I'm perhaps wrong -- or didn't dig deep enough myself -- but I have a vague memory of not finding Frodo's statement in any of the draft texts represented in HME,

You're right, the statement is not there expressly.

Originally Posted by Galin

I don't have Sauron Defeated at hand at the moment, but when you write: '... Frodo's statement enters at the earliest in the first fair copy manuscript, denoted D in Christopher Tolkien's explanations in Sauron Defeated.'

... does this rule out that it entered later?

I suppose it doesn't rule it out explicitly, but I would say that it does rule it out implicitly.

Christopher Tolkien writes

Originally Posted by Sauron Defeated, p.26

From ‘“That's done it!” said Sam. “Now I've rung the front-door bell!”’ a draft text ('C') takes up. This is written in a script so difficult that a good deal of it would be barely comprehensible had it not been closely followed in the fair copy D.[12] The final story was now reached, and there is little to record of these texts.

and notes in note 12 that

Originally Posted by Sauron Defeated, p.30

The very rough draft C stops near the beginning of Sam's conversation with Frodo in the topmost chamber (RK p. 187), and from that point there are only isolated passages of drafting extant; but the latter part of D was much corrected in the act of writing, and was probably now to a large extent the primary composition.

After this, Christopher Tolkien goes on to note differences between texts C, D, the later fair copy E, and the final text without noting anything about Frodo's statement despite the focus he has given throughout the whole of The History of Middle-earth series to the matter of the origin of the Orcs, then I think it is reasonable to assume that if this statement had not been present in D when “the final story was [...] reached”, then he would have noted this.

Actually I am a little surprised that he doesn't note this point at all — I would have expected him to comment on this point, though at that point he might have had other things on his mind Still, if this statement not been present in text D, then I am certain that this would have been noted.

<snipping suggested chronology>

Originally Posted by Galin

That would seem [to me] a bit more 'tidy' as far as the external chronology goes, in conjunction with this change in thinking... but again I'm not sure it's possible and may be missing something.

I agree that it would be more tidy, and would have to acknowledge that the presentation in Sauron Defeated cannot entirely rule this out, though I think the odds are not in favour of it (the whole episode about Cirith Ungol, including the earlier discussions between Shagrat and Gorbag, seems to me to suggest this newer view — I can hardly imagine the earlier Orcs, created in mockery of the Elves by Morgoth from stone, having the kind of discussion that we are, through Sam, allowed to witness between these two captains. The evolutions of Tolkien's legendarium is, unfortunately, quite often not tidy — take the issue of the round vs. the flat world versions of the cosmogonic myth: we know that Tolkien was playing with both ideas during the time he wrote LotR and we can see traces of both in the text (the round-world version is best seen in e.g. Gimli's song about Durin in Moria: “No stain yet on the Moon was seen, / [...] / When Durin woke and walked alone.” Durin awoke in the First Age long before the rising of the Moon and the Sun according to the flat-world version).

[Zigûr]

Does anyone have any personal theories on how Professor Tolkien could have reconciled the origins of Orcs with the metaphysics of the story? Something he might have overlooked? While I think the "corrupted Elves" idea is an elegant one, I do agree that the question of how Morgoth could make their condition inheritable and why Eru would continue to endow them with fëar is problematic. That being said I was never entirely convinced that turning them into corrupted Men was necessarily the best alternative, because it always seemed to me that Men didn't need to be corrupted in the same way as Elves might to become Orcs - that they already Fell further and had a greater vulnerability to Evil without the need for them to be subjected to torments and experimentation.

It's the same as the Sun and Moon origin and Round vs Flat First/Second Age World conundrums I think - the earlier, more mythological stories are so poetic that it's a shame they started to jar so much with the Professor's desire for Arda to seem like a realistic place.

In that regard as a reflection of Professor Tolkien's philosophical ruminations perhaps a definitive origin of Orcs is best left ambiguous - it would certainly emphasise that suggestion in the aforementioned Letter 153 of "Orcism" as a state of character or behaviour being a persistent degeneracy among people in the present day; that the hatefulness and moral decrepitude of the monstrous soldiers of the ancient past are almost a standard of normalcy in the "grey and leafless world" of modern times.

[Galin]

Thanks Troelsfo; and after reading your citations above I agree with your conclusions.

I also think it a little odd that Christopher Tolkien did not note this statement with respect to the larger issue of the origin of orcs [if I recall correctly he did not refer to it in the Annals of Aman commentary either], but there is a lot going on in HME of course, and CJRT is pretty comprehensive in general regarding the orc issue.

Anyway, great digging!

[Nerwen]

Originally Posted by Zigur

Does anyone have any personal theories on how Professor Tolkien could have reconciled the origins of Orcs with the metaphysics of the story? Something he might have overlooked?

Not really. I mean, he played with just about every conceivable variant and I don't think any of them work on the level he wanted– substituting Men for Elves, for example, doesn't actually solve any of the metaphysical difficulties either, making them beasts "reeling off records" seems hopelessly strained, etc.

However. All this arises only because Tolkien was, by then, struggling to make his work consistent with a philosophical framework that wasn't necessarily in place when he actually wrote it. "In-story" there isn't a problem, because, as usual, the "translator conceit" means he doesn't have to provide the reader with a final, definitive answer.