Origins of the Great Goblin

[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.

[Aganzir]

Originally Posted by Rumil

In one of the earlier texts there's reference to Boldogs, who appear to be sort of minor spirits and followers of Morgoth. IIRC they were interbred with orcs. Perhaps the Great Goblin was one in whom the Boldog ancestry 'ran true' to some extent?

I seem to remember something like this was suggested in Myths Transformed, or at least that's how I see the Great Goblin.

Also I can't remember if it was Rumil or somebody else that I repped and told that in Hungarian, boldog means happy, but in any case, you all need to know it because it's seriously the funniest thing ever.

Originally Posted by Inziladun

I see no reason to think Morgoth would have been different. The Silmarillion says more than once that the Fire is with Ilúvatar, and that Fire (of creation) cannot thus be used by any other. If Morgoth were able to truly create his own incarnate creatures, would he not then be the equal of Eru?

This is either something I've cobbled together from a fairly canonical source (as in HoME, as opposed to Wikipedia) or something Lommy or some other Downer has said to me, but I've got this notion that Melkor could, in a way, bring things to life by giving up some of his own essence and weakening himself (which Ilúvatar didn't do). On the one hand I think orcs are mere beasts, on the other, I see them as some kind of Incarnates. I can't imagine them as having fëar given to them by Ilúvatar, though.

As for CaptainFaramir's original question, the idea is funny but what is maybe the biggest factor against it is the Great Goblin's age. He would have to be thousands of years old to be Salgant, and given the orcish lifestyle, I don't see he could have survived that long.

[Nerwen]

Originally Posted by Aganzir

I seem to remember something like this was suggested in Myths Transformed, or at least that's how I see the Great Goblin.

That's rather complicated. "Boldog" is the name of an orc in the "Lays of Beleriand". At this point it is pretty clearly a personal name.

Later, though, in "Morgoth's Ring", the Maia--Orc concept appears: first in some notes on Orc origin ("Myths Transformed" VIII) in which Tolkien is more-or-less "thinking aloud", trying out different possibilities to see if they work. At this point, at least as a sole origin, he seems to reject it, but then Maia-Orcs show up again in two more texts (IX and X), now as special, "greater" Orcs (rather than being their main source). In X, we find the following:

Those whose business it was to direct the Orcs often took Orkish shapes, though they were greater and more terrible. Thus it was that the histories speak of Great Ones or Orc-Captains who were not slain, and who reappeared in battle through years far longer than the span of the lives of Men. [footnote] Boldog, for instance, is a name that occurs many times in the course of the War. But it is possible that Boldog was not a personal name, and either a title, or else the name of a kind of creature: the Orc-formed Maiar, only less formidable than the Balrogs.

Which neatly illustrates the whole canonicity problem. Can we really take that tentative "it is possible... or else..." and say, "yes, yes, there was a kind of creature in Middle-earth called a 'Boldog'"?

Originally Posted by Aganzir

This is either something I've cobbled together from a fairly canonical source (as in HoME, as opposed to Wikipedia) or something Lommy or some other Downer has said to me, but I've got this notion that Melkor could, in a way, bring things to life by giving up some of his own essence and weakening himself (which Ilúvatar didn't do). On the one hand I think orcs are mere beasts, on the other, I see them as some kind of Incarnates. I can't imagine them as having fëar given to them by Ilúvatar, though.

What does become fairly consistent in Tolkien's later writing is that he sees Orcs as corruptions of beings that already existed, and mostly he favours these beings having been rational creatures, i.e. Elves and/or Men– but yes, the problem of their fëar bugged him no end.

By the way, Troelsfo:

Originally Posted by Troelsfo

Not according to the laws as described later, according to which the Orcs should always be spared if they surrendered:
Quote:
But even before this wickedness of Morgoth 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. They might have become irredeemable (at least by Elves and Men), but they remained within the Law. That is, that though of necessity, being the fingers of the hand of Morgoth, they must be fought with the utmost severity, they must not be dealt with in their own terms of cruelty and treachery. Captives must not be tormented, not even to discover information for the defence of the homes of Elves and Men. If any Orcs surrendered and asked for mercy, they must be granted it, even at a cost.

But the next line is: "This was the teaching of the Wise, though in the horror of the War it was not always heeded". And there is a footnote to the effect that Orcs rarely surrendered anyway.

This is all really a quibble, as there is other evidence Tolkien had not yet come up with the "corrupted Eruhíni" idea at the stage under discussion. I'm just saying, as a matter of principle, that I don't think you can argue from "the laws as described later" without noting that it also says those laws weren't necessarily followed.

And I do agree with your basic, original point: it is just not possible to reconcile all Tolkien's various writings on Orcs without creating "some hybrid that is far from anything Tolkien ever imagined".

[Zigûr]

Originally Posted by Aganzir

This is either something I've cobbled together from a fairly canonical source (as in HoME, as opposed to Wikipedia) or something Lommy or some other Downer has said to me, but I've got this notion that Melkor could, in a way, bring things to life by giving up some of his own essence and weakening himself (which Ilúvatar didn't do). On the one hand I think orcs are mere beasts, on the other, I see them as some kind of Incarnates. I can't imagine them as having fëar given to them by Ilúvatar, though.

This thought has occurred to me as well. We know that Melkor spent vast amounts of his strength on his armies at the expense of his own personal potency, but in what way? According to Morgoth's Ring controlling the Orcs and other creatures gradually eroded Morgoth's power; I take it that in that sense the exercise of will diminished the fëa. Otherwise I would suggest that perhaps Orcs achieved the semblance of will because each of their fëar was a sliver of Melkor's own. I'm not sure that's a very satisfying notion either, though, of thousands of miniature Morgoths running around.

Personally I think that the Orc-scenes in The Lord of the Rings, especially the conversation of Gorbag and Shagrat, are so much less intriguing if they're not rational incarnates, because I think it's important that at some level Orcs are not altogether different from Men and Elves. I think that's why I prefer the "corrupted Eruhíni" explanation. Perhaps it could have been considered that Orcs having fëar was incorporated into The Plan by Eru because at the end of they day they were still his children, no matter how corrupted. Asking how they were permitted to exist seems no more difficult a question than why he permitted Melkor to continue existing after his fall, or Sauron, or virtually anyone else who was evil in Arda; it would all be incorporated into the greater whole.