The Unnatural History of Tolkien’s Orcs

By Tyel­las — Edi­to­rial ack­now­led­ge­ments to Aaye­sha, Nekron’s Love­song, and Sharka

An over­view of the Middle-Earth facts about the orcs envi­sio­ned by J.R.R. Tol­kien, from their quo­ti­dian side (what they eat, how they repro­duce) to more exis­ten­tial issues of orcs in the Middle-Earth cos­mo­logy.

“There are elves, dwarves, trolls, dra­gons, princes and prin­cesses, wizards and, inevi­ta­bly, those most mali­gned of fic­tio­nal crea­tures, orcs, the des­pi­sed pro­le­ta­riat of conser­va­tive fan­tasy….”

The Socia­list Review ¹

“They Know What An Orc Is”

This essay exa­mines Tolkien’s orcs as Tol­kien would have them. Before this, it is impor­tant to dis­tin­guish bet­ween Tolkien’s orcs and their wider adap­ta­tion in fan­tasy wri­ting.

The fic­tion writ­ten by J.R.R. Tol­kien has had a huge influence on the genre of fan­tasy wri­ting. The cha­rac­ter arche­types and plot devices Tol­kien used in his main novel, The Lord of the Rings, have been adap­ted by dozens of other fan­ta­sists, in more or less crea­tive ways. Of Tolkien’s Middle-Earth concepts, the idea of orcs stands out as being fre­quently adap­ted with mini­mal change. ² This has rea­ched the point where a fan­tasy critic, Terence Casey, has stated in advice to aspi­ring fan­tasy wri­ters :

“Someone who’s fami­liar with fan­tasy isn’t gene­rally going to have a pro­blem with « orcs » being in a novel or game — they know what an orc is and are used to it. If you start making up your own mons­ters ins­tead of dra­wing from « gene­ric fan­tasy », howe­ver, the mere new­ness of them can make it harder for people to sus­pend their dis­be­lief.” ³

This sta­te­ment is stun­ning because Tol­kien, in the crea­tion of orcs, was very lite­rally making up his own mons­ters. Tol­kien also used the concepts of elves, hob­bits, dwarves, and medie­val-type king­doms in crea­ting his Middle-Earth. Howe­ver, all of those concepts, or their sym­bo­lic equi­va­lents, were stron­gly esta­bli­shed in Euro­pean myth and fan­tasy wri­ting before Tol­kien began his own works. There was no exact equi­va­lent to the orcs. ⁴ Euro­pean folk­lore has small crea­tures of evil – bogies, tom­myk­no­ckers, goblins – and fear­some mons­ters, from Gren­del as com­me­mo­ra­ted in Beo­wulf to the evil ele­men­tals of Celtic tra­di­tion. ⁵ But there was no faerie or super­na­tu­ral evil that was the paral­lel of human war­riors, which faced them as equals and was sent out to mow them down.

Tol­kien needed to create his par­ti­cu­lar mons­ters, and their new­ness had a pur­pose. Long-term Tol­kien scho­lar Tom Ship­pey has said of Tolkien’s orcs, ​“There can be little doubt that orcs ente­red Middle-Earth ori­gi­nally just because the story needed a conti­nual supply of ene­mies over whom one need feel no com­punc­tion.” ⁶ Hence, for the pur­poses of his own nar­ra­tives, Tol­kien com­bi­ned items from then- obs­cure folk­lore with more modern concepts of vio­lence and evil to concoct orcs. Heroes were more heroic with orcs to slay ; with orcs at their bid­ding, higher-caste vil­lains were more fear­some. For these pur­poses, orcs were a suc­cess­ful nar­ra­tive device – and one not seen pre­viously in fan­tasy wri­ting.

Orcs were more than a good idea. There was autho­rial work requi­red to set the stage for this new crea­tion, espe­cially to do so in a way that helped the reader sup­port the concept. ⁷ Tol­kien did this so well that, in the pro­cess, he crea­ted a new arche­type that became popu­lar. It is dis­tur­bing to think that there was a gap in ima­gi­na­tion and myth for what the orcs represent, but their popu­la­rity shows that this has indeed been the case.

Orc Evolution in Middle-Earth

We all know what an orc is – but, just to be sure, what are orcs in Middle-Earth ? They are bipe­dal sapient beings that serve evil. Tol­kien noted in one of his let­ters ⁸ that he had adap­ted the word orc from the Old English word orc, which means ​“demon,” using this term ​“only because of its pho­ne­tic sui­ta­bi­lity.” In this same letter he notes that orcs ​“owe a good deal to the goblin tra­di­tion, espe­cially as it appears in George Mac­Do­nald. ⁹”

In fur­ther cor­res­pon­dence, Tol­kien notes how the goblin idea became blen­ded with a more modern concept ; that of the evil inherent in human beings. In cor­res­pon­dence in Tolkien’s publi­shed Let­ters, he com­pares evil or small-minded humans to orcs mul­tiple times, in let­ters 66, 71, and 78 – all in the context of mili­tary ser­vice. It is neatly phra­sed in letter 153, where Tol­kien says, as part of a longer point, ​“Orcs – who are fun­da­men­tally a race of ​“ratio­nal incar­nate” crea­tures, though hor­ri­bly cor­rup­ted, if no more so than many Men to be met today.”

Orc ori­gins in Middle-Earth cos­mo­logy are des­cri­bed in The Sil­ma­ril­lion. Mor­goth, a power­ful, self-ser­ving Vala (god-equi­va­lent) fallen into evil, cap­tu­red some Elves (Quendi) early in the exis­tence of their race.

“Yet this is held true by the wise of Eressëa, that all those of the Quendi who came into the hands of Melkor [later Morgoth]…by slow arts of cruelty were cor­rup­ted and ensla­ved ; and thus did Melkor breed the race of the orcs, in envy and mockery of the Elves, of whom they were after­wards the bit­te­rest foes.” ¹⁰

This idea is tidy and stron­gly appea­ling with its paral­lel of beau­ti­ful elves directly linked to ugly orcs. None­the­less, in his own varied wri­ting about orcs, Tol­kien vacilla­ted bet­ween this concept of orcs-from-elves and a rela­ted concept of orcs- from-men. ¹¹ He even toyed with the idea that orcs were cun­ning ani­mals, lacking the spi­ri­tual ele­ment of sapient beings, or with the concept that orcs were Maiar (divine spi­rits) ser­ving Mor­goth who had been cor­rup­ted into orc-form. Both the orcs-from-men and orcs-as-beasts concepts seem to come from Tolkien’s per­so­nal reluc­tance to taint elves, his ​“ideal” race. Howe­ver, he kept being drawn back to the idea of orcs-from-elves in mul­tiple drafts of his own orc essay, writ­ten through 1959 and 1960, and he ack­now­ledges that orcs-from-elves was the most wor­kable origin for the Middle-Earth time­line he desi­red. ¹²

Chris­to­pher Tol­kien, edi­ting The Sil­ma­ril­lion after J.R.R. Tolkien’s death, opted for the orcs-from-elves origin. Yet this is not the end of orcish over­lap with other races. In Lord of the Rings (LOTR), Tol­kien pre­sents us with orcs inter­bred with humans. It is never abso­lu­tely stated in LOTR that the Uruk-Hai, who can endure the sun better than regu­lar orcs, are partly human. This is power­fully sug­ges­ted in dia­logue given to the Ent Tree­beard.

“It is a mark of evil things that came in the Great Dark­ness that they cannot abide the Sun, but Saruman’s Orcs can endure it, even if they hate it. I wonder what he has done ? Are they Men he has ruined, or has he blen­ded the races of Orcs and Men ? That would be a black evil!” ¹³

And it is confir­med out­side the novel in a sepa­rate quote from Tolkien’s later wri­tings :

« Men could under the domi­na­tion of Mor­goth or his agents in a few gene­ra­tions be redu­ced almost to orc level and then they would or could be made to mate with orcs pro­du­cing new breeds more large and cun­ning. There is no doubt that long after­wards, in the third age, Saru­man redis­co­ve­red this or lear­ned of it in lore, and in his lust for mas­tery com­mit­ted this, his wicke­dest deed : the inter­bree­ding of men and orcs. » ¹⁴

The impor­tant idea is that Orcs are not an ori­gi­nal life form. Orcs are a pre­vious life form that was cor­rup­ted. Their will is inex­tri­ca­bly bound to that of Middle- Earth’s prime evil powers – first that of Melkor, later known as Mor­goth, then that of Sauron. ¹⁵

Life As An Orc

Though Tol­kien did not care to let his ima­gi­na­tion linger among the Orcs, he did note the basic ​“facts of life” about them to make them a solid, belie­vable part of Middle-Earth. Tol­kien pro­vides the reader with this infor­ma­tion through the point of view of his most sym­pa­the­tic pro­ta­go­nists ; elvish his­to­rians, and hob­bits.

The lack of orc lan­guage is one proof that Tol­kien, who expan­ded the details of Middle-Earth to sup­port his hobby of crea­ting lan­guages, was not ima­gi­na­ti­vely enga­ged with them. ​“It is said that they had no lan­guage of their own, but took what they could of other tongues and per­ver­ted it to their own liking, yet they made only brutal jar­gons, scar­cely suf­fi­cient even for their own needs, unless it were for curses and abuse…” ¹⁶ As a result, the Orcs used the common Wes­tron lan­guage of Middle-Earth for inter-tribe com­mu­ni­ca­tion, and there is a dis­tinc­tive orcish voice in their dia­logue. Sauron crea­ted the Black Speech to be the lan­guage of all his ser­vants ¹⁷ as a sort of Espe­ranto of evil, and, like Espe­ranto, it never achie­ved its goal. Some words of it were used by orcs, incon­sis­tently, espe­cially among the orcs of Mordor. Having noted the basic concept of the Black Speech, Tol­kien crea­ted only mini­mal notes about its voca­bu­lary. ¹⁸

Orcs were far from invul­ne­rable ; they were sub­ject to disease, they could die, they were not immor­tal, and they ​“needed food and drink, and rest.” [^19] Orcish food, though unap­pe­ti­zing as a rule, can be eaten by other people – a star­ving hero, Tuor, hun­gers when he sees orcs roas­ting meat (“even the meat of orcs would be a prize”). ¹⁹ In the hands of the Uruk-Hai, Merry and Pippin are fed orcish bread. ²⁰ Later orcs who take Frodo cap­tive both raid Frodo’s food supply and feed him, though they spe­ci­fi­cally dis­dain the elvish way­bread, lembas. ²¹ Orcs also eat horses, ponies and don­keys, ²² and, most famously, man-flesh. ²³ Pippin refuses to eat a piece of dried meat an orc gives him, ​“the meat of he knew not what crea­ture.” Sur­pri­sin­gly, there are no canon refe­rences to orcs eating other orcs, though pre­su­ma­bly the food chain in Moria had to go around some­how. Orcs were afraid that Elves would torment and eat their orcish cap­tives, though Elves did not engage in either acti­vity. ²⁴

In the books, orcs repro­duce as humans, hob­bits, dwarves and elves do ; through sex lea­ding to pre­gnancy and child­bea­ring. Tol­kien des­cribes this dis­creetly as ​“embo­died pro­crea­tion” and refers repea­tedly to orcs being ​‘bred’. ²⁵ They are even refer­red to as ​“bree­ding qui­ckly” and ​“mul­ti­plied like flies,” terms that evoke ani­mals. ²⁶ As noted pre­viously, orcs can and did inter­breed with mortal humans. Des­pite these constant refe­rences to orc bree­ding, Tol­kien never pre­sents us with an orc cha­rac­ter iden­ti­fied as female.

Tol­kien is silent about a ques­tion some rea­ders have : do orcs rape ? This seems com­ple­tely typi­cal of orcish evil, of which Tol­kien says, ​“They were indeed so cor­rup­ted that they were piti­less, and there was no cruelty or wicked­ness that they would not commit…they took plea­sure in their deeds. They were capable of acting on their own, doing evil deeds unbid­den for their own sport.” ²⁷ But Tol­kien never directly assi­gns this par­ti­cu­lar vio­lence to them. The ter­rible ques­tion of orcs inter­bree­ding with Elves seems cir­cum­ven­ted by Tolkien’s sta­te­ment that Elves die when raped, ²⁸ and by Tol­kien being too tas­te­ful to pos­tu­late a situa­tion where an Elf volun­ta­rily has sex with an orc. This may be an aspect of why the crea­tion of orcs was Morgoth’s ​“grea­test evil.” ²⁹ There is also a sinis­ter under­tone to orcs taking elf-women cap­tive ³⁰ and the orcs’ cap­ture and torment of the elf-lady Cele­brían. ³¹ And Saruman’s bree­ding pro­gram bet­ween mor­tals and orcs had to begin somew­here.

Tol­kien says nothing about orcish child­hood or upbrin­ging. Tol­kien likes chil­dren, as noted in his quotes about hobbit chil­dren and elf chil­dren. ³² This may be the reason for his silence about the pro­bable misery of orcish child­hood.

Both LOTR and The Sil­ma­ril­lion lack des­crip­tions of orcish appea­rance – Tol­kien pro­vides more des­crip­tion in LOTR of how orcs smell than of how orcs look. In Return of the King (ROTK), there is one stri­king scene with two orcs of dif­ferent size, a small tra­cking orc with black skin and a snuf­fling nose wor­king along­side a large war­rior orc. ³³ Tol­kien did pro­vide a des­crip­tion of how he pic­tu­red orcs.

Iro­ni­cally, he wrote this in a letter cri­ti­ci­sing a pro­po­sed movie treat­ment of his works :

“The Orcs are defi­ni­tely stated to be cor­rup­tions of the ​‘human’ form seen in Elves and Men. They are (or were) squat, broad, flat-nosed, sallow-skin­ned, with wide mouths and slant eyes ; in fact, degra­ded and repul­sive ver­sions of the (to Euro­peans) least lovely Mongol types.” ³⁴

The out-of-date racial ste­reo­ty­ping in this sta­te­ment is regret­table. In Tolkien’s more focu­sed orc/​human com­pa­ri­sons in cor­res­pon­dence, Tol­kien com­pares Axis mem­bers in WWII and even evil English­men ³⁵ to Orcs. In the recent LOTR films, the spe­cial effects inter­pre­ta­tions of the orcs are more racially neu­tral than Tolkien’s des­crip­tion, using a palette of grey, pat­ched, or der­ma­to­lo­gi­cally ble­mi­shed skin.

Apart from pillage and plun­der, orcs had a crea­tive streak ; a slimy, poi­so­nous crea­tive streak. A pas­sage in The Hobbit des­cribes the nature of orcish crea­ti­vity : ​“They make no beau­ti­ful things, but they make many clever ones…Hammers, axes, swords, dag­gers, pickaxes, tongs, and other ins­tru­ments of tor­ture, they make very well, or get other people to make to their design.” ³⁶

Orcish plea­sures are few, apart from the amu­se­ment they derive from cruelty. In a pos­sible hol­do­ver from their elvish ori­gins, they do chant and sing. ³⁷

Amongst them­selves, orcs are capable of rough friend­ships and clan alliances, though these fra­gile and likely to fall apart if they get angry enough. This is illus­tra­ted with Ugluk in The Two Towers, an Uruk-Hai who returns to a band he has quar­rel­led with for the sake of ​“some good fel­lows”, and with two orcs, Sha­grat and Gorbag, plot­ting to leave Mordor some day with a few ​“trusty lads”. Orcs hate Elves with a pas­sion. They have a spe­cial term of contempt and fear for Nume­no­réan mor­tals, ​“tark.” Orcs do have some allies. They were known to make alliances with other mortal Men, nota­bly Eas­ter­lings. ³⁸ Ano­ther pos­sible hol­do­ver from Elves, who com­mu­ni­cate with ​‘good beasts” is the orcs’ occa­sio­nal alliance with non-good beasts, namely wolves, ³⁹ and with the wolf-like wargs. ⁴⁰

The Evil That Orcs Do

Because Tol­kien never gives us the nar­ra­tive pers­pec­tive of orcs, we expe­rience orcs in Middle-Earth through their deeds as seen by others. The Orcs are never pre­sen­ted as sym­pa­the­tic, or kind, or wishing to be free from evil (though they do wish to be free from their mas­ters). An orc’s appea­rance is a cause for fear and an imme­diate pre­cur­sor of vio­lence. At times, an evil orcish deed serves a good pur­pose – at seve­ral points in the LOTR story, orcs figh­ting amongst them­selves pro­vide the hobbit cha­rac­ters with chances for defiance or escape – but no orc is ever deli­be­ra­tely help­ful. In ins­tances where orcs restrain them­selves from tor­men­ting cap­tives, they are noted as doing so under com­mand, in fear of a grea­ter evil than them­selves.

The nature of orcish evil changes to suit the story that Tol­kien is tel­ling. Orcs fea­ture in each of Tolkien’s three novels : The Hobbit, Lord of the Rings, and The Sil­ma­ril­lion. The Hobbit is a children’s story set in Middle-Earth. In The Hobbit, these orcs are, in both qua­lity and lite­ral refe­rence, inter­chan­geable with ​“goblins” in folk­lore and Vic­to­rian fairy-tel­ling. The stri­king des­crip­tion of orcs’ crea­ti­vity that Tol­kien includes here has dis­tinct faerie-tra­di­tion over­tones. The slightly dimi­nu­tive pre­sen­ta­tion of orcs as ​“goblins” places them on a par with the book’s pro­ta­go­nist, the hobbit Bilbo Bag­gins. It is implied in later, rela­ted wri­tings that if ano­ther cha­rac­ter, Gan­dalf or Thorin, had nar­ra­ted the orc encoun­ters, they would have a dif­ferent tone. ⁴¹(#_book­mark38)

The most remar­kable orc inci­dent in The Hobbit is Gandalf’s attempt to parley with the orcs when the tra­vel­ling party of dwarves and hobbit are cap­tu­red. This is the only ins­tance in Tolkien’s works where a ​“good” cha­rac­ter tries to reason with orcs, as if they were the peers of other races in Middle-Earth. This is in line with Gandalf’s cha­rac­te­ri­za­tion as an avatar of good, sent to ins­pire the best part of Middle-Earth’s inha­bi­tants. The orcs’ king, the Great Goblin, does not rise to the occa­sion, and a fight imme­dia­tely ensues.

The Lord of the Rings, with its cha­rac­ters embar­king on a quest against evil, is the most tra­di­tio­nal novel-type nar­ra­tive of Tolkien’s major wri­tings. Here all the races shown in The Hobbit are pre­sen­ted from an adult pers­pec­tive. Orcs have shed their goblin asso­cia­tions, though, as in The Hobbit, the pro­ta­go­nists first encoun­ter the orcs deep under­ground. The orc cha­rac­ters who appear later in the nar­ra­tive are crude, random, and fear­some – and dis­tinctly mili­tary, with a modern edge. For the orc sol­diers have num­bers assi­gned to them. ⁴² This is not the only curiously modern touch about them ; the orcs speak in sharp, vulgar, abbre­via­ted dia­logue, dis­tinctly dif­ferent from the ele­gant medie­val tones assi­gned to many other cha­rac­ters. Only the hobbit cha­rac­ters have a simi­larly modern ring to their dia­logue.

A side note about orcs in LOTR is their appea­rance in the Tale of Years appen­dix to the novel. This appen­dix pre­sents Tolkien’s backs­tory idea that, orcish acti­vity has built up over time and affec­ted many of the pro­ta­go­nists directly, nota­bly Arwen and Ara­gorn. With the dry­ness of a his­to­rian, the Tale of Years notes the war of the Dwarves and Orcs (fur­ther Appen­dix notes make this more vivid and grisly) and an orc attack on the Shire, Tolkien’s idyl­lic hobbit land. In addi­tion to this and attacks upon Gondor and Rohan, the orcs at one point cap­tu­red, poi­so­ned and tor­men­ted Arwen’s mother, Cele­brían. Cele­brían is rescued, but cannot be healed, and she departs for the Undying Lands. This sets up a future tra­gedy that almost seems des­ti­ned. Celebrían’s sons vow ven­geance and take to hun­ting orcs, at times in the com­pany of Aragorn’s ances­tors. On one such hunt, orcs kill Aragorn’s father. Thus, dwarves, mortal men, elves, and even hob­bits have suf­fe­red at the hands of orcs, and stood to suffer more if evil had trium­phed.

The Sil­ma­ril­lion is a cos­mo­logy and epic his­tory of Middle-Earth in its eras before The Lord of the Rings takes place. We rarely receive inti­mate details about cha­rac­ters in this book, and, in kee­ping with this, orcs are pre­sen­ted as face­less hordes of evil. Their crea­tion is revie­wed, as noted pre­viously. When elves first encoun­ter orcs, the elves note them as fol­lows : ​“Among them were Orcs, who after­wards wrought ruin in Bele­riand ; but they were yet few and wary…Whence they came, or what they were, the elves knew not, but thin­king them per­haps to be Avari [a type of elf] who had become evil and savage in the wild ; in which they gues­sed all too near, it is said.” ⁴³

After the orcs’ timid debut, they par­ti­ci­pate in a series of bat­tles, with their suc­cess ⁴⁴ linked to the for­tunes of their mas­ters. When their mas­ters fall, they scat­ter and dwindle, but, like evil itself, a few of them always endure to be sum­mo­ned again. But ove­rall, the Sil­ma­ril­lion orcs present a very imper­so­nal evil. Only twice is there a men­tion of a spe­ci­fic cruel act. ⁴⁵ No orc in The Sil­ma­ril­lion – nor in its source notes, chro­ni­cled in the His­tory of Middle-Earth series – merits a name.

The His­tory of Middle-Earth series are fif­teen volumes of Tolkien’s notes and backs­tory that have been publi­shed. Upon revie­wing these books, it is remar­kable how little Tolkien’s other wri­tings concern the orcs that he crea­ted. The main wri­tings are the essays on orcs publi­shed in Morgoth’s Ring, which encom­pass about ten pages, total. In these essays concer­ning orcs, Tolkien’s preoc­cu­pa­tion is how the great evil forces of Middle-Earth use orcs and the spi­ri­tual signi­fi­cance of orcs.

What Orcs Mean in Middle-Earth

Orcs have seve­ral layers of signi­fi­cance beyond that of battle-fodder for elvish swords. As noted, orcs’ role in Tolkien’s nar­ra­tives is simple. It is their place in Middle-Earth cos­mo­logy that makes them com­plex, entan­gled in issues of the nature of evil, free will, and redemp­tion.

Because Orcs, in Tolkien’s cos­mo­logy, are not meant to exist, they would seem to represent the unsee­lie, uncanny, and wrong – the clas­si­cal Other. ⁴⁶ The idea of the Other gains power from its reflec­tion in the self, and what is reflec­ted in the orcs is the pos­si­bi­lity for banal evil in all peoples, very spe­ci­fi­cally humans.

Ins­tead, Orcs are evil made mani­fest, and a very spe­ci­fic evil at that, the will of their mas­ters. Tol­kien gives us an event in Return of the King that makes this clear. After wit­nes­sing *a* one orc killing ano­ther, an act that keeps Sam and Frodo from being dis­co­ve­red, Frodo notes, ​“That is the spirit of Mordor, Sam ; and it has spread to every corner of it. Orcs have always beha­ved like that, or so all tales say, when they are on their own.” ⁴⁷ Frodo goes on to add, ​“But you can’t get much hope out of it,” and indeed, whe­ne­ver an orc appears, it is a reason to fear, even to des­pair.

The evil of orcs is not the evil of the drowsy undead. There is a ter­rible vita­lity to them, shown in their fero­city, rea­di­ness to fight and breed, and their impul­sive, id- level emo­tions. Orcs are alive but fallen ; the living, brea­thing mark of evil’s invest­ment in the world of Middle-Earth, a phe­no­me­non Tol­kien sum­ma­rizes as ​“Arda marred.” ⁴⁸

Orcish Conclusions

If orcs are Arda Marred, can orcs be redee­med ? Maybe. Tol­kien is reluc­tant to rule this out, though, as with other cos­mo­lo­gi­cal points in his notes, he explores seve­ral inter­pre­ta­tions. In one of the ​“Orcs” texts of Morgoth’s Ring he says that orcs ​“might have become irre­dee­mable (at last by Elves and Men), but that they remai­ned within the Law.” As part of this, if an Orc had ever asked for mercy, good people were obli­ged to grant that mercy, ​“even at a cost”. Orcish repen­tance and redemp­tion, howe­ver impro­bable, was sup­po­sed to be given a chance.

Signi­fi­cantly, orcs are not present in an inter­pre­ta­tion of Arda rene­wed and healed ; it seems that, as a spec­ta­cu­lar aber­ra­tion and mockery, they should not exist at all. A com­ment in Letter 153 proves other­wise, and, while not pre­sen­ting a solu­tion, sums up the cos­mo­lo­gi­cal conun­drum of orcs :

“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).”

Tol­kien is aware that in his cos­mo­logy Mor­goth did not create the Orcs, but cor­rup­ted them, and his com­ment on this is ​“That God would ​‘tole­rate’ that, seems no worse theo­logy than the tole­ra­tion of the cal­cu­la­ted dehu­ma­ni­sing of Men by tyrants that goes on today.” ⁴⁹ This also echoes the sad theme that, of all the beings high and low of Middle-Earth, it is the orcs who he sees as having most endu­ring effect on huma­nity.

Tol­kien even seems to have been aware of the dark appeal orcs would have to some rea­ders, and to have explo­red it, in obser­va­tions about rebel­lious­ness lea­ding to evil, in an unfi­ni­shed sequel to LOTR. This sequel, The New Shadow, exists as about ten pages of manus­cript (publi­shed in Peoples of Middle-Earth). It is the begin­ning frag­ment of a story set in Gondor about 100 years after the begin­ning of the Fourth Age. A notable plot point in it is “’orc-cults’ among ado­les­cents.’ ⁵⁰ In this future Gondor, once orcs have vani­shed enough to be a piece of folk­lore or a by-word, there comes to be a rebel­lious appeal to their acts of empty, was­te­ful evil, and some defiant young­sters take up playing at doing ​“orc-work.” This is a shadow of a wider evil plot, and a sign of rene­wed poten­tial for cor­rup­tion amongst mor­tals.

Rea­ders will never know the full details of what this orc-work fore­sha­do­wed. Tol­kien attemp­ted to work on the story seve­ral times, up to fif­teen months before his death. ⁵¹ Howe­ver, he did not finish the story, saying that its concept proved ​“both sinis­ter and depressing….not worth doing.” ⁵²

Tol­kien, in the end, decli­ned to apply more crea­ti­vity to his orcs than neces­sary to make them pro­bable within Middle-Earth. In his wri­tings, they have nothing of value to call their own, are trea­ted as cannon fodder, and their elu­sive redemp­tion is never shown. It is a tes­ta­ment to Tolkien’s crea­ti­vity that even his minions of evil, his grown-up goblins that click in our modern minds as fierce arche­types, are intri­guing and ins­pire curio­sity. This brings us to the obser­va­tion that began this essay : that modern fan­ta­sists have embra­ced Tolkien’s arche­type of the orc, expan­ding on its foun­da­tions. Some fan­ta­sists fol­lo­wing Tol­kien present orcs as even more hollow minions of evil, either in Tol­kie­nesque imi­ta­tion or in parody. Others take a sym­pa­the­tic view of the orcs, pre­sen­ting them as ugly duck­lings, Eve­ry­men arche­types, or ava­tars of power­ful mas­cu­li­nity ⁵³. It seems that the orcs will be redee­med, after all, in our ima­gi­na­tions.

Appendix : Other Orcs in Modern Fantasy

To sup­port my asser­tion that the idea of orcs has made a large impres­sion on the genre of fan­tasy wri­ting, I have col­lec­ted this list of repre­sen­ta­tive role- playing games and novels that use Orcs or orc-paral­lels.

Orcs In Role-Playing Games

Orcs have become such a part of role-playing games that a large ​“stra­tegy game” conven­tion in Cali­for­nia is named ​“OrcCon.”

The Dun­geons & Dra­gons role-playing game system publi­shed by Wizards of the Coast, a famous Tol­kien deri­va­tive, uses orcs and half-orcs. A fine example of this is the D&D ​“module” book Fury in the Was­te­land : The Orcs of Ter­rene, which ​“delves into orc culture like no other book has before. Topics such as life cycle, habi­tat, recrea­tion, diet, clo­thing, medi­cine and heal­th­care, race rela­tions, trade, and lan­guage are all cove­red.”

Saber­tooth Games’ WarCry – Ano­ther game publi­sher invites the power-hungry to ​“Control the hordes of dark­ness (Chaos, Dark Elves, ands Orcs and Goblins) or the Grand Alliance (Empire, High Elves, and Dwarfs) in mas­sive bat­tles that will decide the fate of king­doms!”

Ever­Quest – Noted in Forbes maga­zine in 2001 http://​www​.forbes​.com/​b​e​s​t​/​2​0​0​1​/​0​6​2​5​/​w​e​b​e​x​t​r​a​.html as a social phe­no­me­non among online gaming, orcs are part of the game. Inter­es­tin­gly, while orcs are ​“non-player cha­rac­ter” ene­mies or allies, players with dark urges cannot choose to be an orc as a cha­rac­ter, but are fobbed off with trolls, ogres, evil rep­ti­lian bipeds, and dark elves.

Orcs By Any Other Name

The minions of evil in these series are dis­tinctly simi­lar to orcs.

Eragon series by Chris­to­pher Pao­lini, (2003, Knopf) – Has orc-paral­lel cha­rac­ters Urgalls.

Shan­nara series by Terry Brooks (19 books from 1977 to present, Bal­lan­tine Books) – Has orc-paral­lel cha­rac­ters Gnomes.

The Fion­var Tapes­try series by Guy Gavriel Kay (three books, publi­shed in 1984, 1985, 1986, Roc) – Has orc-paral­lel cha­rac­ters Svart Alfar and Urgaches. This series – Arthu­rian in intent, inter­pre­ted by some as Tol­kie­nesque — was Kay’s first novels, publi­shed ten years after Kay had assis­ted Chris­to­pher Tol­kien in edi­ting ​“The Sil­ma­ril­lion.”

Orcs Called ​“Orcs” in Non-Tolkien Writing

Unlike the authors who use orc-paral­lels, these authors call an orc an orc, often to high­light the contrast or note the satire bet­ween their work and Tolkien’s.

Abacar the Wizard : Book One : A Tale of Magic, War, Elves, Goblins, Orcs, Mons­ters, Fan­tasy, and Adven­ture by Timo­thy Eren­ber­ger (Writer’s Club Press, 2001) – In the title alone, orcs are dis­tin­gui­shed from both goblins and mons­ters as a dis­tinct cate­gory.

Grunts ! by Mary Gentle (Bantam Press, 1992) – Sati­ri­cally aware of its deri­va­tion from Tol­kien, in this novel, orcs (sym­pa­the­tic pro­ta­go­nists) are hired to pro­tect hal­fling thieves who go to steal trea­sure from a dragon. Some of this trea­sure includes wea­pons from the U.S. Marine Corps.

ORCS : First Blood by Stan Nicholls (multi-book series, Gol­lancz, 1997- 1999) – Here the orcs are depic­ted as, though ugly and stupid, none­the­less heroic/​sympathetic pro­ta­go­nists.

Red Orc’s Rage by Philip Jose Farmer (Tor Books, 1991) – Tech­ni­cally this belongs in the ​“Orcs By Any Other Name” sec­tion for its use of orc-paral­lel gworls. Howe­ver, this unu­sual book was writ­ten for use in a type of psy­cho­the­rapy, Tier­sian the­rapy, based on rea­ding evo­ca­tive fic­tion. It fea­tures a trou­bled cha­rac­ter being invi­ted, as part of Tier­sian the­rapy, to pro­ject his per­so­na­lity onto any type of person he likes in a spe­ci­fic fan­tasy world – and he chooses Red Orc, the most pro­minent vil­lain in the fan­tasy world. Part of a longer science fic­tion series with this the­ra­peu­tic goal, this book is noted for being recur­sive, self-refe­ren­tial, and all-around odd. Read an article about Tier­sian the­rapy, with more men­tion of the spe­ci­fic book, here http://​www​.psy​chia​tric​times​.com/​p​0​1​0​7​5​6​.html

The Orc’s Trea­sure by Kevin Ander­son, (I Books, 2004) Orc pro­ta­go­nist as anti­hero : ​“Gree is a wor­ka­day Orc without many aspi­ra­tions, as greedy and as nasty as they come.”

The Orc Wars : The Yngling Saga, Books I & II by John Dalmas, (Baen Books, 1992) A blend of fan­tasy and science fic­tion with orcs (as minions of an evil tele­path) and neo-Vikings in a post-apo­ca­lyp­tic Europe.

The Thou­sand Orcs by R.A. Sal­va­tore (Wizards of the Coast, 2003). A novel in a fan­tasy world that is an off­shoot of the Dun­geons & Dra­gons role-playing game system. The synop­sis speaks for itself : ​“The band returns from Ice­wind Dale in the com­pany of the dwarves of Mithral Hall, who are escor­ting King Brue­nor back to reluc­tantly assume his throne.
…Embol­de­ned by a dark alliance with the deadly frost giants, an orcish horde is mas­sing quietly, wai­ting with uncha­rac­te­ris­tic patience to move against dwarves, elves, and humans alike.”
None­the­less, this par­ti­cu­lar novel was fea­tu­red on the New York Times best­sel­ler list – not a first for this author in this series. 

Thraxas by Martin Scott (Baen Books, 2000) Winner of the World Fan­tasy Award in 2000. Yet ano­ther sati­ric use of orcs : ​“Thraxas is a down-on-his-luck detec­tive, a fan­tasy world Sam Spade, living in a magi­cal world which is refre­shin­gly cli­chéd in its trap­pings… a world popu­la­ted by conflic­ting king­doms of humans, elves and orcs.” 

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