In the film, we see Orcs being “born” out of the mud of the earth. It is as though Sauron is creating them, it seems as though the Orcs are being genetically engineered by the Dark Power, to be his own personal army.
I didn’t really get that impression from the book, however – and the letters of Tolkien seem to support that.
Tolkien seems to suggest that Orcs already existed – but they were corrupted by Mordor – and encouraged to do the dirty work of Sauron. They are genetically encouraged by Sauron to be bigger, stronger, more brutal.
Are Orcs actually created from the mud of the earth, as depicted in the movie? Or – (I feel supremely silly asking this): do Orcs have parents? Are there mummy and daddy Orcs?
What the hell is going on with the Orcs, is basically my question.
Do you mean the Uruks? I think I recall a line in the book about Saruman crossing Orcs and Goblins to create them.
Since Orcs were originally corrupted Elves, I would assume the process for creating little Orcs would be the same.
Also, this link may be helpful
It appears from the above post that most of your brain cells are still frozen and Bill has suffered the same fate. All of this hob-goblinery about elves and such has left a taste of concern in the air. Please procede immediately to the nearest flaming oil can and warm thy brains. Thank You
Bill’s right that the Uruk-hai were something different than orcs in general. Moreover, we don’t see the whole process that Saruman was engaged in: I’d suggest that although their emrgence from the muck seems like birth, it could just as easily be some kind of transformation.
But to the question in general, Tolkien’s ideas changed back and forth over time. There was the idea of orcs as twisted elves, but he also said somewhere else that orcs and trolls were broken off of Morgoth like icebergs hewing from a glacier, that they were in some sense “fragments” of his original greater evil, but because he could create nothing new, their breaking off gradually diminished him.
I hate to keep harping on this (wait, no I don’t), but reading the Silmarillion might help.
Dave J –
The Silmarillion is next – after I finish the letters. It is obvious that Tolkien somewhere believed that the silmarillion was his master work. I am succumbing to the frenzy. At your request – but also at the request of my own heart.
So – the things that came out of the muck in the first film were not orcs but were Uruks?
Did I miss that memo?
the creatures that abducted Merry and Pippin are orcs …
right?
I know, I know … silmarillion,silmarillion
Oh, and by the way, Dave J: Some random person just put another comment to my age-old post on the Last Samurai, and addressed you directly. It’s old news as far as I’m concerned – but you might want to check it out.
It’s like he’s come into the room at a party and is an hour behind the conversation of the group – and keeps trying to jump in – but that’s okay! The blog is an ever-lasting conversation.
Sheila,
That post of yours gets me two or three referrals a day to my Last Samurai review, so the subject still seems to be popular.
The ones that picked up Merry and Pippin were Uruks. Saruman calls Lurtz (the leader who kills Boromir) “his fighting Uruk-hai”. And in the TT book, they refer to themselves as such. But they’re also described as Orcs numerous times in the book and movie, so I don’t think it’s contradictory to call them Orcs. They even make Sting glow, then again, so do the Goblins in Moria.
I think Peter Jackson said in the commentary tracks that Goblins are Orcs adapted to live underground, hence the one with the big Gollum-like eyes.
As for reproduction, with such a long work of fiction, some contradiciton is unavoidable.
To clarify: the Uruk-hai were a newly perfected breed of Orc super-soldiers; I believe I remember John Rhys-Davies (Gimli) referring to them as “silverback gorillas.” Perhaps the best, if not exact, analogy is to say the Uruk-hai were to Orcdom what the Dunedain (like Aragorn) were to humanity: the pinnacle of the species, but not a seperate race altogether. They were bigger and stronger, not bow-legged, and particularly dangerous because (as Gandalf notes to Elrond in the film version of FOTR) they don’t fear sunlight.
Tolkien used the word “goblin” in The Hobbit before he’d really established its connection with his larger mythology from the Silmarillion. Then he threw in Elrond and Rivendell, and the ancient swords from Gondolin, and the connection was made; the Ring was secondary and Tolkien didn’t have any idea that it was what it was when he introduced it. That doesn’t contradict Jackson’s explanation, though, as “goblin” might be a colloquialism specific to the subterranean Orcs of the Misty Mountains.
BTW, now that you mention The Last Samurai, I liked it a lot more than I’d expected to. Ken Watanabe as Katsumoto was particularly extraordinary, and I got the impression that the soldiers were bowing to him at the end, not to Algren. It did strike me as very odd and almost absurdly convenient for the Samurai that the modern Japanese Army appeared to have no cavalry, though.
This is hardly a scholastic LOTR note, Sheila, but I was just watching the cast commentary on the TT DVD (and I’m sorry to say, as much as I admire all of the hard efforts of every last person who contributed to these films, some of the cast who are so lovable on screen are complete idiots in real life). There’s a funny bit that Bernard Hill shared that I thought I’d tell you about in an effort to take your mind off the cold: when they were filming the sequence where the elves arrive at Helm’s Deep to offer their help, BH and some of the crew filmed this gag bit to give to Peter Jackson as a joke where Theoden storms up to the elves as they enter and angrily asks “what the fuck are YOU doing here?” I wish they’d included it somewhere on the DVD.
This question of where the ORCS come from is actually a specific form of a legitimate more general question: where do ANY of the non-elf/non-human creatures come from.
Elves were the first-born. Men (Atani) were the second-born. Eru/Iluvatar created them. The Valar/Ainur had no such power.
Indeed, Aule’s attempt to create a race of his own (the dwarves) would have failed were it not that Eru/Iluvatar took pity upon Aule, who sincerely repented that he had even tried to do such a thing. And there is a striking scene (Silmarillion?) in which when Aule’s attention is removed from his dwarves, the fall limp much like puppets — ie, they are nothing but a reflection of him.
The Ents were the result of Yavanna’s entreaty that there be someone to “look after” her creatures (the plants).
But other than that, you’ve got to scratch your haed and wonder where ANY of the other creatures came from: Orcs, Trolls, HOBBITS…
No need to question where Hobbits came from. I remember somewhere Tolkien specifically saying that they were counted among the Second-Born: they’re human, just a smaller variety that we don’t see around anymore. Thus, like their kindred among the Big Folk, they have the Gift of Iluvatar: they’re not tied to the circles of the world, and pass beyond it after death, unlike the Elves.
I was always touched by Aule’s creation of the Dwarves (yes, it is in the Sil): in his repentance, he cries as he raises up his hammer to smash them, and then they recoil in terror of their own accord, since Iluvatar has been moved by Aule’s contrition to give them souls. As the smith of the Valar, he is the quintessential sub-creator, but there’s also something very revealing about the fact that both Sauron and Saruman were originally among his Maiar.
Just a quick comment on the original point. Since the Orcs being ‘born’ in the movie are showing up at Isengard, it seems clear that they are the “fighting Uruk-Hai”. However, one thing that having just reread the first two books isn’t clear to me is what exactly they _are_. While at some points they are referred to as Orcs, I believe at one point, somethings, I presume the Uruk-Hai are referred to as “half-orcs”. Whatever they are, they certainly appear to be stronger than ordinary orcs.
ah orcs. i’m so glad the geeks of the world has someting new to talk about after 35 years of star trek and 25 years of star wars. a new saga begins…
Jimbo –
You are not kidding.
I never in my life thought that I would ever utter a sentence like: “Are there mummy and daddy orcs?”
That is a positively ridiculous thing to say – and I have no idea how I got to this point.
Where is the bit about mountain trolls from?
The Uruk-Hai, while stronger than Orcs don’t appear to be that strong, and since ordinary orcs avoid sunlight and the trolls would be turned to stone, how come the Uruk-Hai have no probelm with sunlight?
Where is the bit about mountain trolls from?
The Uruk-Hai, while stronger than Orcs don’t appear to be that strong, and since ordinary orcs avoid sunlight and the trolls would be turned to stone, how come the Uruk-Hai have no probelm with sunlight?
Yes, you appear to be right. The appendices in RotK mention the “uruk”, black orcs, coming out of Mordor. I wonder if whoever it was that referred to Saruman’s ‘half-orcs’ simply couldn’t believe that the Uruk-Hai were pure orc.
Oh, and the part about orcs reproducing by raping elvish women? The numbers don’t work. There are like, zillions of orcs, and they seem to multiply like rabbits when evil is ascendant. There aren’t enough elf women for that even if they were willing, and even if orcs and elves lived side-by-side, which they don’t; moreover, elvish fertility appears to be either close to non-existent, or a very brief moment in an elf’s immortal life, since compared to their lifespan, most elves have very few children. Feanor, with his seven sons, is, I believe, the record, and for beings that routinely live thousands of years that’s not really that many.
It is hinted somewhere that Elrond’s wife Celebrian was raped by orcs, and that that was at least part of why she sailed to Valinor without him, but there clealy were no orcish offspring to be half-siblings to Arwen, Elladan and Elrohir.