The Istari were susceptible to mortal pitfalls.

On Mar 26, 7:58 am, Troels Forchhammer <Tro....DeleteThis@ThisIsFake.invalid>
wrote:
> In message <news:MPG.2253f647b95cfb98b575@news.individual.net>
> Stan Brown <the_stan_br....DeleteThis@fastmail.fm> spoke these staves:

> > Does this explanation work?  They have the capacity for redemption
> > when they are born, but are so twisted by their upbringing among
> > Orcs that they become irrevocably evil.

Not with Catholic theology, not if you mean "irrevocably" literally
rather than as an extremely small chance. And the latter wouldn't
square with the way Orcs are universally treated and regarded. No one,
not even Gandalf, Galadriel, or Treebeard, shows any Orc one-tenth the
consideration extended to Gollum, for instance. I could buy that from
Sam or Eomer, but not Gandalf. He may have forgotten much, but I don't
recall any evidence that his moral compass was so badly compromised
with his incarnation.

> The example of Morgoth's Curse on Húrin shows that the children can
> be cursed through the father.

But Túrin was never irredeemable! That's what drives the tragedy! He
could have turned aside from the path Morgoth chose for him on several
occasions, but always chose not to do so, usually out of pride.
Morgoth did not have the power to corrupt either father or son totally
and irrevocably or to forfeit grace for them; all he could do was make
it very easy and very likely for them to make wrong choices.

> I have encountered no text where Tolkien considers the question of
> Orc infants. He stated that would be conceived and born in the same
> way has human or elven children, but apart from that I don't recall
> having seen anything as to their upbringing etc.
>
> We do know that traits such as an aptitude to violence can be bred in
> a line (e.g. for dogs), and so it doesn't appear to me to be wholly
> beyond the realm of the possible to explain orcs and the orcish
> predisposition to evil by a combination of various inheritable
> factors, most of which would, in themselves, be insufficient for
> solving the problem.

They would, because none of them would make the corruption irrevocable
- just much more likely. They wouldn't change the nature of the soul.
Orcs would be no different from, say, human children brought up as
slave-soldiers in Barad-dur, if one can imagine such a thing - or
really, different in their fundamental nature, their souls, from
children brought up by Bill Ferny or Sharkey's thugs.

> Under such circumstances the chances that an orc-infant would be
> found and raised by Elves or Men who would prove caring and loving
> foster-parents to the child are extremely small -- small enough that
> Tolkien could effectively reject the possibility.

I disagree. He could never reject the possibility, not without
rejecting central Catholic dogma. His choices were to try to ignore it
and just tell fairy-stories, to sidestep it by breaking his theology
in a different way (allowing Evil to create life), to avoid it by
making Orcs soulless automatons, or to make them essentially human but
treated as inhuman monsters even by the Wise. None of those ultimately
proved acceptable.


- Bruce
 >> Stay informed about: The Istari were susceptible to mortal pitfalls. 

On Mar 28, 4:27 pm, Troels Forchhammer <Tro... DeleteThis @ThisIsFake.invalid>
wrote:

> > Yes, but that's not the way Tolkien is looking at it. He doesn't
> > want to analyze real human behaviour (at least not in this
> > aspect), he's working from first principles.
>
> I'm not sure that is entirely correct. The Orcs is probably the best
> counter-example of this, since the the portrayal of evil ways that is
> provided through the orcs is so scaringly realistic.

Specific behaviors are realistic, but their overall nature isn't. If
you substituted the name of an imaginary tribe of humans for "Orcs,"
the resulting characters wouldn't be believable, not the way Elves are
once you understand their circumstances. They'd be obvious stock
villains.

> And none of he good characters are without faults either -- even
> Gandalf recognizes his own vulnerability and frailty and the lure of
> the Ring, and though he, like Sauron, the Balrog, the Watcher,
> Saruman, Elrond, Galadriel and possibly others, are of a higher order
> than what is achievable by the reader, there are still many
> characters whose will and powers for either good or evil are
> realistic.

Yes, but you said it yourself - *Gandalf recognizes his own
vulnerability and frailty*. He *has* flaws, but there is no reason to
think he has massive gaps in his moral consciousness of which he is
utterly oblivious.

Galadriel presents a similar problem. Could she possibly have had the
better part of six millennia to meditate on guilt, pride, mercy, and
redemption without even for one moment considering the possibility
that Orcs might be even theoretically redeemable - in the same boat as
the Noldor had been, but *much* further gone? Possibly with another
author, but not, IMO, the way Tolkien depicts her.

(And yes, she has strong personal reasons to hate Orcs, but they
don't, for instance, blind her to the danger of the Ring.)

> I think that Tolkien wanted his portrayal in the book of good and
> evil as forces on the human soul to be very realistic, indeed.

Yes, very much so - he wanted his portrayal of human *behavior* to be
realistic. But the story is framed from a more-or-less omniscient POV
- we see things from Frodo's eyes, for example, but are never limited
to only what Frodo sees except for finite scenes, or to what Frodo
knows, or even might know, or even what any character in the story or
all of them might know.

LotR is a far cry from Huck Finn. AFAICT Tolkien doesn't ever present
moral ambiguity or dissonance as a challenge for the reader. When
people are doing wrong, the reader *knows* they are doing wrong, even
if the character doesn't.


- Bruce
 >> Stay informed about: The Istari were susceptible to mortal pitfalls. 

In message
<news:20080327090153.1250.2.NOFFLE@dthierbach.news.arcor.de> Dirk
Thierbach <dthierbach.TakeThisOut@usenet.arcornews.de> spoke these staves:
>
> Troels Forchhammer <Troels.TakeThisOut@thisisfake.invalid> wrote:
>>
>> When Tolkien first introduced goblins into his stories, he did it
>> because he needed an kind of enemy cannon-fodder his heroes could
>> fight,
>
> You keep repeating this, but simply repeating it won't convince me
>

I think I was afraid I had chosen an unfortunate wording that didn't
get my intention across quite clearly -- since you easily recognise
it as repetitions, I guess we can cross out that possibility

> So let's look at details. As I said, I don't have the evolution of
> the texts in my head. When did Tolkien first introduce the
> Goblins, and what did they look like?

I'm not completely sure, but I think the first use of 'goblin' is in
the poem 'Goblin Feet' (1915), but here the word referred to the
diminutive fairy folk which Tolkien would later reject so vehemently
in 'On Fairy-Stories'.

At first 'Goblins' was used instead of 'Gnomes' for the 'Noldoli' --
the later Noldor. So the first usage of the word was to identify the
protagonists who had become captives of Melko.

It seems that my memory about the sequence of the stories was a
little wrong, though I had the right triplet as the first Their
sequence (using Garth's descriptions in /Tolkien and the Great War/)
is:

1: The Fall of Gondolin
2: The Tale of Tinúviel
3: The Tale of Turambar

Regarding the first of these, CRT writes in BoLT2 in his commentary
to this 'The Fall of Gondolin':

(iii) Orcs
There is a noteworthy remark in the tale (p. 159)
concerning the origin of the Orcs (or Orqui as they were
called in Tuor A, and in Tuor B as first written): 'all
that race were bred of the subterranean heats and slime.'
There is no trace yet of the later view that 'naught that
had life of its own, nor the semblance of life, could ever
Melkor make since his rebellion in the Ainulindalë before
the Beginning', or that the Orcs were derived from enslaved
Quendi after the Awakening (The Silmarillion p. 50).
Conceivably there is a first hint of this idea of their
origin in the words of the tale in the same passage:
'unless it be that certain of the Noldoli were twisted to
the evil of Melko and mingled among these Orcs', although
of course this is as it stands quite distinct from the idea
that the Orcs were actually bred from Elves.
Here also occurs the name Glamhoth of the Orcs, a name
that reappears in the later Tuor (pp. 39 and 54 note 1.

So it would seem that the orcs were just that from the very
beginning, and that the goblin confusion didn't evolve until later.

> Which part of the difference between "he first introduced them as
> cannon-fodder" and "he first introduced them, like anything else,
> because he re-worked fairy-story material" is unclear?

There's no problem with that, of course. The problem is that I never
said the second thing, so that was not what you asked.

It would be wrong, I suppose, to say that Tolkien did not rework
fairy-story material, but this, I am convinced, was not his primary
purpose, and thus it would also be wrong to /only/ say that this was
what he was doing.

There are, of course, many statements by Tolkien saying that his work
is linguistic in origin, and that the name came first, but there are
also many examples showing that this was not always true when it came
to practical writing. The Tale of Tinúviel is a tribute to a time
with his wife, and there the wife came first, then name (Tinúviel)
and then the story. But once he sat down to write, he would usually
get caught up in the story and would write on beyond what he had
planned, simply adding elements as the revealed themselves to him (as
he would probably have described it).

Whatever the reason for Tolkien to sit down and write 'The Fall of
Gondolin', it was not to rework traditional fairy-story elements.
Having embarked on his sub-creative quest, however, he knew that such
material would fit both his own tastes and the air of the stories he
was writing, and so he used and reworked such material at every turn,
but it seems to me certain that it was the sub-creation (languages
and world) and the story-telling that came first (at times one and at
times the other), and that the reworking of fairy-story material
served these purposes.

The first explanations for the Orcs ('bred by Melko of subterranean
heats and slime'), which were quickly abandoned (though Jackson seems
to have, regrettably IMO, revived them for his films), and are
typical of the kind of short traditional non-explation used to
introduce something that is essentially to serve a completely
different role than that of world-building. And the passage which CRT
refers to does also make the purpose clear. It continues:

Their hearts were of granite and their bodies deformed;
foul their faces which smiled not, but their laugh that of
the clash of metal, and to nothing were they more fain than
to aid in the basest of the purposes of Melko. The greatest
hatred was between them and the Noldoli, who named them
Glamhoth, or folk of dreadful hate.
[BoLT2, 'The Fall of Gondolin']

So, 'the greatest hatred was between them and the Noldoli' -- they
were the 'folk of dreadful hate'.

From there I think Shippey's explanation does follow as he suggests,
and that his reference to Tolkien speaking of the monsters being the
'infantry of the old war' is not wholly besides the point either --
IMO.

<snip>

> Yes, of course. What connection has the Ainulindale with the
> problem if the Orcs were just a "plot-device", or if they come
> from the Goblin-tradtion?

I would say that there is no 'or' about it. They were introduced
because his story made them necessary and for that purpose were they
lifted from the goblin tradition. It is an 'and'.

<snip>

> But what I am after is that he was basically inspired by their
> fairy-tale nature, and not by the need as story-device. He didn't
> start out saying "I need some enemies my protaganists can battle
> against. Let's call these Orcs". He started out with all these
> tales about elves, dwarfs and goblins in his head, and then
> he mixed in some Beowulf and Sagas, and tried to create new
> stories from it. So it was natural to ask "what role could the
> goblins play in those stories?" -- and not the other way round.
>
> Do you see what I mean?

Yes, I do see now, but I think you're wrong -- or at least not right
I don't think that you don't get the whole picture into your
description.

To some extent it is probably just a version of the old question of
the hen and the egg, and it doesn't make sense to ask which came
first.

Tolkien doubtlessly did have all these fairy-stories, sagas, legends
and myths floating about in his mind, and wanted to use elements from
them in his own stories. My point is that he was not looking for a
place for 'goblins' or 'orcs' ('orqui' was probably derived from
'orc' from the very first), but he had them in mind, ready to use
them whenever there was a need for them in the story.

The way you put it makes it sound, to me, as if his primary concern
was to rework the various legends, myths and fairy-stories he had in
mind, and that would, as I see it, be wrong, and even inconsistent
with the stories, that are so much more than just the amassment of
traditional elements which the approach you suggest would produce.

I don't think the process was anywhere near as deliberate as any of
the descriptions you give. From the various descriptions of his way
of working, both from himself (in letters) and from Carpenter,
Shippey, Garth etc. I think that he found himself needing to describe
Melkor's infantry (the continuous supply of enemies to be killed off
with little fuss, though he certainly didn't stop to think of it that
way), but he didn't stop, because he found them waiting in his mind:
a compound of elements from the goblin tradition, demonic traditions,
trolls and other types of low-level monsters. He never stopped to
think about it either way, but just carried on writing -- they were
there when he needed them, not because he had thought them out
beforehand (carefully drawing from various traditions), but because
this was the way his mind worked, when he was writing.

--
Troels Forchhammer
Valid e-mail is <troelsfo(a)gmail.com>
Please put [AFT], [RABT] or 'Tolkien' in subject.

The significant problems we have cannot be solved at the
same level of thinking with which we created them.
- Albert Einstein
 >> Stay informed about: The Istari were susceptible to mortal pitfalls. 

In message
<news:20080327084203.1250.1.NOFFLE@dthierbach.news.arcor.de>
Dirk Thierbach <dthierbach.TakeThisOut@usenet.arcornews.de> spoke these staves:
>
> Raven <jon.lennart.beck.its.my.name.TakeThisOut@mail.its.in.danmark> wrote:
>>
>> We have observed in the real world that in conflicts with
>> organized violence the "good" side is generally merely the "least
>> evil" side.
>
> Yes, but that's not the way Tolkien is looking at it. He doesn't
> want to analyze real human behaviour (at least not in this
> aspect), he's working from first principles.

I'm not sure that is entirely correct. The Orcs is probably the best
counter-example of this, since the the portrayal of evil ways that is
provided through the orcs is so scaringly realistic.

And none of he good characters are without faults either -- even
Gandalf recognizes his own vulnerability and frailty and the lure of
the Ring, and though he, like Sauron, the Balrog, the Watcher,
Saruman, Elrond, Galadriel and possibly others, are of a higher order
than what is achievable by the reader, there are still many
characters whose will and powers for either good or evil are
realistic.

I think that Tolkien wanted his portrayal in the book of good and
evil as forces on the human soul to be very realistic, indeed.
Realistic, of course, as he believed them to be, but what more can we
ask?

--
Troels Forchhammer
Valid e-mail is <troelsfo(a)gmail.com>
Please put [AFT], [RABT] or 'Tolkien' in subject.

Behold! we are not bound for ever to the circles of the
world, and beyond them is more than memory, Farewell!
- Aragorn, /The Lord of the Rings/ (J.R.R. Tolkien)
 >> Stay informed about: The Istari were susceptible to mortal pitfalls. 

Troels Forchhammer <Troels.RemoveThis@thisisfake.invalid> wrote:
> Dirk Thierbach <dthierbach.RemoveThis@usenet.arcornews.de> spoke these staves:
>> Raven <jon.lennart.beck.its.my.name.RemoveThis@mail.its.in.danmark> wrote:

>>> We have observed in the real world that in conflicts with
>>> organized violence the "good" side is generally merely the "least
>>> evil" side.

>> Yes, but that's not the way Tolkien is looking at it. He doesn't
>> want to analyze real human behaviour (at least not in this
>> aspect), he's working from first principles.

> I'm not sure that is entirely correct. The Orcs is probably the best
> counter-example of this, since the the portrayal of evil ways that is
> provided through the orcs is so scaringly realistic.

Excuse me? A whole race of beings that are bound to do only Evil,
and only want to fight, is realistic? The bits inspired by "disgruntled
soldiers" may be, but that's not what Rabe was talking about.

I mean, Tolkien does accurately analyze human behaviour, for example
the "addiction" of the Ring, but certainly not in the Orcs.

- Dirk
 >> Stay informed about: The Istari were susceptible to mortal pitfalls. 

Paul S. Person <psperson.DeleteThis@ix.netscom.com.invalid> wrote:
> On Fri, 28 Mar 2008 11:46:25 +0100, Dirk Thierbach
>>Paul S. Person <psperson.DeleteThis@ix.netscom.com.invalid> wrote:

>>> IIRC, some of the early versions had both Dwarves and Men fighting for
>>> Melko in the last battle (the one which destroyed Beleriand).

>>But then probably not *all* Dwarves and *all* Men? To have Evil
>>corrupt *some* of them is no news.

> Your question was:

>> On Wed, 26 Mar 2008 19:35:33 +0100, Dirk Thierbach
>>> <dthierbach.DeleteThis@usenet.arcornews.de> wrote:

>>>>Where does it say that the Dwarves were allied with Melko? Is that in
>>>>HoME?

> And that is what I answered. This has nothing to do with "all" of
> anything.

Then I must have misunderstood you. I asked because you said

: which were modified over time so that the Dwarves, from being allied
: with Melko, become staunch allies of Elves and Men,

which looked like you wanted to say that the Dwarves *in general* (i.e.,
all, or most of them) were allied with Melko(r). Which seemed surprising
to me.

>>> I am, however, quite certain that the earlier versions portrayed the
>>> Dwarves as making swords and armor for Melko and his Orcs. For
>>> payment, of course.

>>Quite possible, but also not the same as being allied with him

> From the Elvish viewpoint, it is certainly the same: they are being
> slaughtered by Dwarvish weapons.

Oh, come on. I can make plenty of examples in the real world where one
nation is selling weapons to another nation without being allied to
it.

>>I had a look a BoLT, and found in one place the fascinating idea
>>that Orcs at one time worked as mercenaries for the Dwarves...

> Also indicative, to the Elves, of an alliance with Melko, no doubt.

Ah, no. The Orcs DIDN'T work for Melko. They worked for the Dwarves
INSTEAD.

>>> In /HOTH/, Rateliff points out that the view of the Dwarves in the
>>> legendarium before /TH/ (and so also /LOTR/) was pretty explicitly the
>>> view of the Elves. This underwent a sort of evolution: the assertion
>>> that Dwarves aided the Dark Lord went from reported fact, to a
>>> traditional opinion no longer considered authoritative by the author,
>>> to a clearly mistaken idea.

>>If so, that must have happened *very* early. BoLT has for example
>>"The Nauglath are a strange range and none know surly whence they be;
>>they serve not Melko nor Manwe and reck not for Elf or Man"
>>
>>> Note that Rateliff bases this in large part on /HOME/, and gives
>>> citations.

>>Could you give some of those, so I can check?

> BLT II.223-4 (this has already been quoted: "they serve not Melko nor
> Manwe" etc).

Hm. How does one deduce from "they serve not Melko" that they "aided
the Dark Lord"? Sorry, I cannot follow here.

> BLT II.230 (after the incident of the Nauglafring, "[the Dwarves have]
> drawn more nigh in friendship to the kin of Melko")

And "the kin of Melko" means in this context "the Orcs". Not Melko
himself.

> He also refers to the outline for "Gilfanon's Tale", where "it is a
> host of Dwarves and Goblins in the service of Melko-Morgoth who attack
> the first Men and their elven allies in the Battle of Palisor".

Hm. I can only find "Thereafter (in A only) Palisor was possessed by
'Fangli and his hosts of Nauglath (or Dwarves)'. (In the early
writings the Dwarves are always portrayed as an evil people.)"

So we have that in the really early texts, the Dwarves were not sort
of neutral, but evil. But as BoLT shows, that changes very soon to
the kind of easily offended neutrality they retain still in the SIL.

> Those are from Rateliff's essay "The Dwarves", starting on page 76 of
> /HOTH/ (Vol I, since the page number is below 467).

Sorry, don't have HOTH

>>> Now, with regard to the idea that Orcs are "irredeemably evil", that
>>> assertion would not, by any chance, be another opinion of the Elves?

>>That doesn't work, because the problem is not how the Elves represent
>>Orcs, the problem is how they are portrayed also in the later works
>>like TH and LotR.

> As I and others have pointed out, in /TH/ and /LOTR/ Orcs are neither
> automatons nor irredeemably evil.

But nevertheless they were treated only as Evil people. Which is the
problem.

> They are basically crude, boastful, lower-class Alpha-male types
> from a warrior-culture but, when on their own, fully capable of
> forming societies and raising families, which an irredeemably evil
> species could not do.

*Sigh*. That was never the point. See below.

> Ultimately, unless JRRT actually /said/, in the legendarium, not in a
> letter to someone or a note to himself, that the Orcs were
> irredeemably evil, I think we must conclude that he did not, in fact,
> portray them that way, although he clearly believed that he had.

Excuse me, but Tolkien need not to explicitely say something about
that. Look at the relationship between the Orcs and the other people.
Look how they are treated by the other people. They are not treated as
those would treat other human enemies. THAT is the problem. And that
kind of behaviour is only justifiable if they are soulless creatures,
which deserve no pity.

But OTOH, as you correctly point out, and as I have also already
pointed out, they are portrayed with quite human-like features
(though I wouldn't have phrased it as "lower-class Alpha-male types
from a warrior-culture" . And there's the contradiction.

- Dirk
 >> Stay informed about: The Istari were susceptible to mortal pitfalls. 

On Fri, 28 Mar 2008 17:57:43 -0700 (PDT), Bruce Tucker
<disintegration DeleteThis @embarqmail.com> wrote:

<snippo>

>Galadriel presents a similar problem. Could she possibly have had the
>better part of six millennia to meditate on guilt, pride, mercy, and
>redemption without even for one moment considering the possibility
>that Orcs might be even theoretically redeemable - in the same boat as
>the Noldor had been, but *much* further gone? Possibly with another
>author, but not, IMO, the way Tolkien depicts her.

Perhaps I've forgotten, but where exactly does Galadriel assert that
Orcs are "irredeemably evil"? Where, exactly, does /any/ character
assert that Orcs are "irredeemably evil"? Where does JRRT assert that
Orcs /are/ "irredeemably evil" as opposed to claiming that he has
portrayed them as "irredeemably evil" -- and where is that portrayal?

I don't think we know what Galadriel thoughts on the issue of the
"irredeemably evil" nature of the Orcs were -- whether she agreed or
disagreed, or even who she would have been agreeing or disagreeing
with.
--
"A portent, therefore, happens not contrary to nature,
but contrary to what we know as nature."
 >> Stay informed about: The Istari were susceptible to mortal pitfalls. 

On Fri, 28 Mar 2008 22:43:24 +0100, Dirk Thierbach
<dthierbach.TakeThisOut@usenet.arcornews.de> wrote:

>Paul S. Person <psperson.TakeThisOut@ix.netscom.com.invalid> wrote:
>> On Fri, 28 Mar 2008 11:46:25 +0100, Dirk Thierbach
<snippo>
<Dwarves making swords for Orcs>
>> From the Elvish viewpoint, it is certainly the same: they are being
>> slaughtered by Dwarvish weapons.
>
>Oh, come on. I can make plenty of examples in the real world where one
>nation is selling weapons to another nation without being allied to
>it.

Yes, you can. But how are they regarded by the people being
slaughtered by their customers? Especially if their customers win and
so write the histories?

<Orcs as mercenries for Dwarves>

>> Also indicative, to the Elves, of an alliance with Melko, no doubt.
>
>Ah, no. The Orcs DIDN'T work for Melko. They worked for the Dwarves
>INSTEAD.

And Melko had nothing to do with it? He did not approve it? The Orcs
were /rebels against Melko/? Are you quite sure of this?

<examples from HOTH>

>> BLT II.223-4 (this has already been quoted: "they serve not Melko nor
>> Manwe" etc).
>
>Hm. How does one deduce from "they serve not Melko" that they "aided
>the Dark Lord"? Sorry, I cannot follow here.

He is not interested in adopting a position and monmaniacally
defending it. He considers as much evidence on all sides of the issue
as he can.

>> BLT II.230 (after the incident of the Nauglafring, "[the Dwarves have]
>> drawn more nigh in friendship to the kin of Melko")
>
>And "the kin of Melko" means in this context "the Orcs". Not Melko
>himself.

Rateliff points out that, in addition to Orcs, we have (in /TH/:
Trolls, Bats, Wolves, Wargs, and maybe a few others I have overlooked)
as "children of Morgoth".

So, you believe it is possible to be a neo-Nazi (to "draw close to the
kin of") without being an admirer of Adolf?

>> He also refers to the outline for "Gilfanon's Tale", where "it is a
>> host of Dwarves and Goblins in the service of Melko-Morgoth who attack
>> the first Men and their elven allies in the Battle of Palisor".
>
>Hm. I can only find "Thereafter (in A only) Palisor was possessed by
>'Fangli and his hosts of Nauglath (or Dwarves)'. (In the early
>writings the Dwarves are always portrayed as an evil people.)"
>
>So we have that in the really early texts, the Dwarves were not sort
>of neutral, but evil. But as BoLT shows, that changes very soon to
>the kind of easily offended neutrality they retain still in the SIL.

Which, I believe, is what I said: The Dwarves were initially portrayed
as evil, but this assertion was reduced, over the course of time, to
an Elvish misunderstanding.

<Orcs in /TH/ and /LOTR/
>> As I and others have pointed out, in /TH/ and /LOTR/ Orcs are neither
>> automatons nor irredeemably evil.
>
>But nevertheless they were treated only as Evil people. Which is the
>problem.
>
>> They are basically crude, boastful, lower-class Alpha-male types
>> from a warrior-culture but, when on their own, fully capable of
>> forming societies and raising families, which an irredeemably evil
>> species could not do.
>
>*Sigh*. That was never the point. See below.
>
>> Ultimately, unless JRRT actually /said/, in the legendarium, not in a
>> letter to someone or a note to himself, that the Orcs were
>> irredeemably evil, I think we must conclude that he did not, in fact,
>> portray them that way, although he clearly believed that he had.
>
>Excuse me, but Tolkien need not to explicitely say something about
>that. Look at the relationship between the Orcs and the other people.
>Look how they are treated by the other people. They are not treated as
>those would treat other human enemies. THAT is the problem. And that
>kind of behaviour is only justifiable if they are soulless creatures,
>which deserve no pity.

Yes, that is a problem. But it is an ethical problem for the Men and
Elves, not an indication of the Orcs actual state: it says something
(something not very nice) about the nature of Elves and Men that they
behave that way.

>But OTOH, as you correctly point out, and as I have also already
>pointed out, they are portrayed with quite human-like features
>(though I wouldn't have phrased it as "lower-class Alpha-male types
>from a warrior-culture" . And there's the contradiction.

And the reason that Elvish bias in the portrayal of the Orcs must be
suspected. Even the Red Book is based on Elvish records in the older
parts, and the participants in /LOTR/ are clearly influenced by Elvish
attitudes, in particular the Hobbits, who speak Elvish, are, in some
cases, Elf-friends, and Aragorn, who was /raised/ by Elves.

By the way, Rateliff has calculated that Aragorn would have been 10
years old when Bilbo and the Dwarves reached Rivendell in /TH/. Think
of the possibilities for PJ's movie: a 10-year-old Aragorn tagalong
who does /all/ the heroic bits in the rest of the story! Sadly, Arwen,
it appears, was in Lorien with her grandmother.
--
"A portent, therefore, happens not contrary to nature,
but contrary to what we know as nature."
 >> Stay informed about: The Istari were susceptible to mortal pitfalls. 

In message
<5d511874-56f5-45a0-ac05-a43b82bd3ccc.DeleteThis@u69g2000hse.googlegroups.com>
Bruce Tucker <disintegration.DeleteThis@embarqmail.com> spoke these staves:
>
> On Mar 28, 4:27 pm, Troels Forchhammer <Tro....DeleteThis@ThisIsFake.invalid>
> wrote:
>>
>> In message
>> <news:20080327084203.1250.1.NOFFLE@dthierbach.news.arcor.de>
>> Dirk Thierbach <dthierbach.DeleteThis@usenet.arcornews.de> spoke these
>> staves:
>>>
>>> Yes, but that's not the way Tolkien is looking at it. He
>>> doesn't want to analyze real human behaviour (at least not in
>>> this aspect), he's working from first principles.
>>
>> I'm not sure that is entirely correct. The Orcs is probably the
>> best counter-example of this, since the the portrayal of evil
>> ways that is provided through the orcs is so scaringly
>> realistic.
>
> Specific behaviors are realistic, but their overall nature isn't.

Yes, that's what I meant -- as individuals their wickedness is
scaringly realistic, but I agree that as a whole race, the realism
does collapse.

It might be possible to imagine a realistic society or sub-society
that is consistent with Orcish behaviour and what little we know
about their society, though I'm not entirely sure about that.

> If you substituted the name of an imaginary tribe of humans for
> "Orcs," the resulting characters wouldn't be believable, not the
> way Elves are once you understand their circumstances. They'd be
> obvious stock villains.

I think you're right. Of course one might begin to argue over how
much should be included in understanding their circumstances -- if
Elven longevity is part of their circumstances, then why not the
divine corruption of the Orcs

The most important point, however, that I think should be mentioned
in this context, is the utter conviction of the Orcs that their
enemies (and Elves more than anyone) are crueller than themselves.
Not that this, in itself, will make the Orcs as a whole race
realistic, but it does, IMO, go some way towards making them less
/un/realistic.

<snip>

> Yes, but you said it yourself - *Gandalf recognizes his own
> vulnerability and frailty*. He *has* flaws, but there is no reason
> to think he has massive gaps in his moral consciousness of which
> he is utterly oblivious.

Gandalf is, I'd say, a special case -- he is a divine being and
even, during the story, is in direct contact with the Creator God.

Even in LotR there are some characters which belong to a kind of
'larger than life' category -- characters whose stature is, even as
individuals, beyond the scope of the reader, though even the
mechanism of how evil works on their minds (excepting such as
Sauron, the Balrog, the Watcher in the Water etc.) is wholly
realistic, even if their power to resist evil is probably not.

> Galadriel presents a similar problem. Could she possibly have had
> the better part of six millennia to meditate on guilt, pride,
> mercy, and redemption without even for one moment considering the
> possibility that Orcs might be even theoretically redeemable - in
> the same boat as the Noldor had been, but *much* further gone?
> Possibly with another author, but not, IMO, the way Tolkien
> depicts her.

I don't know about Galadriel, but shouldn't Gandalf's statement
about pitying even Sauron's slaves be understood to include also the
Orcs, Trolls and his other monstrous servants? And if we consider
also non-LotR material, there is the statement in MR (Myths
Transformed text X) that the Elves held that Orcs should always be
spared if they surrendered, that they should be slain only in war or
self-defence.

But yes, even in LotR there's a vestige of the old role as simply
the army of the Enemy -- to be killed without mercy as long as they
didn't ask for it (which, in any case, they didn't).

> (And yes, she has strong personal reasons to hate Orcs, but they
> don't, for instance, blind her to the danger of the Ring.)

Do we ever see her in a situation in which it would be natural for
her to mention whether Orcs could be redeemed? I don't think it would
really fit the scene with the mirror.

In any case Tolkien (though much later than LotR) wrote,

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.* This was the teaching
of the Wise, though in the horror of the War it was not
always heeded.

* [footnote to the text] Few Orcs ever did so in the Elder
Days, and at no time would any Orc treat with any Elf. For
one thing Morgoth had achieved was to convince the Orcs
beyond refutation that the Elves were crueller than
themselves, taking captives only for 'amusement', or to eat
them (as the Orcs would do at need).
[MR (HoMe 10), 'Myths Transformed' Text X]

CRT says about this text that 'there seems no reason to doubt that
it belongs to 1959-60', i.e. a decade after finishing LotR (the
narrative), but the view on the origin of Orcs expounded here is
largely consistent with the view underlying LotR (not evil in
origin, but corrupted).

It is debateable whether this 'Law' and the views expressed in the
above (with respect to how Elves and Men should react to Orcs)
really finds expression in LotR -- possibly the best one can say is
that it is not inconsistent with the actions in LotR.

>> I think that Tolkien wanted his portrayal in the book of good and
>> evil as forces on the human soul to be very realistic, indeed.
>
> Yes, very much so - he wanted his portrayal of human *behavior* to
> be realistic.

Yes.

Tolkien states in letter #181 that 'The Elves represent, as it were,
the artistic, aesthetic, and purely scientific aspects of the Humane
nature raised to a higher level than is actually seen in Men.' I
think that something similar is the case for Orcs -- that they
represent an aspect of human nature 'raised to a higher level than
is actually seen in Men.' As with the Elves this becomes, in the
individual Orc, wholly realistic, but as a group, a whole race, it
exceeds the level seen, or even achievable, by a group of Men.

<snip>

> LotR is a far cry from Huck Finn. AFAICT Tolkien doesn't ever
> present moral ambiguity or dissonance as a challenge for the
> reader. When people are doing wrong, the reader *knows* they are
> doing wrong, even if the character doesn't.

I think I'd put that in a slightly different way

The failure of Frodo at the Sammath Naur has certainly been
interpreted both ways ('I have had one savage letter, crying out
that he shd. have been executed as a traitor, not honoured.' --
letter #180), and I believe that there are other cases that present
some moral ambiguity.

Tolkien usually does make his own opinion, his own moral decision,
clear, so that the reader usually knows when Tolkien thinks that his
characters are doing wrong, but I don't think that is quite the same
as not presenting moral ambiguity -- I would rather say that he
presents the moral ambiguity and offers his own opinion for the
reader to consider.

--
Troels Forchhammer
Valid e-mail is <troelsfo(a)gmail.com>
Please put [AFT], [RABT] or 'Tolkien' in subject.

Only two things are infinite, the universe and human
stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former.
- Albert Einstein
 >> Stay informed about: The Istari were susceptible to mortal pitfalls. 

In message
<news:20080328210303.34CF.1.NOFFLE@dthierbach.news.arcor.de>
Dirk Thierbach <dthierbach.DeleteThis@usenet.arcornews.de> spoke these staves:
>
> Troels Forchhammer <Troels.DeleteThis@thisisfake.invalid> wrote:
>> Dirk Thierbach <dthierbach.DeleteThis@usenet.arcornews.de> spoke these
>> staves:
>>>
>>> Yes, but that's not the way Tolkien is looking at it. He doesn't
>>> want to analyze real human behaviour (at least not in this
>>> aspect), he's working from first principles.
>>
>> I'm not sure that is entirely correct. The Orcs is probably the
>> best counter-example of this, since the the portrayal of evil
>> ways that is provided through the orcs is so scaringly realistic.
>
> Excuse me? A whole race of beings that are bound to do only Evil,
> and only want to fight, is realistic?

Regarding the 'whole race' bit, please see my response to Bruce. But
even if the Orcs, as a whole race whose redemption cannot be achieved
by Elves or Men, is not realistic, it does not follow that Tolkien
was 'working from first principles'. The only real first principle in
Tolkien's writings is Eru, and he occupies only a very small role in
the stories about Middle-earth (except, of course, through grace and
providence, which pervades his world).

I don't know what state of the mythology you're thinking of with the
above description of the orcs, but it certainly doesn't fit the
portrayal of Orcs given in LotR.

> The bits inspired by "disgruntled soldiers" may be, but that's not
> what Rabe was talking about.

But I wasn't responding to Rafn -- I was objecting to your statement
that 'he's working from first principles', which I don't agree with
in any case.

> I mean, Tolkien does accurately analyze human behaviour, for
> example the "addiction" of the Ring, but certainly not in the
> Orcs.

Of course it isn't realistic when you look at it in large scale as a
whole race or a whole people, but that is not the level we're
introduced to in LotR. In LotR we see the evil of Orcs through the
invididual Orcs, and at that level I maintain their behaviour
/throughout/ is 'scaringly realistic', even down to laughing at
Ufthak hanging in Shelob's webs while at the same time condemning the
'great warrior' just leaving the 'little fellow'.

The picture in /The Hobbit/ is far more one-sided, I'd agree, but
even there we get a very small hint of there being more to Orcs than
only being 'bound to do only Evil'.

--
Troels Forchhammer
Valid e-mail is <troelsfo(a)gmail.com>
Please put [AFT], [RABT] or 'Tolkien' in subject.

It is the theory which decides what can be observed.
- Albert Einstein (1879-1955)
 >> Stay informed about: The Istari were susceptible to mortal pitfalls. 

On Sat, 29 Mar 2008 10:49:27 -0700, Paul S. Person
<psperson RemoveThis @ix.netscom.com.invalid> wrote:

<just a clarification>

>in particular the Hobbits, who speak Elvish, are, in some
>cases, Elf-friends,

Well, /that/ got pretty munged. Hobbits, of course, spoke the Common
Tongue, mostly; Bilbo and Frodo had some Elvish (Bilbo, of course, was
probably quite good at Elvish after spending 17 years or so at
Rivendell); Bilbo was declared an "Elf-friend" at least in the
material in /HOTH/ (I don't recall if that survived into /TH/). Sam
adored the Elves. So the core point (that the Red Book, written by
Bilbo, Frodo, and Sam must be presumed to reflect an Elvish viewpoint,
not perhaps exclusively, but certainly not a neutral or pro-Orc
viewpoint) is still as valid as it ever was.
--
"A portent, therefore, happens not contrary to nature,
but contrary to what we know as nature."
 >> Stay informed about: The Istari were susceptible to mortal pitfalls. 

"Paul S. Person" <psperson.TakeThisOut@ix.netscom.com.invalid> wrote in message

> So the core point (that the Red Book, written by
> Bilbo, Frodo, and Sam must be presumed to reflect an Elvish viewpoint,
> not perhaps exclusively, but certainly not a neutral or pro-Orc
> viewpoint) is still as valid as it ever was.

Given Bilbo's experience with them in the cave, and what Frodo and Sam saw
of them 1st hand, I don't believe the Elvish viewpoint needs to rub off on
them at all. All three had up close and personal reasons to ascribe to "the
only good Orc is a dead Orc" school of thought.
I'm quite sure Merry an Pippin, if polled, would also line up of thier own
accord.

-W
 >> Stay informed about: The Istari were susceptible to mortal pitfalls. 

On Sun, 30 Mar 2008 15:15:58 -0500, "Clams Canino"
<cc-marine RemoveThis @earthdink.net> wrote:

>
>"Paul S. Person" <psperson RemoveThis @ix.netscom.com.invalid> wrote in message
>
>> So the core point (that the Red Book, written by
>> Bilbo, Frodo, and Sam must be presumed to reflect an Elvish viewpoint,
>> not perhaps exclusively, but certainly not a neutral or pro-Orc
>> viewpoint) is still as valid as it ever was.
>
>Given Bilbo's experience with them in the cave, and what Frodo and Sam saw
>of them 1st hand, I don't believe the Elvish viewpoint needs to rub off on
>them at all. All three had up close and personal reasons to ascribe to "the
>only good Orc is a dead Orc" school of thought.
>I'm quite sure Merry an Pippin, if polled, would also line up of thier own
>accord.

Which, of course, explains why the Orcs depicted seem so much more
human, as it were, than the "irredeemably evil" propaganda would lead
us to expect. And that, precisely, is what makes JRRT's reported
theological problem so puzzling: it is clear from his own writings
that the Orcs are not "irredeemably evil" in a sense that would cause
Eru's provision of fear to be a problem.

They are, of course, very nasty and brutish. But nothing they say or
do falls outside the span of human behavior; people can be quite nasty
and brutish as well. To say that the Orcs depicted by Bilbo, Frodo and
Sam, with input from Merry & Pippin, are "irredeemably evil" is to say
that (some) humans are "irredeemably evil", and that just won't work
in Christian theology, especially in those variants that define "evil"
as "absence of good" and assert that all choices made by are for (a
perceived) "good" and never for "evil".

It occurred to me last night (based in part on things I have read
recently on rabt, so this is not an original thought) that the phrase
"irredeemably evil" may not mean what I, at least, and, judging by the
problems it posed for him, JRRT, take it to mean. It might instead
mean this:

a) Orcs are "evil", in the opinion of the Elves, because they are
loyal to the Elves' Enemy; and
b) Orcs are "irredeemable" because they they are loyal to the Elves'
Enemy.

That is, "irredeemable" may mean, simply, that the Orcs cannot be
persuaded to abandon their allegiance to the Elves' Enemy and embrace
the Right Cause which, of course, is the cause of the Elves.

In that sense, a lot of people are "irredeemably evil", never mind
Orcs. Basically, all of those irritating types who do not think the
way we do and who refuse to admit that they are wrong are
"irredeemably evil" in this sense.

But that sense is far from the sort of "irredeemable evil" that would
make one wonder why God gave them souls.
--
"A portent, therefore, happens not contrary to nature,
but contrary to what we know as nature."
 >> Stay informed about: The Istari were susceptible to mortal pitfalls.