Haerangil
Well-Known Member
It’s perfectly possible in many other settings to have morally complex orcs.
Yeah, and it makes them LESS inteResting, not MORE.
anyway that is how i perceive it.
It’s perfectly possible in many other settings to have morally complex orcs.
Yeah, and it makes them LESS inteResting, not MORE.
anyway that is how i perceive it.
I do consider JRRT "orc problem" is more a derivate of the more basic "elf problem". How exactly do elves differ from humans. How exactly an unfallen but only marred race works. When we have only elves in the story this is not necessary to be resolved. But if he wanted to understand the exact mechanism of how such a race can get corrupted, not having a total understanding of how elves actually work starts to be a problem. But he loved elves too much to dissect them. So he sough for other solutions. But imho his first instinct was right. The "elves to orcs" solutions is both the most logical and most elegant one. We just have to accept not to understanding the exact mechanism of the transition. We want to understand evil according to the "understand you enemy" premise. But as we see in Saruman, this can be dangerous and it if safer to curb down this our desire to understand the methods of the enemy a little bit.I appreciate JRRT himself had an orc problem, but I’m saying that textually perhaps there doesn’t need to be one. We could accept it as enrichment to the reality. In the same way character flaws and discrepancies add to the world’s richness.
This is exactly what I meant in the beginning. To me there is no orc problem at all. But I just trying to understand, why Tolkien had one. And it comes down for me to 2. points.Sorry, I think you’ve lost me there. I don’t really understand what you mean by ‘how elves work’. Elves are elves. There a race of people, no? Sorry, I’m not trying to be intentionally obtuse I just don’t quite get the point being made.
The more we discuss it the more I don’t really have an issue with orcs at all. I’m not sure they are anything more than a race of people potentially descended from elves. I’m not sure I personally see a problem therein anymore. We see they are beings with individual motivation and agency and aren’t just a homogenous hive mind of evil. They are are a race of creatures. What happens to them after death might be unknown but it frankly doesn’t need to factor anymore into the story anymore so than what happens to humans right? I think the question I want to ask to address the premise of the initial question is this: is there actually an Orc Problem? #orcsareorcs
This is exactly what I meant in the beginning. To me there is no orc problem at all. But I just trying to understand, why Tolkien had one. And it comes down for me to 2. points.
1. He modeled orcs after a kind of humans he met. So in his mind the human-orc connection is strong.
2. He loved elves too much to deconstruct them to see how they work to understand how they could be broken. (Watching Melkor over the shoulder taking them apert was too much for him to bear.)
A tangential question (but not sure where else to put it): at what point are most elves aware that orcs came from elves? I'm scratching my brain to think where the point for this knowledge to spread widely would be. This is possibly due to the fact that a single idea was never committed to by Tolkien himself. Am I missing something?
I do think is only a conclusion that the "wise" among themselves have come to and most beyond this circle of academics never really care to bother.
A tangential question (but not sure where else to put it): at what point are most elves aware that orcs came from elves? I'm scratching my brain to think where the point for this knowledge to spread widely would be. This is possibly due to the fact that a single idea was never committed to by Tolkien himself. Am I missing something?
That is not the point.Are we basing the whole idea of orcs healing people on the drink they give to Pippin when he can't stand up? I would point out that they are not interested in healing him, only in making him able to walk (run) on his own so they don't have to carry him any more. It's not healing, it's strengthening. It's drinking from the Entwash that heals the hobbits.