In Middle Earth, there is no difference between goblins and orcs. I don’t recall, but Tolkien may have dropped the g-word later.
There are two types of Orcs:
The original kind that turn to stone when exposed to sunlight, and a newer kind (called uruk-hai?) that don’t, and are a little bigger and stronger.
Both are raised in a very warlike, violent society, and have bad tempers. (Morgoth, Sauron’s mentor, created them, and probably bred them like someone might if they wanted violent fighting dogs.)
The sunlight limited the danger of the original orcs to the other races, except in the case of Dwarves, who liked to live in vast underground cities.
Yes. Actually played (written) well, and an entertaining character, IMO.
Actually, those are trolls that turn to stone. Orcs just really, really dislike the sun. This isn’t much of a factor in LOTR because (a) Saruman’s been tinkering and (b) Tolkien realized, as would Joss Whedon, that confining your bad guys’ activities to nighttime severely limits their effectiveness.
Gollum is by far the best thing to come out of “The Two Towers.” Well, a certain shield maiden was pretty good too.
If you’re using “race” in one of the modern senses, perhaps so, but Tolkien states in the prologue that they are closely related to men: “Despite we are separated now, the hobbits are close kin to us; anyway, they are closer to us than Elves, and even from the dwarves. In the ancient days they spoke in the human tongues, with a special dialect, and the same habits like us they have, for good and bad.”
Although the above may be somewhat ambiguous (Tolkien was writing as an editor, not an omniscient creator), the author was more explicit outside the book itself: “The Hobbits are, of course, really meant to be a branch of the specifically human race (not Elves or Dwarves) – hence the two kinds can dwell together (as at Bree), and are called just the Big Folk and Little Folk. They are entirely without non-human powers, but are represented as being more in touch with ‘nature’ (the soil and other living things, plants and animals), and abnormally, for humans, free from ambition or greed of wealth.”* Letters, 158 (#131)
So Tolkien definitely considered little folk and big folk to be of the same race, as he used the term in regards to his creation. As to how the the two types of folk saw each other, Tolkien tells us that little folk are (justifiably) shy and distrustful of big folk. And there are no recorded instances of them intermarrying. But Bree has already been offered as an example of the two types living together peacefully (which you would never see with dwarves and elves or men and only occasionally with elves and men), and Merry and Pippin do seem to ingratiate themselves awfully quickly in Rohan and Gondor.
If I cited my personal conversations with the professor people would think I was putting on airs (and really old to boot).
Also, LOTR is literally the end of an age. The events of the novel come after thousands of years in which most of the important events of history were in the hands of immortal beings. Now the immortals** are leaving the world of men. Elves who choose mortal lives choose to become part of the changing world. If it were possible for mortal men (especially proud men from an ancient and noble lineage) to become immortal at will, it could disrupt the new order.
>> Footnotes contain spoilers<<
The Sackville-Bagginses seem to have been unfortunate exceptions to the last part.
** For purposes of this discussion, we’ll consider any sentient being with an appointed lifespan of over 1,000 years to be immortal. The Valar and majority of the Maiar have already largely retreated from worldy affairs and Melkor has been exiled. By the end of the book, the (apparently) last Balrog has been killed and Sauron has been rendered incorporeal and powerless. Of the Istari, Gandalf is going home and Saruman has been destroyed (no word on Radagast or the Blues Brothers). The Elves are going to the Undying Lands. The Ents are dying out. The Dwarves (
Goblins are Orcs and Orcs are Goblins (more or less). The goblin term comes from The Hobbit where it gets used in conjunction with orc.
The thing about Tolkien’s work is that the Lord of the Rings is simply an outgrowth of a deeply crafted world he had been building for the majority of his life. You can see pieces of this history poke through in the LotR with references to Gondor, Arnor, Elendil, the Rings of Power, the Last Alliance. In short ~6000 years before the war of the ring there were a number of elven kingdoms in a portion of middle earth further to the west. They were in a 500 year war with demiurgic power called Morgoth. Sauron was merely a powerful servant of this power. The primary shock troops of Morgoth were orcs – beings filled with nothing but a mindless desire to smash, kill and destroy. The elves ultimately lost and had to be rescued by the Valar in a war which effectively sank that western portion of the world under the sea.
Now the sword Frodo has is an artifact of The Hobbit. That was written as a fairy tale and had many more magical aspects like the swords wielded by Gandalf and Frodo being forged in one the ancient elven realms (Gondolin).
Orcs (and, as has been noted, “goblin” is just another name for orc here) were among the primary (and undoubtedly most numerous) servants of the BBEG in Middle-Earth since the First Age. IIRC, Morkoth (ne Melkor, at one time Sauron’s boss before he was finally defeated at the end of the First Age) created them by corrupting elves which he had captured.
I also seem to recall that “goblin” was most typically a term used for the orcs of the Misty Mountains (which are the orcs seen in “The Hobbit”, as well as in Moria). Not sure to what extent that’s ret-conning different terminology being used in “The Hobbit” vs. LotR.
As orcs were the primary soldiers for their enemy, one can see why the elves created weapons that warned them when orcs were nearby.
(As has been noted elsewhere, Gandalf’s sword, which was also recovered from the orcs in “The Hobbit”, has the same orc-warning property, though it never seems to do so in the movies (and, Sting only does so as a plot device). I’ve read that this was a conscious decision, so that Gandalf and Frodo didn’t look like they were wielding lightsabers.
If you’re thinking of the critters that capture Frodo and the dwarves in “The Hobbit”, and Gandalf tricks into staying outside of their cave until dawn, those are trolls.
Orcs weren’t comfortable in sunlight, but it didn’t incapacitate them or petrify them.
In “The Two Towers”, the group of orcs that captured Merry and Pippin are a mix of Saruman’s Uruk-Hai and orcs from Mordor. The Mordor orcs are unhappy running in the sunlight, while the Uruk-Hai (who were cross-bred with humans to minimize that weakness) mock them for that weakness).
Negative, that’s trolls. “Oldschool” orcs would, however, be nigh paralyzed with terror by bright sunlight.
Also, yes, Orcs were not only the most numerous, but also, in a way, the most stealthy of the foes of the elves - one generally didn’t need a glowing sword to tell if a dragon or a balrog was drawing near.
Can I suggest before watching it for the second time (with subtitles on) to read The Hobbit. It’s a quick easy read and explains a lot about Bilbo’s past with the ring along with Gandalf and Gimli’s relatives. It’s also referenced a lot in the first film (stone trolls, riddles in the dark, my precious, etc.).
When the fellowship flees Moria after the fall of Gandalf, Aragon says that the Orcs will be out in force after sundown. If the Orcs were really allied or servants of Sauron, sunlight be damned, out they should have come. They did came out (working for Saruman) when they kidnap the two hobbits and flee through Rohan back to Isengard.
The other was something said in the Hobbit, while Bilbo was lost in the caves (and eventually found his way to Gollum’s Lair). I thought the orcs in the hobbit were afraid of getting turned into stone. I’m probably misremembering.
The orcs of Moria had been underground for a long time. They weren’t Uruk-hai and really didn’t like being out in the Sun. Aragorn knew they would also still be unorganized and badly shaken by the death of the Balrog, the dominant power in Moria for many years. Once night fell, however, they would come after the Fellowship.
Some have suggested that goblins were simply smaller, weaker, more craven orcs.
Not quite. Or rather, quite and then some. In The Hobbit, Gandalf’s sword Glamdring and Thorin’s sword Orcrist were presented as a pair, but they weren’t really, except in the eyes of the orcs. Orcrist (the name means “goblin-cleaver”) was, like Bilbo’s, a weapon specifically forged to be of value against orcs, but Glamdring (“foe-hammer”) was forged against all enemies, and would glow when any enemy was near. This makes Glamdring considerably more valuable, and indeed it had a much more prestigious history of prior ownership back in Gondolin (one of the old great Elf-kingdoms in the First Age). I don’t think it’s even said anywhere who the original owner of Orcrist was.
There was a post a bit back containing some questions. The one regarding the ring’s powers was answered pretty thoroughly, but there’s another one that I didn’t know the answer to that I don’t think got addressed.
When Gimli suggests traveling through the mines of Moria in Fellowship, how does he **not **know that the whole place has been overrun by goblins? It’s been a long time since I read the books, so I don’t remember how it was explained there, and the movie (IIRC) never did. I always assumed that it was something like “Middle Earth doesn’t have the same kind of information network that our society does, and the dwarves keep to themselves anyway, so no one would be surprised to get no news out of the mine, and no one would bother to visit.” Which always seemed pretty weak to me (c’mon, seriously, it’s a freakin’ mine, nobody thinks it’s weird that they’re not selling any ore or buying any supplies?).
Because it was spoiler tagged originally, and I’m trying to keep consistency. It would be a spoiler for anyone who hadn’t seen the first movie, certainly. Is it really that big of a deal to click a box to potentially save someone else finding out something earlier than they’d like? I made sure to specify which movie, so that people could click or not click as they chose.
As for your explanation…
I don’t really get it. Are you saying that Gimli actually suspected that everyone was dead? He seemed pretty enthusiastic about the whole idea of going through Moria, actively encouraging the Fellowship to take that route. If he had any inkling, I can’t see him *not *bringing it up. Now, Gandalf probably knew what was up, but that’s presumably because of his Crazy Eldritch Powers of Gandalfness, so it still doesn’t explain why the Moria situation wasn’t common knowledge, at least among dwarves, and especially one related to the guy who was supposed to be running the place.
It’s not a big deal to click, but it was my understanding that we weren’t spoilering anything from the first movie because the OP (who sets the spoiler rules) already saw it.
I think Gimli was probably smart enough to figure something wasn’t right, for the reasons you already mentioned. But some people handle bad news poorly, and he may have been in denial.
Ever hear of a woman who refuses to accept that her husband is cheating on her, up to the very moment she catches him literally with his pants down?
Some folks live in a reality that they tried to reshape through wishful thinking.
I don’t recall if Gimli was a trained (regular) warrior who saw much active warfare, or what. He had some stereotype opinions about elves, too, until he actually interacted with them in Lothlorien, that got on Legolas’ nerves.
I thought about it, but I decided that because threads don’t exist for just the OP, someone else might come through here who *hasn’t *seen the first movie yet, and I didn’t want to spoil it for that hypothetical reader. I’m not gonna get all bent out of shape if other people don’t spoiler first-movie stuff, though–it’s just something I’m doing. For now, anyway.
Balin was seeking Mithril, which is a significant enterprise, and had only returned to re-open the mine some years after the events of The Hobbit[ – Balin entered the mine in 2989, and was killed in 2994, in other words, he had only been there 5 years and there is no evidence (er, that I remember) that the mine ever produced goods in that time. Gimli may have had his misgivings, but I wouldn’t say he was necesarily in denial or that the dwarves of Moria were obviously dead.
It would be like you had a friend that went to live high in the Himalayas and you didn’t hear from him for a year. You might be a little worried but you wouldn’t assume that he was dead, right?
TWDuke, are you freaking kidding me? You snark at me because I’m worried about spoilers and then say something totally mild and barely semi-spoilery, then you go ahead and lay out the entire spoiler-ridden plot of the next two movies and don’t even put it in a spoiler box!
God I hope choie didn’t read that. choie, if you managed to catch yourself at TWDuke’s “thoughtful” (not) warning that the footnotes of his post contain spoilers, I’d suggest you just stay away from this thread altogether until you’ve seen the next two movies. People are bound and determined to ruin them for you.
I appreciate Shot From Guns’s reticence to discuss Fellowship stuff openly, since the thread could attract other LOTR newbies. The thread is definitely not just my own playground. It’s better and most considerate to err on the side of caution.
OTOH, since we have been doing open discussion of Fellowship since I saw the film, I think that particular ship has sailed down Anduin and headed over the Falls of Ruoros. (See? See? I know something!)
So to make certain, here’s a warning:
Warning! Below this point, spoilers for The Fellowship of the Rings (the first LOTR movie) may be discussed without spoiler boxes! Newbies and Spoilerphobes beware!
Once I see The Two Towers I’ll post another note. Is that okay? Not that I own the thread or anything, of course; anyone can post anything if you like. I just might choose to depart the thread if the general consensus is to discuss stuff openly.
Anyway: grazie to everyone who answered my orcs v. goblins question. I must say I did find it curious that they mentioned goblins once or twice once entering the Mines, but from then on it was nothing but orcs. If they’re basically interchangeable, that makes sense.
I suppose there aren’t hobgoblins in this universe either, huh?
Edited to Add: Yeah, Equipose, I didn’t notice the “Spoilers may be found in these footnotes” line because once I saw the little footnote I immediately scrolled to read it, rather than noticing the warning. (That’s how I read footnotes in real life!) But while I did see the info about Sauron, well, to be honest, that’s not really that much of a spoiler. I wasn’t expecting…
a miserable ending where Sauron was still in power and incarnate in some way. I figured he’d be destroyed and things would generally end up okay.
Again, I don’t mind at all if people chat about the books and films, just pleeease put 'em in spoiler boxes? Please? Thanks, guys.
