Orcs are supposed to be descended from elves. Are they allowed into Valinor? Or would it depend upon from which elves they were descended?
Not so much descended from the Elves as a corrupted creation of Morgoth based on captured Elves… Kind of like genetic engineering maybe?
No idea of their afterlife, tho. Sorry.
More will come.
I’d venture to guess that the Orcs would be unable to find The Straight Road. And if they did, by golly, Varda would smite them all the way back to Mordor. I am sure someone will be by with a better answer, though.
As for their origins, in The Simarillion it is postulated that the orcs are descendents of the Avari (JRRT, 50 & 94), who had become twisted by years of imprisonment in Utumno.
From The Silmarillion Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston: 1983.
A lot about the orcs is unknown. For example, since they’re descended from elves, are they immortal? We don’t know one way or the other, but if they are it might explain why they seem to replenish their numbers so quickly. Also, where are the female orcs? The movies showed them bursting out of pods, but in the novels there’s no reason not to assume that there are female orcs somewhere. It’s possible that the females were kept in the fortresses like Barad-Dur and that place that the Nazgul lived in (the city below Cirith Ungol; what was its name?) If this was the case, then perhaps the orcs died out because when Mordor was destroyed all the orc women died.
In any event, I really can’t imagine orcs being allowed into Valinor. Perhaps they went to some sort of hell, or perhaps Eru had some other solution for them, like reincarnation as humans.
Unknown, of couse, but Tolkein implied they were at a couple of points, when a couple of orcs talk about an event several centuries back as if it were yesterday. He aparently grew dissatisfied with this idea, and might have changed it but never got around to it.
Unknown. Reincarnation (well, as somebody else; elves came back in their own bodies in Valinor if they died) was not a part of elven or human lives and not part of the Catholic ideas the books’ theology was based on. The orcs occupied an uncomfortable middle ground.
As slaves (mind, body, and presumably soul) or Morgoth, they did not appear to have free will. Morgoth wasn’t very big on the idea, really, except for himself. Tolkein felt they had to be truly living, soulful beings, but realized he’d left to good place for them.
personally, I suspect he might eventually have had their dead manning the gates of Arda to watch for Morgoth, in retribution for the crime of sendign them into lifelong torment and evil.Minas Morgul
Tolkien however did suggest reincarnation among the Dwarves, didn’t he?
I’ve posted this before, but I believe that an Orc could, in principle, be redeemed, and therefore be no longer an Orc, but an ugly Elf. Or perhaps not so ugly: The Orcs were ugly in the first place because of the corruption of evil in them; an Orc who shook off that corruption might be able to grow more beautiful again. Such a reformed Orc would presumably be allowed the same privelidge of entry into Valinor as any other Elf.
But I think it’s safe to say that most Orcs are so far gone that it would take extraordinary divine grace and effort of will for one to be redeemed, and I’m not going to bet that it ever happened.
In Elvish tradition, the Dwarves return to the stone from which they were created. In Dwarvish tradition, they are gathered into a seperate place in the Halls of Mandos and are gathered up by Mahal (Aule, their creator) and be reincarnated after the Last Battle.
Chronos that is a very intriguing thought! Given Tolkien’s fondness for themes of redemption and grace, I wouldn’t discount it, either.
I believe Friar Ted was referencing the periodical reincarnation of Durin, actually.
But the book only says that periodically a Dwarf was born who looked extremely like a new incarnation of Durin, and was named such (and widely considered to be?), not that he actually was.
JRRT struggled with the idea of whether or not the orcs were redeemable. He disliked the idea that he’d invented an inherently evil thinking race. Unfortunately he never got everything untangled before he died.
We’ve had threads on this before, tho I think it’s been at least a year. No time to track it all down right now though, sorry. But if you search cafe society for my name, “orcs”, “evil”, “mandos” you might locate the thread.
Dwarves’ fate was discussed before also, IIRC.
The impression I got, remembering that Tolkien was a devout Catholic, is that Durin II-VII were more akin to the Elijah/John the Baptist thing than straight metempsychosis. I.e., the new Durin looks and acts very much like the one(s) that went before, but is a separate person. I don’t think Tolkien ever pins that down clearly, though, though I don’t have access to much of HOME.
Well, yes. I just mentioned that I thought that was what Friar Ted was referencing, not that I thought he had it clear. 
Thanks 
Shame on you!
Saying that a little sweetie like THIS was evil!
She’d be let into Valinor, if only because pom-poms are very Elvish!
Maybe they get the same deal as the Discworld dwarves. Perhaps you see the female Orcs all the time, but they look and act just like their male brethren.
“All dwarfs have beards and wear up to twelve layers of clothing. Gender is more or less optional.”
-Terry Pratchett, Guards! Guards!
Heh heh.
I remember how in the movies, Aragorn implied that dwarf women have beards. I don’t think this is canon, but it is a widely held interpretation of Gimli’s comments regarding dwarf women and men being similar in appearance.