Ugluk and Grishnakh were following different masters. That’s what made them funny. Shagrat and Gorbag were arguing technicalities.
That was two Southrons (or was it Easterlings?). In any case - it was two men.
Brian
No they weren’t - they were motivated soleby by his will, and it isn’t until he moves to smite them and they react, that they respond as sentient beings. That’s Eru’s doing.
We don’t know their true origin, only that it might have been the Elves waking them. Are you claiming the Elves can create sentient life, now?
Per Tolkien himself, Morgoth could only corrupt, not create. Frodo is quoted as saying “The Shadow that bred them can only mock, it cannot make: not real new things of its own. I don’t think it gave life to Orcs, it only ruined them and twisted them …”
and in letter #151, Tolkien says Frodo was right, and Treebeard was wrong to say they were “created in mockery”
That doesn’t excuse the complaints about the food.
“Arguing technicalities”? That’s an interesting interpretation for the stab-in-the-back deadly fight that happens in the Tower.
I don’t think so. Going by a cached blog post that appears to copy the Silmarillion text:
After Aulë responded by offering up the Dwarves to Ilúvatar, he took up his hammer to destroy them. At that point:
I don’t remember what happened with the Ents, but as for Morgoth, most of the prominent creatures on his side (Balrogs, Dragons) were embodiments of Maiar, IIRC.
No, I think the reference is to Gorbag and Shagrat reminiscing about the “Good Old Days” and “The Great Siege” (almost as if they’d been there!)
It only just occurred to me, and I’m pretty sure it’s not addressed anywhere in Tolkien’s writings, but his pal C.S. Lewis was of the opinion that eternal life in the absence of grace would turn into a literal hell for an individual, whence he couldn’t be retrieved even by the love of God. Take an ordinary person who has even just a mildly bad temper or tendency toward peevishness and raise it to the power of ten thousand years, and that peevishness would be compounded into a towering demonic rage.
And many (if not all?) of the orcs may have gone through exactly that experience as they were ground down through millennia of beatings, hard beds and bad food – if, say, they were the one and the same orcs that survived the siege of Angband (as MrDibble hints above). And an orc that did have a chance at redemption? Hacked down ten thousand years ago by Gothmog and company, when he had the poor judgment to comment on the beauty of the sunset. Too bad, so sad.
I know it’s not canon, but in the Rankin-Bass cartoon of ROTK, Samwise even sees a future where hobbits & orcs can live together in peace.
But that was part of the delusion brought on by his holding the Ring, wasn’t it?
That was part of the delusion brought on by being forced to be a part of the Rankin Bass production.
I liked it, though. Where there’s a whip (CRACK!) / There’s a way!
The kind of regular guys they were talking about being, though, were the sort that hang out “with a few trusty lads with good loot nice and handy, and no Big Bosses” --“like old times”. They didn’t like being a cog in Sauron’s world-domination machine - they wanted to be small-time thugs and bandits answerable only to themselves, that’s all. If there are any peaceful farming and marketing orcs, we never hear about them.
Hey–just wanted to say thanks to everyone for the info–I’m enjoying learning and reading the discussion!
I once shot an orc in Reno to watch him die. And also for 50 experience points.
Anyone else sing this song whenever watching that scene in the PJ ROTK ?
I’m not really sure I’d agree with that. If anything, I’d argue the opposite.
I can think of several places in LOTR where Tolkien went out of his way to show that he didn’t consider evil characters irredeemable. For instance, Frodo understands that the dying Southron soldier was probably not inherently evil; Gandalf (the White) gives Sauruman a chance to repent and join the good guys again (it appears Sauruman considers accepting); and of course Smeagol/Gollum is, with Frodo’s pity and understanding, right on the edge of being redeemed.
[stopping before I write a full-blown essay on the contrast between Tolkien’s epic Manichean Good vs Evil stories and his ‘all of us are imperfect but capable of good’ ethics and storytelling]
As far as the Ents go, I think along with the explanation of the dwarves creation, Yavanna goes to Manwe and wants to know who will protect the things that can’t defend themselves like Trees. Manwe consults with Eru and then via Eru magic, the Ents are “born.” Which doesn’t mean they “awaken” before the Elves appear later.
As far as the orcs go, in the Lord of the Rings, they seem fit the situation as needed. To me their motivation was mostly fear of Sauron and hatred of everything but orcs. In the Silmarillion we don’t really get much from the orc point of view, except maybe when they were celebrating after getting Barahir’s hand with Felagund’s ring on it. And when they captured Turin. Just brief glimpses, really.
Another question: Morgoth created the dragons, didn’t he? It doesn’t really specify how they came about, they just appeared.
Hmm now you’ve got me wondering if they might have had any more luck with the Jem’Hadar child if Worf had been around… maybe he would have had some insight, having gone through the same experience.
I’m not saying it would have been a success, but I’m curious to see how Worf would have dealt with him.
I think the closest orcs get to being civilians is the wild orcs/goblins, like those in The Hobbit or Moria. They still want to raid and kill, but they do it under their own steam.
ETA: Farming is tricky when you can’t stand sunlight.
As said above, he couldn’t “create.” What they were derived from, who knows?
One thing to note, however, is that successive generations of dragons were tougher than the earlier ones - they didn’t have wings to start with, for instance. This is contrasted by the giant spiders (whose ultimate ancestor, Ungoliant, was about Ainur-level) which were getting smaller and weaker over time.
edit: typo
I don’t get it. Just because your plants need the sunlight doesn’t mean you have to be there while they use it. What’s the problem with ploughing, sowing, watering, harvesting by night ?
(or if there is one, why not just farm 'shrooms in the dank and dark ?)