Q: Are J.R.R. Tolkien’s Orcs Genetically Evil?
ANSWER: This question comes straight out of an online discussion which wandered all over the place. I decided to focus on this one question. It’s not clear to me what people think “genetically evil” is supposed to mean. J.R.R. Tolkien never used the words “genes”, “genetics”, or any of their derivatives. Danish scientist Wilhelm Ludvig Johannsen coined the word genes in 1905, so Tolkien should have been familiar with it and understood its meaning.
It would have been contrary to his principles to think in terms of a “genetically superior” caste or race (of men). That is, he didn’t believe in the inherent superiority of a group of people over others. He mocked the Nazi concept of a “master race” and when he retired he gave a speech that roundingly condemned South African-style apartheid (in government, society, and higher education).
As an author, J.R.R. Tolkien struggled to define or explain (at least to his own satisfaction) what “evil” is supposed to be. The question wasn’t simply limited to the nature of Dragons, Orcs, and Trolls – but was equally applied to all living things within Middle-earth. There were even birds capable of behaving badly or acting on behalf of evil, even if their own intentions were not necessarily evil.
Were Orcs Irredeemably Evil?
Tolkien’s thoughts about Orcs wandered all over the philosophical map. And, frankly, he dropped many random comments about Orcs and their wildness or evilness throughout his notes and essays. It would be a monumental task to compile everything, organize it chronologically, and then connect it to the primary published works that were contemporary with those notes.
In Morgoth’s Ring there is a note in the “Myths Transformed” section where J.R.R. Tolkien writes:
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.
The footnote (denoted by *) reads:
* [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).
The primary text continues:
It is true, of course, that Morgoth held the Orcs in dire thraldom; for in their corruption they had lost almost all possibility of resisting the domination of his will. So great indeed did its pressure upon them become ere Angband fell that, if he turned his thought towards them, they were conscious of his ‘eye’ wherever they might be; and when Morgoth was at last removed from Arda the Orcs that survived in the West were scattered, leaderless and almost witless, and were for a long time without control or purpose.
This servitude to a central will that reduced the Orcs almost to an ant-like life was seen even more plainly in the Second and Third Ages under the tyranny of Sauron, Morgoth’s chief lieutenant. Sauron indeed achieved even greater control over his Orcs than Morgoth had done….
The author here clearly suggests that Orcs were NOT “irredeemable” – but rather had been deprived of their freedom to choose for themselves by Morgoth and Sauron. And, of course, throughout the stories there are hints that Orcish culture contributes much to the cruel and “evil” behavior of these poor creatures.
In (draft) Letter No. 153, which Tolkien wrote to Peter Hastings in September 1954, he wrote:
To conclude: having mentioned Free Will, I might say that in my myth I have used ‘subcreation’ in a special way … to make visible and physical the effects of Sin or misused Free Will by men. Free Will is derivative, and is only operative within provided circumstances; but in order that it may exist, it is necessary that the Author should guarantee it, whatever betides: sc. when it is ‘against His Will’, as we say, at any rate as it appears on a finite view. He does not stop or make ‘unreal’ sinful acts and their consequences. So in this myth, it is ‘feigned’ (legitimately whether that is a feature of the real world or not) that He gave special ‘subcreative’ powers to certain of His highest created beings: that is a guarantee that what they devised and made should be given the reality of Creation. Of course within limits, and of course subject to certain commands or prohibitions. But if they ‘fell’, as the Diabolus Morgoth did, and started making things ‘for himself, to be their Lord’, these would then ‘be’, even if Morgoth broke the supreme ban against making other ‘rational’ creatures like Elves or Men. They would at least ‘be’ real physical realities in the physical world, however evil they might prove, even ‘mocking’ the Children of God. They would be Morgoth’s greatest Sins, abuses of his highest privilege, and would be creatures begotten of Sin, and naturally bad. (I nearly wrote ‘irredeemably bad’; but that would be going too far. Because by accepting or tolerating their making – necessary to their actual existence – even Orcs would become part of the World, which is God’s and ultimately good.) But whether they could have ‘souls’ or ‘spirits’ seems a different question; and since in my myth at any rate I do not conceive of the making of souls or spirits, things of an equal order if not an equal power to the Valar, as a possible ‘delegation’, I have represented at least the Orcs as pre-existing real beings on whom the Dark Lord has exerted the fullness of his power in remodelling and corrupting them, not making them. That God would ‘tolerate’ that, seems no worse theology than the toleration of the calculated dehumanizing of Men by tyrants that goes on today. There might be other ‘makings’ all the same which were more like puppets filled (only at a distance) with their maker’s mind and will, or ant-like operating under direction of a queen-centre.
I think that’s a significant acknowledgment that if the Orcs exist and exercise Free Will then they can only do so because God accepts that they should exist and have Free Will – in which case, there could (within the scope of God’s love for his Children) be a path to redemption for them, even if it’s only a hypothetical path.
Elsewhere Tolkien implies or speculates (in his “feigned scholarship” mode) that Orcs were a branch of Men, or became merged with Men, in which case their descendants as Men must have available to them all paths of redemption available to Men.
So I don’t think Tolkien could fully resolve himself to the idea that Orcs were irredeemably evil. They were capable of acting independently, and choosing to do evil on their own. But they were also capable of being less evil than Morgoth and Sauron forced them to be. That point Tolkien mentions in passing in a couple of places, especially in essays published in The Nature of Middle-earth. The “eastern Orcs” who didn’t participate in Morgoth’s wars in Beleriand remained relatively independent throughout much of the Second Age until Sauron decided to create an empire based in Mordor. Even so, the eastern Orcs were least likely to remain fiercely loyal to Sauron.
All Of Tolkien’s Major Races Committed Horrendous Evil
Elves, Dwarves, Men, and Orcs – each has its own story of a moral fall (or more than one). None of these races were perfect or irrevocably “good”.
The Noldor not only rebelled against the Valar, they attacked the Teleri in Aman and Beleriand and slew many innocent Elves. They were corrupted by Melkor, of course, but eventually their sins became their own.
Even Thingol became embroiled in the corruption Melkor had sewed among the Elves, and his desire for a Silmaril eventually led to his downfall.
Dwarves proved capable of committing evil from early on. The Petty-dwarves were outcasts from the great Dwarven civilization. But the Dwarves of Belegost eventually attacked the Elves of Doriath. And later on (Tolkien noted) the eastern Dwarves “became evil”. Some Dwarves, too, apparently even fought for Sauron in the War of the Last Alliance of Elves and Men (so the narrative seems to imply).
Many Men, of course, fell into evil – but so, too, did the majority of the Númenóreans before the end of the Second Age. And from the descendants of the Faithful in the Third Age even more Númenóreans became evil, or at least committed evil.
The “good peoples” of Middle-earth were as capable of slaughtering or enslaving their enemies as the Orcs, and Elves, Dwarves, and Men proved to be more capable than the Orcs on many occasions: “Both sides were pitiless, and there was death and cruel deeds by dark and by light.”
There’s Biology, Of Course
Tolkien did mention the biological kinship of Men with Elves and Hobbits in his letters. So by implication he nods a bit in the direction of “genetics”. But the biological kinship – even if extended only between Orcs and Men – implies that the Orcs were biologically “human”.
In Christian theology we are all “born into sin”. That is, thanks to Adam’s rebellion in Eden, we are all born with a propensity to sin. Our sinful nature makes it easy for someone else to entice us into sin, but we essentially sin because we are selfish creatures. The sacrifice of Jesus for all is an offer of free and full pardon, for all sins committed up to his death and resurrection and all sins committed afterward. Some opinions vary on whether we lose that sinful nature after accepting salvation or if Christ’s blood merely covers our sins and therefore we can still continue to sin (even though we shouldn’t) and will continue to be forgiven.
This is as close as Christian theology gets to genetics in the sense of the question about whether Tolkien’s Orcs are genetically evil. I don’t think he envisioned them as being more capable of or prone to evil than Men in general. But they were bred to be subservient to Melkor (and later to Sauron).
That breeding is itself an awful sin but it’s a sin of the masters, not the slaves. One can speculate on how Tolkien might have rationalized Orcish susceptibility to (Dark) Ainurian mental influence, but ultimately I think Tolkien decided the Orcs had some Free Will and thererfore were not “born to be evil” or simply evil automatota.
Conclusion
This kind of discussion ultimately begs the question of whether Tolkien saw Men (either as Author or as a Christian) as inherently evil. He saw us as redeemable, and so not as irredeemably evil.
Redemption is a major theme in Tolkien’s fiction. Everyone is flawed in Middle-earth. There is no one perfect (except the God and those of his angels who remain faithful, of course – but as a group even the Ainur are capable of moral failure).
I think as an author Tolkien felt that if he created a flawed race then he had to leave them a glimmer of hope of some future redemption. The Orcs may seem hopeless because they’re pushed around like pawns by Melkor and Sauron, but I feel they are much more interesting when one sees them as creatures capable of thinking for themselves, acting on their own behalf, and occasionally not behaving like classic evil stereotypes.
I’m not saying that Tolkien’s Orcs are good characters. We only see them when they’re engaged in committing evil. It’s comparable to only seeing Númenóreans when they’re taking slaves, or Noldor when they’re slaughtering their Telerin neighbors. The Elves and Men seem so much better by comparison to the Orcs because we see them at their best as well as at their worst.
Maybe the Orcs didn’t have much of a “best” to behold, but they had the capacity to be better because they were ultimately “just different aspects of the Humane” (Cf. Letter No. 181).
See also
Did Any Orcs and Trolls Fight against Sauron in the War of the last Alliance?
Did J.R.R. Tolkien Invent Orcs?
Are Orcs, Trolls and Dragons Immortal, Unless Killed?
Is It True There Is Racism in The Lord of the Rings?
Is That An Orc in Your Pocket or Are You Just Happy to Be Evil? (Classic Essay)
All the King’s Horses, and All the King’s Men (Classic Essay)
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If I may, this is my own theory about the origins and nature of Orcs. I agree that a focus on genetics is an unnecessary complication, not to mention that it would take Tolkien’s legendarium closer to science fiction than fantasy. However, it may be fruitful to look at inherited traits (or “heritable states,” as Tolkien put it), especially if we imagine that one could potentially inherit spiritual qualities.
The Orc’s origin story from the Silmarillion always struck me as being a little off. It says that Melkor sent evil spirits to the hills around Cuiviénen, and they would sometimes catch Elves who had strayed away too far from the others. They would take these Elves to Utumno, where they were corrupted into Orcs.
The thing is, I don’t think that makes much sense from Melkor’s point of view. Why would he bother to be sneaky about it? If he wanted Elves, and he knew where they lived, why wouldn’t he just roll in and take as many as he could find? He was the undisputed ruler of Middle-earth, and he had been for thousands of years. Why would he need to be cautious?
Also, no matter how much you corrupt an Elf, their children would not inherit that corruption. In his notes, Tolkien says that only Eru would have had the power to pervert an entire group of people and to make that state heritable (HoMe, vol 10, pt. 5, text VIII). Therefore, corruption and perversion wouldn’t be sufficient to create a new race of people.
Also, I don’t think Melkor would have even cared about the Elves all that much, at least at that point in history. We’re told that he didn’t pay much attention to the Third Theme of Ilúvatar (which many people think was principally about Elves and Men). He also doesn’t pay much attention to small things. He was always interested in doing things on a great scale. “Melkor was more interested in and capable of dealing with a volcanic eruption, for example, then with (say) a tree. It is indeed probable that he was simply unaware of the minor or more delicate productions of Yavanna such as small flowers” (HoMe vol. 10, pt. 5, text VII). The Elves of Cuiviénen would be very small from his perspective and possibly beneath his notice.
After the War for the Sake of the Elves (when the Valar sacked Utumno) we’re told that Melkor came to deeply resent the Elves, whom he saw as being the cause of his downfall. But that war hadn’t happened yet, and the Valar were not yet aware that the Elves had awakened.
Tolkien theorized that some of Melkor’s servants had taken to haunting the borders of Cuiviénen, and that some of them took shapes that were “mocking and degrading the very forms of the Children.” What if they sometimes seduced or overcame Elves and bred with them? It seems that their children would inherit a portion of the dark spirit of their demonic parent, in much the same way that Lúthien inherited some of her mother’s divine spirit. That would be something that could be passed on from generation to generation. What if individual Elves weren’t tortured or corrupted at all, but merely bred with some of the lesser Maiar in Melkor’s service? To me, that explanation sounds the most plausible.
Melkor might not even have been aware of it, or maybe to him it was nothing more than some of his minor servants amusing themselves with the local wildlife.
It says in the Silmarillion that after Morgoth returned to Middle-earth with the Silmarils, he gathered his servants to Angband, including Orcs, who “grew strong and fell, and their dark lord filled them with a lust of ruin and death” (Silm, ch. 10). This seems to imply that the original Orcs weren’t like that. That is, they weren’t particularly strong or fell and they were not filled with a lust of ruin and death. That part came later. The shadow of the dark spirits that bred them (which themselves were slaves of Melkor) might have made it easier for Melkor to dominate them.
Even if the original Orcs were all Elves, the race might have gradually become more Mannish over time. When an Elf and a Man have children, the child is always a mortal Man (barring special grace from the Valar). Anyone with any Mannish blood in them is a Man. So, if an Orc bred with a Man, the child would inherit the “dark spirit” that all Orcs have, but it would also be mortal. Therefore, there would naturally be fewer and fewer pureblood “Orc-elves” with each passing generation.
This could also explain why many Orcs physically resemble Drûgs and why the two groups have special enmity for each other. Perhaps at some point, some Orcs met a group of Drûgs and bred with them, creating a group of “Orc-drûgs.”
It’s possible that Orcs weren’t necessarily irredeemable except when Morgoth and/or Sauron were actively filling them with hatred and fury. In situations where Morgoth and Sauron are out the picture, and no enemies are present (like Elves or Dwarves), it’s conceivable that Orcs might be somewhat reasonable and relatable.
By the way, I’m not trying to suggest that breeding with a dark spirit wouldn’t be torture. It’s just much different than what’s usually depicted.
My own theory is that Treebeard was closer to the mark than everyone realises: they were bred (like beasts) in mockery of the Elves, yet could not be given a soul, of course. In mockery of Ilúvatar, Melkor then places a portion of his spirit within them, specifically his unending hatred and disgust at the Children. Their reason for being is therefore totally in opposition to Elves and Men, but they are not at all of the same nature: they are little more than cheap copies, who cannot bear the light of the hallowed Sun. However, they continue the essence of Melkor himself, so can persist and endure for Ages. This is why Sauron (and, maybe, Saruman) “breed” them – it is not just to have bigger and stronger soldiers, but to try and get a race of Orcs that contain “more Melkor”. Without that leadership they just regress helplessly to their bestial state, unable to offer an sort of actual threat to Men (since Elves have left by this point).