Is That An Orc in Your Pocket or Are You Just Happy to Be Evil?

It may be a strategic shift in our social values which leads to many gamers today wanting to play Orcs and other bad guys in upcoming Tolkien-related games. Why is that? Do the bad guys really win that often in Tolkien? Or does Tolkien purism take a back seat to the opportunity for engaging in general mayhem?

The evil creatures of Middle-earth are often lumped together as “evil races” but that is really a misnomer. Sure, no one ever heard of a “good” Orc, but many people believe that the Orcs were simply bred from corrupted Elves. Deep down inside, they may still have a kernel of goodness which was suppressed by the overpowering wills of Melkor and Sauron.

It’s a bit difficult to rationalize how Orcs could be anything like the “good” races of Middle-earth, but then, the Orcs aren’t really supposed to be anything other than an aspect of the humane. They are a reflection of the worst qualities we find in ourselves. Orcs feel loyalty, express courage, and honor their oaths. But they also live in constant fear, dwell on hatred and contempt, and treat everything with absolute disregard. They are depraved, debased, and extremely selfish.

In writing about the Elves, Tolkien noted that they, too, were just an aspect of the humane. They represent human artistic endeavor in an enhanced or enlightened state. But part of the Elvish enlightenment derives from their own fall. They had to sink pretty low in order to rise up as high as they are perceived to be in The Lord of the Rings. There is an echo of Tolkien’s hope that humanity’s artistic side will somehow overcome the bestial nature which threatens to engulf us.

But in The Lord of the Rings the Elves ultimately are doomed to leave, and the question of whether the Orcs are all killed off is left open. Most likely some of them survive, and Tolkien seems to hint in letters to his son that some of the Orcs survived and interbred with Men. The message he leaves us as Elrond’s white ship sails off toward the sunset is that all which empowers our love of beauty is on the verge of leaving us. Men must remain behind and do with the world what they can. But the age of enchantment has departed and we must achieve Art through mundane efforts.

Elvish grace and beauty are counterbalanced by their sins. The Elves do act evilly on more than one occasion. But they are somehow forgiven, perhaps because they ultimately take responsibility for their decisions and suffer the consequences of their actions. Gil-galad thus dies and his death brings an end to the dominance of Noldorin culture in Middle-earth. The torch does not fully pass to Men in the Third Age, but the leadership of the West clearly falls to Arnor and Gondor, and they bear the burden of challenging Sauron and his servants for supremacy.

Arnor succumbs to the struggle but Gondor manages to hang on until the end of the Third Age. In some ways Arnor seems a lot like the ancient Elven realms of Beleriand. The Elves, unlike Men, don’t aspire to rule empires. The closest the Elven civilizations came to establishing empires were their high kingships, which are poorly defined. Elu Thingol ruled all of Beleriand for a long time, and Cirdan and Denethor were his vassals or sub-ordinates. The land area Thingol controlled was immense.

But with the return of the Noldor to Middle-earth Thingol gave up some of his authority, and the Noldor established their own High Kingship. The High Kings of the Noldor really seem to have lacked authority over the other Noldorin kings. Could Fingolfin have commanded Turgon, Finrod, and Maedhros to join him in an assault upon Angband? Or did the various kings merely act in unison, according to their mutual needs?

When the Numenoreans became strong they began conquering large portions of Middle-earth, levying tribute from other Men. The Noldor did not conquer other Elven nations. At best (or worst) they merely raided their fellow Elves (as at Alqualonde) or strove to utterly destroy their fellow Elves (as at Doriath and Arvernien). The question of Elvish populations always raises some interesting speculations about numbers and reproduction rates, but seldom, if ever, do the speculations concern how many Elves actually die.

If the Feanorians really wiped out most of Doriath’s population, how many Sindar were living in Doriath? Of course, the Feanorians benefitted from the fact that many of the Sindar had died in the war with the Dwarves. We know that the account in The Silmarillion, “Of the ruin of Doriath”, really doesn’t reflect the story as J.R.R. Tolkien would have told it. He felt that Thingol had to be induced to leave Doriath before the Dwarves could kill him. Perhaps he would have followed a group of Dwarves who fled with the Nauglamir and the Silmaril, and somewhere in East Beleriand could have fought a pitched battle.

The prospect of an Elf-Dwarf conflict can be enlarged well beyond the canvas of Tolkien’s brief outline and notes. The Dwarves of Nogrod, for example, could have appealed to the Dwarves of Belegost on a very emotional principle: that the Sindar were going to do to them what they did to the Petty-Dwarves. It is almost certain that the Petty-Dwarves, never very numerous, had to be doomed to extinction because of their conflicts with the Sindar.

The Belegostians, for their part, could have declined the invitation purely out of horror at the thought of Morgoth’s enemies fighting among themselves. Enough blood would have been shed already. And what right would Dwarves have to claim a Silmaril anyway? Retrieving it from Thingol’s victorious army would be costly, and then would not the surviving Noldor demand the jewel’s return? The Nogrodians would only be able to justify their war (in Dwarven eyes) through a cry for vengeance. But would Dwarven custom agree with that cry where the underlying cause of the conflict was the theft of a holy artifact?

The Nogrodians must therefore have succumbed to the curses laid upon the treasures. Mim’s curse upon the Nauglamir and the Valar’s curse upon the Silmaril ensured that no one could possess either for very long. Even Beren and Luthien did not live long after Beren acquired the necklace and Silmaril. No one may have touched them, but their possession of the forbidden treasure hastened their deaths. Was Beren right to keep the Silmaril, rather than return it to the Noldor? He certainly had no love for Celegorm and Curufin, but did he have the right to withhold the treasure which had been taken from their family?

Elvish ambition is wrapped up with a peculiar pride, an ambient sin which focuses on the value of achievement rather than possession. That is, a King of Numenor or Gondor would look out upon Middle-earth and see slaves and tribute pouring into his realm. But a King of Elves would look out upon Middle-earth and see a diamond in the rough, a gemstone waiting to be shaped and enchanted. Empires are crude but artistic draperies laid across the face of the land. They might be a shadow of the effect which an Elven civilization could have upon the landscape.

Gandalf said, in “The Ring Goes South”, that “much evil must befall a country before it wholly forgets the Elves, if once they dwelt there.” Legolas replied, “That is true. But the Elves of this land were of a race strange to us of the silvan folk, and the trees and grass do not now remember them. Only I hear the stones lament them: deep they delved us, fair they wrought us, high they builded us; but they are gone. They are gone. They sought the havens long ago.”

Legolas’ words seem to imply that he, as a wood-elf, shares an affinity with the living plants of the landscape. But the Noldor shared an affinity with the very stones of the Earth. They shaped the world itself, or a part of it, and the land remembered the Elves even long after all else had forgotten them. So the expression of Elvish ambition was the ultimate imprimature of their will upon the land.

Would the land remember Orcs? Trees clearly do remember the evil worked upon them, and the creatures which work that evil. When Fangorn Forest rises up against Saruman the trees’ cause is just, their grievances are clear and indelibly etched in their memories. The wood of Huorns which marches to Helm’s Deep is wreathed in a palpable anger that alarms the Men who must ride through the unexpected forest which has come to their aid.

But there seems to be no indication that the Orcs have so inflicted harm upon the land that the rocks would rise up against them. Instead, the Orcs tunnel under the mountains and work stone and metal to their will. They are cruel and methodical, but only to living things. It would not be right, perhaps, to say that Orcs have an affinity for Aule’s domain, as the Noldor clearly do. But it may be appropriate to say that the Orcs ignore the land. They do not afflict it with malice. They hate all living things, but the ground beneath them is also beneath their notice. They do not feel the pulse of the Earth.

Orcs seem to utterly lack ambition with respect to either the world or their own works. The Elves create artifacts, or systems of knowledge, and they imprint their thought in everything they make. Men acquire artifacts, or treasures, and they impose their will on all who dwell around them. Orcs dream of setting up on their own somewhere with a few trusty followers and engaging in a little raiding. They’ll kill enemies they fear have grown too powerful, but they won’t try to conquer vast tracts of land or alter the landscape.

The chief expressions of Elvish achievement had to be Finrod’s realm of Nargothrond and Turgon’s city of Gondolin. The heart of Finrod’s realm was his underground city of Nargothrond, modelled on Thingol’s Menegroth. But Nargothrond was guarded by towers and fortresses in the north and hidden fastnesses in the south. One could not venture across Finrod’s kingdom without sensing or encountering symbols of his power. Finrod’s people transformed the landscape on a massive scale. But they so disguised or disseminated their works that the land seemed largely unchanged.

Turgon’s people, on the other hand, set themselves the task of reconstructing the memory of Tirion upon Tuna. And they constructed gates of gold and silver, and hidden paths, and blocked all passes into the valley of Tumladen. They utterly transformed the landscape of their hidden kingdom into an image of their combined desires. When Tuor looked out upon Gondolin, he could not help but be awed by the presence of the Elves’ artistic will.

There are significant Dwarvish accomplishments in the stories, to be sure. But they do not aspire to leave their mark upon the land, or to extend their rule across vast empires. Dwarvish ambitions are obscure, and though they must represent an aspect of the humane as well, they seem less concerned with owning or making things than either Men or Elves. Treasure is important to a Dwarf, but not as a sign of power. And Dwarves seem to delight in craftmanship more than in its products.

Dwarves and Orcs resemble each other in that neither race strives for supremacy in Middle-earth. Elves and Men, on the other hand, spread across the landscape and pursue near total control over their lands. The Numenoreans represent a merger of Elvish artistic ambition with human domination. Hence, immense towers rise up from the mountains at Isengard and Minas Tirith. The gigantic statues of Isildur and Anarion warn hostile visitors to remain in the north. The Numenoreans shape the land to suit their desires, but their desires are still focused on boundaries, treaties, and controlling other people.

It should not be surprising, therefore, that the Nazgul turned out to be Men. Of the three races Sauron tried to subvert, Elves, Dwarves, and Men, only Men really nourished the kind of ambition Sauron needed: the Nine proved to be adept at conquering empires. Elven Nazgul might simply have scattered the inhabitants of a land in order to concentrate on twisting the land to reflect Sauron’s malice and glory. Dwarven Nazgul might have ignored the land and its inhabitants and just accumulated huge storehouses of treasure to fund Sauron’s wars of conquest. He needed generals, not sculptors and bankers.

Men were the easiest to ensnare in Sauron’s game of conquest and control because, perhaps, those were the kinds of ambitions they cherished. Without the Nazgul to extend his power, would Sauron have become the fearsome overlord Ar-Pharazon felt challenged by? Would Mordor simply have continued, powerful in its own right but unable to extend its will throughout most of Middle-earth?

The baddest bad guys seem to be Men. When the Lords of the West lead their small army against Mordor, the Mouth of Sauron turns out to be another man, rather than an Orc or some other creature. Orcs may serve the Dark Lords in droves, but they lack the ambition and initiative that true leadership required. Elves engage in evil, and some might work the will of the Dark Lords (as Maeglin did in Gondolin), but they have no real aptitude for carving out empires. The Feanorians are more accomplished at command and conquest than other Elves, but they negate their achievements by turning upon their friends and allies.

So why do some people want to be Orcs? What is the fascination with the bully-boys of Middle-earth? Is it, perhaps, the simplicity that the Orcs convey? True evil is sophisticated, intricate. Orcs are little more than thugs. Even the Noldor at their most evil don’t approach the low achievments of Men. Elves speak of their kinslayings with horror. Men plot new kinslayings every day.

Maybe Tolkien’s real message wasn’t so much that these other races are all that good or bad, as it was that there are aspects to being human which can be exaggerated and enhanced. But for us to appreciate the beauty and the good, it already has to be in us. And for us to feel any fascination for the brutality and evil of Middle-earth, those things, too, must also be in us. All that distinguishes between good and evil, then, are the choices we make.

This article was first published on May 7, 2001.

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