The Origin of Orcs

I’m generally not into overly deep social issues when it comes to fantasy novels. The occasional allegorical event can be cool, (my favorite is probably the ending of The Druid of Shannara,) but I generally read fiction for entertainment. And frustrating stuff is rarely entertaining. On that note, one of the things I like about The Lord of the Rings is that the bad guys are just plain bad. Orcs, in particular, are not creatures that you feel sorry for. There are no orc widows or orphans – indeed, I maintain that there are no orc women or children.

Now, in The Silmarillion and some of the other “extended” literature about Middle Earth, Tolkein explores (but to my knowledge doesn’t definitively explain) the origin of the orcs. In this discussion, there are some details that would seem to contradict my perception of them as creatures of pure evil. The problem lies in the matter of the Secret Fire – the power of Ilúvatar (the all-power creator of Tolkein’s world) to create new life. Morgoth (Sauron’s old boss) seeks this power, but his search is always in vain because it is an essential attribute of Ilúvatar himself. What this means for this orcs is that Morgoth could not have created them. Rumors in Middle Earth suggest that Morgoth captured some Elves and turned them into orcs. But I have a problem with that. Are we to believe that the only reason orcs are evil is because they were raised that way? If you took a newly-spawned orc and had it raised by loving parents, would it become a contributing member of an enlightened society? Certainly not. If that were the case, then why aren’t the Elves making any attempt to rescue the orcs?
On the other hand, if orcs really are pure evil, then did Ilúvatar create them that way? You see the problem. And it gets worse. I seem to recall that Tolkein suggested that Sauron’s orcs were literally bred from a mixture of humans and orcs. Now that’s just messed up – something like that would be enough to make me not want to read the series. In my opinion, that suggestion was just an attempt to reconcile the existence of orcs with the fact that only Ilúvatar could create life. I believe I have a better explanation.

To begin, I assert that orcs are spawned (Legolas’s exact word), not born. I think this is one area where the movie embellished the facts and got it exactly right. Orcs emerge as adults from a nastly-looking hive, with no desire but to cause injury in the rest of the world. This claim raises two immediate questions:

1. How did the orc hives get there in the first place?

2. Where does the newly-spawned orc’s consciousness come from, if the forces of evil can’t create life?

The first issue is perhaps the less important, but it is worth mentioning as a foundation for the second issue. I believe that orcs emit spores wherever they go, especially when they are at rest. These spores stick to the orcs’ surroundings but usually perish quickly, especially in sunlight. However, if enough orcs are in the same place for long enough, the spores have a chance to fall in a concentrated way. Once a critical mass of spores accumulates, a hive is formed. This idea is consistent with the fact that orcs are generally concentrated in dark, secluded places, and that they tend to multiply most quickly when left alone.

As for the source of the orcs’ consciousness, I believe that each orc’s mind is a sliver of the mind of Morgoth. He could not create life, but as a Valar he would have been able to split off pieces of his mind to act independently – a small price to pay, since he could then send armies out where he might be noticed, or to complete tasks he did not want to do himself. Though he was banished from Middle Earth, I think it’s fair to assume that parts of his mind that are disconnected from his consciousness could still exist in the races he had begun. Although the idea of a split consciousness might seem like an unreasonable stretch, we do have a precedent: The Ash Nazg – the One Ring of Sauron. The Ring managed to betray Isildur, find its way into Gollum’s hands, and then slip away in a den of orcs, all without Saruon knowing where the Ring was or what it was doing. With this in mind, I think it is reasonable that Morgoth – a much more powerful being than Saruon – was able to accomplish the same thing.

(Incidentally, it seems logical that the minds of orcs are “recycled” when they die – they return either to Morgoth himself or to some large pool of potential orc minds, to await the creation of a new orc body in one of the hives.)

With these two facts in mind, we are free to enjoy the conquest of the book’s villains without worrying about all the poor orcs “back home.”