Orcs are the redshirts of Middle-Earth - you know, the ones who are there to get killed off, as in Star Trek? In their case, they mostly seem to be there for heroes to kill off rather than defending anyone. In The Lord Of The Rings they are working for the baddies, like Sauron and the evil wizard Saruman.
When we first meet them, in The Hobbit, though, they are villains in their own right. They have their own community underground, as Bilbo Baggins and the dwarves find out when they camp in a cave that turns out to be what the orcs call their Front Porch. There must be orc women somewhere in the background of this novel, although Tolkien has a tendency to forget women; his original dwarf origin story has the Fathers of the Fathers of the Dwarves being put to sleep - he did rewrite so that each Father had a mate. Gollum kills and eats a young orc, so presumably it has a mother.
We are told that orcs - called Goblins in The Hobbit - love technology and loud bangs. They are very good at creating machines. This is not the compliment it might seem, though, because Tolkien was not keen on modern advances, which wrecked the peaceful landscapes he loved.
Orcs will eat just about anything; one sad thing is that somehow nearly all the horses and ponies in this book end up dead and eaten. The ones who survive are okay only because Bjorn the bear shifter, who lent them to the dwarves, takes them back.
Thorin, the Dwarf king, is called Oakenshield, because when he was fighting the orcs at Moria, where his grandfather died, he snatched up an oak branch, using it as both a shield and a weapon. There is a named Goblin leader in that battle, Azog.
In The Hobbit, the dwarves and Bilbo are captured and taken underground by orcs and dragged before the Great Goblin, who is not named. They are terrified by Thorin’s sword, Orcrist, “Goblin-cleaver”, which has a reputation for killing people of their kind.
Fortunately Gandalf turns up to rescue the adventurers before the Goblins can do any of their threatened things, though this is when Bilbo gets lost and meets Gollum.
The Goblins, however, do turn up in the Battle of Five Armies near the end, and Gandalf reminds Dain, another dwarf king, that there is an orc, Bolg, who remembers he killed his father in Moria. They are a warrior culture like the dwarves, but they are always evil - and destined to lose, though not without killing some of the good guys first.
I find it rather sad to think that there is an entire race doomed to be the baddies. And in the sequel, they aren’t even fighting for themselves, they are just minions of the bad guys!
What do you think?
Tomorrow’s villain is Peter Pettigrew of Harry Potter infamy.
5 comments:
Vast, expendable armies of dehumanized creatures are a standard feature of epics, aren't they, for the heroes to fight and show their prowess without us having to feel bad for their victims. Like the armies of space aliens and robots that the Avengers and other superheroes usually fight in the MCU.
It's a bit hard to feel sympathy for Orcs. Maybe I'm a specist.(is that a word?) They are a bit of a sideshow in Tolkien's work, I think. Suitably unattractive and aggressive - good villains as it were.
Hi Debra! Very true about expendable armies! Yes, the ones in the Avengers movies are certainly there to be killed off. There is at least one novel, can’t remember the title, which is seen from the orcs’ viewpoint. One of them has married a hobbit woman, who is a madam! The mind boggles.
Agreed, DA, they are there to work for villains and be evil. I can’t help thinking of Sylvie, Loki’s love interest in the TV series, who is dragged off as a child by the Time Variance Authority because she isn’t fulfilling her destiny to become a villain, seeing herself instead as a hero, saving Asgard. After escaping them, she makes it clear that she can be THEIR villain if that’s what’s required. I imagine an orc who refused to do horrible things would just be killed off.
I think it depends what the point of the story is. If the story is supposed to be about making your way through all dangers to stay true to your quest, for example, then I don't mind if some of those dangers are generic baddies. If the story is supposed to be about ways of interacting with each other, then entire species that are all bad are more problematic.
But remember that in Tolkien's back story the orcs were created as deliberate corruptions, so they are by definition incapable of being truly noble. Less like a species and more like zombies or constructs.
Thanks, Anne, some interesting thoughts there! I’ve read quite a few Tolkien bits and pieces in the HOME books, can’t recall the orcs back story, alas! I do recall somewhere in the movies where Saruman says they were originally Elves … shudder! Thing is, in The Hobbit they are people, if nasty ones, not constructs, and I even remember a scene in LOTR where an orc is telling another that the Nazgûl creep him out! So, he may be a baddie, but even he is capable of noticing when another villain is worse,
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