Are all orcs evil?

are all orcs evil in the lord of the rings it seems sometimes as if orcs are just all bad but are there good orcs we just didn't see are they born evil or can they be redeemed somehow hi everyone this is robert welcome to in deep geek on this channel we cover lord of the rings a song of ice and fire and other great fantasy books and tv shows if you're interested in that please click on the subscribe button in the bottom right of your screen in popular culture orcs are bad guys the grunts of sauron's army with no hope of redemption tolkien himself admitted that the word he used orc was derived from his understanding of an old english word that meant demon or evil spirit which makes it sound like he wanted us to think of them as always evil but is that fair is there more to them than just being the bad guys let's start by taking a look at where orcs actually come from their origin is way back in time even before the first age of middle-earth the elves had awakened but the valar were not yet aware melkor morgoth the big baddie of tolkien's world was aware though and if any elves strayed too far away from home they would be waylaid and vanished still more were captured when arame of the valar did finally arrive and see the elves for malcor had started a whispering campaign among them to fear his arrival so some just ran off when adame arrived we aren't told the details of what happened to those elves next but we do read this in the silmarillion they were put in prison and by slow arts of cruelty were corrupted and enslaved and thus did melkor breed the hideous race of the orcs in envy and mockery of the elves of whom they were afterwards the bitterest foes for the orcs had life and multiplied after the manner of the children of iluvatar and naught that had life of its own nor the semblance of life could ever melt or make since his rebellion in the inulin delay before the beginning so say the wise and deep in their dark hearts the orcs loathed the master whom they served in fear the maker only of their misery this it may be was the vilest deed of melkor and the most hateful to a louvitar so somehow these elves were corrupted and turned into orcs a mockery of elves tolkien was clear that melkor couldn't create life ex nihilo out of nothing so he used the elves he had captured as the starting point for his corruption and mockery then bred them they multiplied in the manner of the children of iluvatar that's elves and humans so yes there were and are orc babies they aren't just made from scratch each time in truth tolkien was rather vague about this origin story though and christopher tolkien hinted that his father grew a little uncomfortable with the idea that orcs were descended directly from elves you'll find oblique references in some of tolkien's wider writings to orcs coming from animals humans or even fallen maya and the lord of the rings community are not always of one mind here but the canon answer from the silmarillion and built on in the fall of gondolin remains that malcor captured some elves used evil sorcery to corrupt them out of subterranean heat and slime and that way bred orcs he didn't create the life force but he could corrupt what was already there however they were made though the point stands that they were made by melkor to serve him and as a mockery of the elves and throughout the history of ardor and middle earth that's what they did they did evil and well earned their reputation as being always the bad guys but in truth there are hints that orcs aren't all irredeemably evil to start with we have to recognize that even in the lord of the rings some of the orcs we meet have some if not positive traits then certainly some aspects of their character that are not just about being evil for example aglock the leader of the urukhai that capture marion pippin shows bravery in facing down the rohirim loyalty to his mission and particularly his clan mates and an unwillingness to just hurt the hobbits for the sake of it and shagrat and gorbach the orcs who discover frodo's body outside shelob's lair talk tellingly about elvish tricks in a disdainful way yes they've clearly been brought up to believe that elves and humans are cruel and evil but the very fact that they seem to make a moral judgment about the degradation of elves implies that they do actually have a moral code however twisted that doesn't sound like a race of irredeemable souls hard to redeem perhaps but not irredeemable in addition tolkien mentions that when sauron battles the last alliance of elves and men all living things were divided in that day and some of every kind even of beasts and birds were found in either host save the elves only they alone were undivided so by implication some orcs seem to have fought against sauron then again this isn't conclusive but very suggestive that there were some orcs that weren't quite that bad but what did tolkien think as is often the case his letters are quite instructive on this matter he writes this they orcs 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 this is deep stuff but it is an important distinction orcs are naturally bad that's what they were created like and that's what they are like there's no getting around it but if you have a world such as tolkien's which was created by an immutable and omnipowerful deity to be good once orcs have been allowed to be made they become a part of that world and redemption has to be possible for them it's something that the elves seem to instinctively know in myths transformed a collection of tolkien's later incomplete reflections on and revisions to his legendarium which is a fascinating read worthy of a video on its own which i will definitely do in that tolkien writes this the law states that orcs must not be dealt with in their own terms of cruelty or treachery captives must not be tormented not even to discover information for the defense 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 he added a clarification that few orcs ever did ask for mercy having been convinced by morgoth that elves were irredeemably cruel the subtlety here and we must get used to tolkien injecting lots of nuance into his middle earth morality is that as morgoth could not create ex nihilo the materials he used to create orcs were in and of themselves not evil because they had been created by eru alouvitar their evilness may have appeared or even actually been absolute as far as humans and elves were concerned but because of the origin of their constituent parts they remained under the law with a capital l the moral law of the world hence them being protected under the middle earth equivalent of the geneva convention so where does all this lead us all the orcs we meet in canon middle-earth are evil but that doesn't mean that all orcs are evil some have several positive traits some were able to overcome their inbuilt fear and hatred of elves some even seem to have fought against sauron and most importantly all were capable of being redeemed in some way whether they took that up or not is there hope for the orcs yes and perhaps their best hope as a race came after the fall of sauron morgoth seems to have had an almost complete control over the orcs sauron a bit less strong but still cutting to the heart of most of them to the extent that many just killed each other or sought the dark pits of the world after his fall but the few that survived they seem to just fade from history perhaps they just delved deeper into the earth and just killed each other but perhaps some found that redemption that tolkien held out for them i hope so if you'd like to see more lord of the rings videos please click on the link on the left of your screen or if you'd like to support this channel or get access to some content i produce exclusively from my patrons please click on the link on the right of your screen that's all for this time thanks for watching and i'll see you again soon

Channel: In Deep Geek

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Keywords: in deep geek, deep geek, lord of the rings, lotr, middle earth, lore, history, history and lore, orcs, are orcs elves, do orcs, do orcs breed lord of the rings, do orcs come from mud, orc origin lord of the rings, orc origins, tolkien, jrr tolkien, are orcs evil, are there good orcs, how are orcs made, how are orcs made lotr, how are orcs made from mud, orc babies, female orcs, female orcs lotr

Id: mEgrgb06rAA

Length: 9min 54sec (594 seconds)

Published: Wed Oct 14 2020