An Apology to Orcs

[browngirl]

I feel kind of guilty towards orcs sometimes.

From a narrative perspective, whether reading or writing, it can be useful to have characters whose evilitude is pre-established. When reading or watching LOTR or The Hobbit, anytime orcs show up one knows they’re going to be bad news. In “Undaunted” I didn’t need to explain how or why Ori ended up in such a horrible situation, I just had to throw orcs at him.

And yet.

My conception of sentience (and orcs are obviously sentient) rebels against the notion of classifying any group as Always Chaotic Evil (as TV Tropes would put it), not least because in the society where I live I belong to a couple of groups that many people consider to be Always Chaotic Evil. And, because fiction is inextricably entangled with ‘Real’ life, I know that one common idea about Middle-Earth is that the orcs, along with the Southrons and Easterlings, are meant to be the People of Color there. But even without that sociopolitical reason, I would still be philosophically opposed to assuming that any group or lineage is automatically all bad, any more than they could be assumed to be all good. I feel like I should depict an orc or group who aren't bad guys.

I’m not sure where I’m going with this thought yet, since I don’t have any accompanying story ideas. I think I’m going to get a copy of Mary Gentle’s Grunts and see what comes to mind after I read that.

Comments

[marta-bee.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure orcs are intended as people of color. Obviously they have black skin which is problematic because it will make people assume we're tlaking about other dark-skinned people. I see them more as a metaphor for the power of sin, or corruption if you prefer: it's what happens when the goodness in us is tortured out of us. And if you look at it geographically, it's not like orcs are strictly from the south and the east, those places where there might be ethnic "others" relative to Europe. They're just as much a part of the landscape of middle-earth as anyone else, and often have been living there alongside the Freefolk since before places like Gondor and Erebor and the Shire were ever settled.

I do think it's problematic that they're presented as always-evil, but I tend to rationalize that with the knowledge that we're only seeing one side of the culture: their warriors. And whether they're all-evil, warriors of any enemy in a place where the land is disputed so attack is possible are all-dangerous.

It also helps to focus on those glimpses we get of something beyond pure evil, like the conversation Sam overhears about what the orcs want to do after the war, outside Shelob's lab, or again Sam's question about the Haradric boy he sees killed in Ithilien (I love that the movies gave that question to Faramir!), or the amnesty Aragorn offers to the people who had fought against Gondor and Rohan after the war. You see even more in the Silmarillion - it's obvious that most of the so-called evil men are being oppressed by "Servants of Morgoth" the Valar couldn't be bothered to deal with.

Not saying there aren't problems here, but this is one strategy I've found helpful to deal with the way orcs and other "evil" folk are presented in Tolkien.

[dreamflower]

I've always connected the color of Orcs to the color of their blood--that whatever extraordinarily painful process Morgoth used to torture other beings into becoming Orcs left them with that taint in their blood, which is literally black--perhaps it's painful yet, even down all these generations.

Also, we can figure that the Haradrim and the Southrons have been deceived by the Enemy, much as the Dunlendings were. So that doesn't mean they are necessarily Evil, though as you say,they remain dangerous. And so long as they remain able to wage war they have to be dealt with as enemies.