Apologies if I've gotten facts wrong, but I'm tired and just needed to write something.
Enjoy.
On Orcs
In this age where the orc has risen from obscurity through many mediums – the most notable being the resurrection through cinema of Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings – we have seen much of their nature and character. They’re belligerent and warlike, bad mannered, and lacking in all appreciation of beauty and virtue. But can these things alone constitute an entire existence, even for fictional creatures?
The reason I write this is a quote from the second film in Peter Jackson’s adaption of the Lord of the Rings trilogy. During an argument about whether the hungry band of orcs can eat the captured hobbits – Merry and Pippin – one orc cuts the head off another, at which point he remarks, “Meat’s back on the menu, boys.” Now, I find this a terribly odd thing for an orc to say. Looking past the cannibalism factor, the very notion that an orc would use the word ‘menu’ says a lot about orcish culture. I know that in human culture, a menu is something found specifically in restaurants. This leads to the conclusion that somewhere in the dungeons of Barad-dur, or the caverns of Moria or wherever you may stumble upon a group of orcs, there is a restaurant. I don’t mean this to ridiculous, as if this restaurant were anything fancy, with decorations and a wine list. But I don’t think it’s unfathomable that they have a place in which to order prepared food if they so choose. Perhaps there are even tables, who knows. However, this is just the jumping-off point for this essay – the entrance into orc society that we so badly need to understand how they work. The question I really want to get to the heart of is this: what does such a warlike race do when there is no war?
Imagine if they had won the war of the ring. What then? Unprecedented peace and prosperity for the orcs? It is well-documented that orcs do not get along even with their own kind, so perhaps a civil war would ensue, but whatever uprising there is to start such a war would presumably be crushed by the power of Sauron. So if we make these two likely assumptions – that there is no one left to wage war on, and that all orcs obey the will of Sauron – we are left at the awkward silence that marks the beginning of the time of the orc. Although I imagine the first step in their plan would be to remake the world around themselves to make it more agreeable to them, which would be a lengthy process involving construction, metallurgy, logistics, food and transport (unless they intend to stay in Mordor), but what then? I feel that to answer this question, we must attain a better understanding of what orcs are capable of.
It seems that nearly all orcs work for, or at least very closely with, the military. They are capable of producing (albeit crudely) weapons and other instruments of a metallic nature. This is perhaps the groundwork for what could one day become orcish sciences. A basic understanding of minerals and metallurgy may one day advance to a level of physics and chemistry that we know in our civilization. Although, it is possible that their techniques were stolen from men or, more likely, dwarves, and that they have no interest in advancing their methods. In support of this theory, they do not appear to be very intelligent, which makes it very unlikely that the advancement of sciences will become a priority in the new orcish world. On the other side of the coin to science, the arts are even less likely to be given attention after the fall of men. With no appreciation for virtue, art as we know it would not appeal to these creatures. However, in saying that we assume that art does not mean something entirely different to them. While portraits and poetry seem unlikely, is it possible that other art forms could thrive? I imagine jagged and ugly metal sculptures, or stories about glory on the field of battle, but are these not art in their own right? After all, what is art but a form of expression? And surely, however unbalanced these beings are, they must feel something beyond bloodlust. Or if they don’t, is an expression of bloodlust in the form of a sculpture not art anyway?
Another thing I believe orcs are capable of is a very basic form of politics. It may be little more than a military chain of command, but they seem to recognize that those in command are to be obeyed. While Sauron’s rule would be extremely totalitarian, it strikes me as obvious that the Dark Lord would not make all the decisions in his lands. He would need to delegate accordingly, either to orc officials, or to his generals – the Nazgul. The hierarchy is unclear, but surely there are those with more power than others. Clearly, they are not elected, but appointed, either by Sauron or by someone else higher up in the chain of command. I have absolute faith in this assertion of orcish politics, because the war machine seems far too organized for chaos to be reigning in Mordor, and while it is likely that fear drives all orcs to obey, the orders must be given, and these orders are too many to all come from the Dark Lord himself.
There is one last thing that I feel I should address: a simple existence. In our world it would equate to setting down with someone and starting a family, going to work, coming home and finding a content happiness in each day. I wish to use Adolf Hitler’s idea of lebensraum, or ‘living space’ to demonstrate my point. In the event of Germany winning World War II, it would simply be enough for the Germans to have simple lives – families, jobs, friends – in their newfound lands. Yes, the Germans would undertake arts, sciences, politics, religion and all those things we accept as part of human life, but Hitler didn’t need extra room for them to practice these things. No, he wanted to expand Germany’s borders so that his people could live their lives at a higher quality. At least, that is the reasoning he gave. Now, when I imagine myself in such a situation, I imagine a wife and children, I imagine good friends and a fulfilling job. For an orc, these things do not exist. I am almost convinced that there are no orc women, given the scene in the Fellowship of the Ring in which orcs seem to be produced from… actually I’m not sure what the hell happened to produce those orcs. It looks like the orc equivalent of cloning, which makes it likely that orcs to not bear children of their own. And maybe orcs do make friends with each other, but they do not appear to develop the same sorts of relationships that give humans a deeper meaning to their lives. So you see, orcs cannot be fathers, or husbands, or children or lovers, and thus do not pursue that simple life so many of us desire.
So now we come to the final question, what is the world of the orc like? I will tell you the answer: there could never be one. I intend to expose the one fatal flaw in the genius of Mr. Tolkien here. You see, his villains don’t make sense. His trilogy is the quintessential tale of good versus evil, and he obviously had that idea in his head before he began writing. He set out to write a story of heroes triumphing over evil, and threw together an evil-for-the-sake-of-evil group of villains. Orcs do not have a purpose beyond war. Sure, they may undertake some crude sciences or find some meaningless way to enjoy themselves, but when the war is over they’re left with less than when the war was raging. When you take away war, you leave them nothing in their lives. You could argue that they blindly follow the will of Sauron, and have not thought of what life will be like after the war, but Sauron does not make sense in his objectives either. The only reason we are given is that above all else, he desires power. Power to do what? Hitler wanted power for the greatness of his people (though it is no justification for anything he did), Stalin wanted power to spread the ideology of communism, Al-Qaeda appears to want power to bring about the downfall of what they see as infidelity in the world. Sauron is just a two-dimensional symbol of evil that Tolkien created to give his heroes something to do.
The Lord of the Rings is an amazing contribution to literature and should be read by everyone, but I feel this fatal flaw in the concept needed to be addressed. How can we stress the importance of believable characters to young writers, when one of the greatest stories ever told has such problems as these? Although if there is a way to justify it, I guess one could argue that evil must be combated, and it’s goals are irrelevant when dealing with it.
