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Alveric
Lorien
Jun 23 2015, 4:48pm
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female orcs, baby orcs
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I've done some searching of past forum posts, but can't find the answer. I seem to remember, somewhere, reading something, about Sauron's orc breeding program, how he kept all the orc women off in the far corner of Mordor. Does anyone have more specific recollections? And secondly, the films show the births of Uruk-hai as if they were hatched out of the earth like grubs--I don't think there is any canonical support for that, right? Alveric
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Elthir
Grey Havens
Jun 23 2015, 5:42pm
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in a letter that came up for auction (Sotheby's)...
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... Tolkien noted: 'There must have been orc-women. But in stories that seldom if ever see the Orcs except as soldiers of armies in the service of the evil lords we naturally would not learn much about their lives. Not much was known'. The "Munby letter" The Uruks first appeared out of Mordor according to the Appendices. If one thinks Saruman's Uruk-hai are something different from Sauron's Uruks*, well that's another matter, but in any case Orcs reproduced sexually (like the Children of Eru) according to the Silmarillion... ... so there "must" have been orc women __________ *I think Saruman's uruks were very well trained to run and fight under the Sun, although the troop from Mordor (chapter The Uruk-hai) run very well under the Sun too, and it was not known if they dropped back a bit due to some plan, or if perhaps Saruman's Uruks were hardier.
(This post was edited by Elthir on Jun 23 2015, 5:47pm)
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Otaku-sempai
Immortal
Jun 23 2015, 5:42pm
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Saruman's alchemical process for creating Uruk-hai was a film-invention. Indeed, Sauron bred the Uruk-hai in Tolkien's canon while Saruman developed his own breed of Half-orcs; the two were not the same in the books. The way I look at it is that Saruman was taking short-cuts in the films because he had to breed an army quickly. There is some support for Jackson's version in the legendarium only because Tolkien went back-and-forth for a long time about the origins of the Orcs. Near the end of his life he was even having second thoughts about the Orcs coming from broken and corrupted Elves in favor of Sauron fashioning them from Men--although that would have created problems for his history of the First Age where Orcs first appeared before Men awoke.
"At the end of the journey, all men think that their youth was Arcadia..." - Phantom F. Harlock
(This post was edited by Otaku-sempai on Jun 23 2015, 5:43pm)
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Elthir
Grey Havens
Jun 23 2015, 5:57pm
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not that you don't know already, but for a long time...
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... Tolkien imagined that Morgoth simply created orcs... out of various somethings, like heat and slime, stone and hatred, but not out of the children of Eru. Ultimately Tolkien decided that even Morgoth could not create orcs from non-living stuff... it's hard to say exactly when, given Frodo's statement about Orcs (after being freed from Cirith Ungol), but the idea arises on paper (in the Silmarillion tradition) in the early 1950s -- that the Wise of Eressea held that Morgoth created the first Orcs from captured Elves. But Tolkien began questioning the idea of Orcs from Elves in the later 1950s, early 1960s. It's true that the note to the Druedain is rather late, wherein Orcs are said (by Elves) to hail from Men, but Tolkien began challenging what the Wise of Eressea believed (Orcs from Elves) in texts generally dating to the later 1950s (Myths Transformed).
(This post was edited by Elthir on Jun 23 2015, 6:08pm)
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Elthir
Grey Havens
Jun 23 2015, 6:19pm
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... (in the Silmarillion tradition) Generally speaking there... I think the actual text was The Annals of Aman.
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Alveric
Lorien
Jun 24 2015, 1:19pm
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When Tolkien wrote, "Not much was known," that's a bit coy, isn't it? Was known? As if he wasn't making it all up himself! "Not much was known" must surely mean, "I didn't want to think about it." He could not have given the orcs a realistic family life, because that would have compromised the gleeful slaughter of the "evil races." It would have reduced the clarity of the good/evil division which is the stories' strength and weakness. Good/evil belongs to a mythic thought process, not a realistic one. It might have been more convenient for Tolkien if he had indeed used Jackson's grub-hatching scheme. Female orcs are a bit like the ent-wives--they must exist somewhere, but we've forgotten.
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noWizardme
Half-elven
Jun 24 2015, 2:08pm
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I seem to remember, somewhere, reading something, about Sauron's orc breeding program, how he kept all the orc women off in the far corner of Mordor. In the 2013 subthread starting here http://newboards.theonering.net/...i?post=558885#558885 we had a discussion about the absence of female & baby orcs & whether this was just because they were not encountered (or not recognized) by our heroes, or whether Tolkien dug himself into a hole with all this. A key post in the subthread goes in part
I've always thought, particularly since Tolkien was in a real war, that he invented orcs because he needed an enemy that could be unequivocally evil and not very person-like so that his heroes could be unequivocally right to fight and kill them. The closest encounter a hobbit (the species of protagonist with whom the reader can most closely identify) has with a human enemy is the scene in Ithillien when a dead warrior from the south prompts Frodo to wonder about him as a person, why he left home, and if he would have preferred to stay there. (Apologies -- my book is in another state or I would give the exact quote!) [The passage is: "It was Sam's first view of a battle of Men against Men, and he did not like it much. He was glad that be could not see the dead face. He wondered what the man's name was and where he came from; and if he was really evil of heart, or what lies or threats had led him on the long march from his home; and if he would really rather have stayed there in peace..."] That passage seemed so achingly personal to me, I wondered if it was an echo of Tolkien's own emotions during WWI. While I don't believe LOTR is an allegory of either world war, it seems impossible that somebody who experienced war could keep his thoughts about it from shaping the way he invented a war in his fiction. No real war can be satisfactory if it involves human enemies because most humans (even if they are required/persuaded to follow an evil leader, such as Hitler) are not 100% evil. Tolkien's sympathy for Gollum -- who had a tiny but real chance at redemption & joining the good guys -- and this nameless warrior from the south indicates that, to him, the concept of war that goes "They may not be totally evil but we have to fight them anyway because they are attacking us" is a very troubling one. I think Tolkien's love of old poems and sagas depicting glorious warfare was at odds with his compassion for real people. So -- much as he did when, unsatisfied with the "moving" of Birnam Wood in MacBeth, he created Ents -- I think Tolkien's dissatisfaction with real warfare prompted him to make a world in which glorious fighting was actually possible. In that case, thinking too hard about orc families with wives and children would invalidate their purpose. I think biological reproduction must be happening, but that the thought of orc babies would have been unbearable to an author who positioned their species as an enemy whom it is always acceptable to kill. No people in Tolkien's world start evil, even if they become very evil later by their own choices; the fact that orcs are ruined elves allows that rule to still apply: they started out good but were pushed past the point where they could possibly be redeemed. Innocent orc babies who've never hurt anybody (even if they grow up to do so) would upset the concept, so that's why I think Tolkien didn't want to think about them. Gwenhwyfar http://newboards.theonering.net/...i?post=559593#559593 ~~~~~~ "nowimė I am in the West, Furincurunir to the Dwarves (or at least, to their best friend) and by other names in other lands. Mostly they just say 'Oh no it's him - look busy!' " Or "Hold off! unhand me, grey-beard loon!" My avatar image s looking a bit blue, following the rumbling of my 2 "secrets" : http://newboards.theonering.net/...i?post=855358#855358 This year LOTR turns 60. The following image is my LOTR 60th anniversary party footer! You can get yours here: http://newboards.theonering.net/...i?post=762154#762154
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Felagund
Rohan
Jul 1 2015, 5:37pm
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In his various musings (1950s-1960s) on the origins on the Orcs, Tolkien also postulated that Orcs (whether of Elvish or human origins) may have later interbred with Men - thus adding a new element to the origins story. All part of the of 'Myths Transformed' treasure trove. Once Morgoth corrupted various tribes of Men (the generic 'Easterlings' of the First Age), his human and Orcish servants would likely have spent time in each other's company - perhaps these new Orcs were conceptualised as a mixture of Orcs and Easterlings? That said, Morgoth did segregate the Easterlings after the Nirnaeth Arnoediad, by 'shutting' them in Hithlum, whilst the Orcs seemed free to rampage around Beleriand.
Welcome to the Mordorfone network, where we put the 'hai' back into Uruk
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