|
|
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
InTheChair
Rohan
Sep 14 2016, 5:43pm
Post #1 of 6
(1440 views)
Shortcut
|
|
**The Land of Shadow** Part 3. "Snufflers and Slugs, Heckle and Jeckle."
|
Can't Post
|
|
After the Uruk-Hai and the Cirith Ungol chapters The Land of Shadow continues to provide us with first hand experience of Orcs and their ways, and in this part we'll be taking a look at the encounters Frodo and Sam have with these goons of Middle-Earth in The Land of Shadow.
The first of these is not until half-way through the chapter, after Frodo and Sam has passed the orc-hold on the way. Then they hear harsh and loud orc-voices, and presently two orcs comes into view. As usual they were quarrelling and beeing of different breeds they used the Common Speech after their fashion.
1. Back at Cirith Ungol no mention is made of the Orcs the common speech, Tolkien having there the benefit of ascribing Sams understanding of the Orcs to the ring. Is Tolkien pairing two Orcs of different breed here so as to get an excuse for using the common speech, translatable to English?
This is also the first time we see Orcs operating in small numbers. True Sam only had to deal with two in Cirith Ungol, but there had been hundreds before they decided to kill each other off.
2. Are there any differences in their behaviour now that there is only two of them? Is the tracker more rebellious than he would have dared to be in a large company?
3a. Why are there only two of them? Why aren't the orcs out searching in large troops, as they do everything else in large troops? Sauron is said to have plenty of them. Is this a way for Tolkien to explain how Frodo and Sam could avoid detection or prolonged hunt?
3b. Is it efficient use of soldier orcs to have one guarding only one tracker orc?
The translation into English of their speech use a few words or ways of expressions that might be English dialect or slang. Probably to substitute for the way the orcs use the common speech.
4. Nar! snarles the tracker orc, and then he says also Ar!. Are ar, and nar his versions of yes and no? Do these come from any particular english speaking group, who also uses them in this meaning?
5. He also graces the listerner with a Garn! Which I think Shagrat also made use of previously. Where does this come from? Is it similiar in meaning or application to Damn?
Not much use are you little snufflers with your snotty noses says the soldier orc to the tracker orc. In a previous chapter The Uruk-hai Ugluk commented that all the little maggots were good for was seeing in the dark.
6. Are this tracker orc and the smaller orcs from Moria of wholly different breeds and therefore have different special abilities?
You don't even know what you're looking for says the tracker orc to the soldier orc. But just a little earlier the tracker orc said, It went up into the hills, not along the valley I tell you, proving that the tracker orc also don't know what he is looking for, nor how many.
7. Given this, does the tracker orc have grounds for his taunt of the soldier orc? Has he been dragged out against his will in this task? Or does he simply in orcish fashion not care about fairness of insult?
The soldier orc won't accept it. Whose blame is it? It comes from higher up, first it's a great elf in bright armour, then it's a sort of small dwarf man, then it must be a pack of rebel Uruk-hai.
8. One can see where the first two suggestions come from, but how did someone come to think it was a pack or rebel Uruk-hai? Gorbags men and himself would surely all have been found in the tower, and Shagrat who got out would have told them that none of Gorbags men survived.
Small wonder there's bad news from the battles. Says the tracker. Who says there's bad news? Says the soldier. Who says there isn't? Says the tracker.
9. Clearly the tracker hasn't had much news at all. Why does he assume bad news? Is he just a misanthrope, or is it the way of all orcs to be pessimistic?
10. Is the soldier of a more optimistic disposition, or is he just trying to uphold the honour of his profession and his fighting collegues?
The tracker brings upp our old friend Gollum. What's the black sneak got to do with it? That gobbler with the flapping hands.
11. Is Gollum black? He might be mired with slime and soot, but the general impression is usually that he has fair skin. He has black clothes in the Hobbit though. Does the tracker call him black because of his clothes, and is the usual image of Gollum clad only in a loincloth faulty?
12. What are flapping hands? And why and how did Gollum come to get such a reputation with the orcs?
No sooner had he slipped us and run off than word came he is beeing wanted alive, wanted quick, says the soldier orc.
13. Who are us? The soldier orc is said to be a big fighting-orc like those of Shagrats company. Shagrats whole company was killed at the tower. Was Gollum ever in the capture of a company from the orc-hold? Is that where this soldier orc is coming from?
He messed up the scent back there pinching that cast-off mail-shirt, and paddling all around the place.
14. Frodo and Sam it seems are not nearly as careful as they need to be and Gollum is helping along by cleaning up their tracks after them. He of course has good reason why he doesn't want the ring to be caught. Does this unexpected, though perhaps unfriendly help foreshadow the final role of Gollum and Gandalfs prophecies?
Eventually the tracker orc has had enough and lopes off. He shrugs of the soldier orcs warning of a report. Who to? Not your precious Shagrat.
15. Again we see a connection made between Shagrat and the soldier orc, and still all of Shagrats men were killed in the tower. What company does the soldier orc belong to? Was Shagrat infact Captain over more than one company?
16. Is Shagrat much higher in the orc-hierarchy that has hitherto been the impression?
After threatened with a report to the Nazgul, the tracker orcs calls the Nazguls filthy shriekers, and in a combined Star Trek, Spectre reference says the enemy has already done in Number One.
17. Is the tracker orc showing uncharacteristic courage openly throwing such an insult against a high ranking Nazgul? Or has he just had his fill of the whole situation?
18. News travels quickly in Mordor. Given he has been on the track of Frodo and Sam for some time, and has had no clear news, good or bad, from the battles, When has the tracker orc heard that Number One has met his fate?
Moving ahead until Frodo and Sam are further North on the road towards the Isenmouthe they are finally caught up by an orc-troop. They sit down under a cliff and set their shields before their knees to hide their feet.
19. If hiding the feet was important now, why wasn't it after they are put into the line and forced to march with the other orcs?
20. Frodo threw away the orc-mail because it was too heavy. Was the shield he appears to have carried all this way much lighter? Or did Sam carry two shields?
The slave-driver orc notices them, and recognize the devices on their shields. All your folk should have been inside Udûn before yestreday.
21. The only heraldic device mentioned is the red eye, and this is notably painted on the shields of the orcs. What markings did the slave-driver orc notice on their shields to figure out their company? Did the orcs of Cirith Ungol not wear the red eye on their shields?
22. Sam took their orc-gear from Shagrats company, a company stationed at Cirith Ungol at a fair distance from Udûn. Why were their company expected to be inside Udûn? And not at Cirith Ungol guarding that pass?
Where there's a whip there's a will, my slugs. Frodo and Sam are marched along with the rest of the company.
23a. Given Ugluks assesment from the chapter The Uruk-hai that the smaller orcs can see like gimlets in the dark, how can Frodo and Sam fail to be detected? Or is the night-vision of the Moria orcs a special quality of living down in the mines?
23b. Same question given the smaller tracking orcs snuffling noses and scent-abilities. How can Frodo and Sam avoid beeing sniffed out?
At the road-meeting the Durthang line is charged by a troop of heavy-armed uruks from Barad-dûr, and are thrown into confusion. Frodo and Sam takes their chance and slowly crawls away unnoticed.
24. Again how can they go unnoticed in this situation. Would there be a lot of dust thrown up to cover them? Or would the almost magical elven cloaks serve to hide them in the general confusion?
Last part hopefully to come up by Friday.
|
|
|
noWizardme
Half-elven
Sep 14 2016, 6:20pm
Post #2 of 6
(1408 views)
Shortcut
|
14. Frodo and Sam it seems are not nearly as careful as they need to be and Gollum is helping along by cleaning up their tracks after them. He of course has good reason why he doesn't want the ring to be caught. Does this unexpected, though perhaps unfriendly help foreshadow the final role of Gollum and Gandalfs prophecies?
Gollum trying to prevent F&S (and the Ring) from being captured seems a perfectly reasonable explanation. I hadn't thought of that, and had assumed that Gollum had grabbed it because he was tracking F&S himself. Unless he was watching them as Frodo discarded the mail shirt, I was supposing he'd have to sniff it to confirm that it was Frodo who had been wearing it, not some random orc.
~~~~~~
Volunteers are still needed to lead chapters for our read-thorough of Book VI ROTK (and the appendices if there are sufficient volunteers) http://newboards.theonering.net/...i?post=909709#909709
A wonderful list of links to Book I - Book V chapters in this read-through (and to previous read-throughs) is curated by our very own 'squire' here http://users.bestweb.net/...-SixthDiscussion.htm
|
|
|
noWizardme
Half-elven
Sep 14 2016, 8:05pm
Post #3 of 6
(1398 views)
Shortcut
|
|
Are Tracker and Soldier the Tom, Bert and William of LOTR?
[In reply to]
|
Can't Post
|
|
...because they are beginning to remind me of the trolls from The Hobbit.
'Garn' (when not an obsolete word for yarn) is said to be cockney slang (or at least an authors' version of it) - an expression of disbelief or mockery.
Mrs Pearce: […] She may be married.
Liza: Garn!
1912, George Bernard Shaw, Pygmalion
whereas you might hear 'ar' for yes in the West Country of England (think cliched pirate speech -apparently they were all from Devon!).
There's something quite stagy about the arrival of these two characters. It's not only their dialogue and their prompt exit again. Nor is it how you could imagine them played for rather dark comedy. It's how over-neatly they exemplify what I think Tolkein wants to show us about Mordor.
So I think its a slightly clumsy way of giving us some news that F&S couldn't have got any other way, and giving us the insight that Frodo promptly vocalises:
that is the spirit of Mordor, Sam; and it has spread to every corner of it. Orcs have always behaved like that, or so all tales say, when they are on their own. But you can’t get much hope out of it. They hate us far more, altogether and all the time. If those two had seen us, they would have dropped all their quarrel until we were dead.’
Not my favourite bit of Tolkien's writing but I like the idea that the only thing worse than orcs being orcish under their own devices is orcs harnessed to an evil bureaucracy. It multiplies their efforts, but it adds the classic institutional problems of poor communication, turf battles and muddled priorities to the general lack of cohesion inherent in it being every man (well, every orc) for himself.
We also see that Sauron has not read (or applied) his Machiavelli.
“Upon this a question arises: whether it be better to be loved than feared or feared than loved? One should wish to be both, but, because it is difficult to unite them in one person, it is much safer to be feared than loved. ...
Men love according as they please, and fear according to the will of the prince. A wise prince should establish himself on that which he controls, and not in that which others control. He must endeavour only to avoid being hated.”
Machiavelli The Prince
It does seem a bit odd to send out searchers in twos, especially if its not clear what the quarry is - a great elf in bright armour or a pack of rebel Urk-hai would need more than one soldier to deal with. Maybe the idea is that in Mordor you can't trust anyone to do their job, so a tracker would need a watcher or else he'd just shirk the job. And of course you send along someone hostile to the tracker so that they don't just connive to have fun together (if yo can have any fun in Mordor).
That problem of 'nobody will do good work unsupervised' was well summed up by the great Dr Seuss:
“Oh, the jobs people work at! Out west near Hawtch-Hawtch there's a Hawtch-Hawtcher bee watcher, his job is to watch. Is to keep both his eyes on the lazy town bee, a bee that is watched will work harder you see. So he watched and he watched, but in spite of his watch that bee didn't work any harder not mawtch. So then somebody said "Our old bee-watching man just isn't bee watching as hard as he can, he ought to be watched by another Hawtch-Hawtcher! The thing that we need is a bee-watcher-watcher!". Well, the bee-watcher-watcher watched the bee-watcher. He didn't watch well so another Hawtch-Hawtcher had to come in as a watch-watcher-watcher! And now all the Hawtchers who live in Hawtch-Hawtch are watching on watch watcher watchering watch, watch watching the watcher who's watching that bee. You're not a Hawtch-Watcher you're lucky you see!”
Dr. Seuss, Did I Ever Tell You How Lucky You Are?
Of course Dr Seuss was a humourist not a management consultant. But that said I came across this particular Seuss book after a friend of mine quoted it to explain why she'd decided to quit her IT job...
~~~~~~
Volunteers are still needed to lead chapters for our read-thorough of Book VI ROTK (and the appendices if there are sufficient volunteers) http://newboards.theonering.net/...i?post=909709#909709
A wonderful list of links to Book I - Book V chapters in this read-through (and to previous read-throughs) is curated by our very own 'squire' here http://users.bestweb.net/...-SixthDiscussion.htm
(This post was edited by noWizardme on Sep 14 2016, 8:16pm)
|
|
|
Ingwion
Lorien
Sep 17 2016, 11:37am
Post #4 of 6
(1334 views)
Shortcut
|
21. The only heraldic device mentioned is the red eye, and this is notably painted on the shields of the orcs. What markings did the slave-driver orc notice on their shields to figure out their company? Did the orcs of Cirith Ungol not wear the red eye on their shields?
22. Sam took their orc-gear from Shagrats company, a company stationed at Cirith Ungol at a fair distance from Udûn. Why were their company expected to be inside Udûn? And not at Cirith Ungol guarding that pass?
Maybe on their shields were printed a number associated with the previous owner of the shield? ("I'll give your name and number to the Nazgul") It would only need to be crude markings to be distinguishable.
If that is so, the logical system for numbering the orcs would be to have, perhaps, the first digit denoting whether he came from the Morgai, Gorgoroth, Udûn, Isenmouth or even Nurn. Then the second digit would narrow it down further, so a shield number with the first two digits 47 might show that he was stationed near the south of the Morgai, and the first three digits 473 might show he came from Cirith Ungol, and so on (once the area was specified, maybe in the first 5 digits, it would have a number specifying the company within that area, then the individual orc).
So a half-important orc might recognise the digits '473', for example, and remember all the troops in Cirith Ungol were to be in Udun. Maybe even the first digit, 4 (for example) would tell him that, if Sauron had ordered all troops in the Gorgai/Ungol to move out.
This logical numbering system would be in line with the text and would seem like the kind of system Sauron would employ.
As for 22, I think Sauron was intelligent enough to realise the Captains of the West would not attempt an attack by so sorcerous a way - and if they did, the sorcery probably would send them mad. Anyway, I think Minas Morgul was the prime defense of that pass, and Cirith Ungol would only be tried if Morgul fell, which Sauron in his arrogance thought impossible.
Also, I don't think Sauron was beyond fear, so he wanted to be sure of victory. He might leave a few companies in MM but he would move all troops from the Cirith Ungol area to Udûn.
It was a foggy day in London, and the fog was heavy and dark. Animate London, with smarting eyes and irritated lungs, was blinking, wheezing, and choking; inanimate London was a sooty spectre, divided in purpose between being visible and invisible, and so being wholly neither.
It is said by the Eldar that in water there lives yet the echo of the Music of the Ainur more than in any substance that is in this Earth; and many of the Children of Ilúvatar hearken still unsated to the voices of the Sea, and yet know not for what they listen.
|
|
|
CuriousG
Half-elven
Sep 20 2016, 12:31am
Post #5 of 6
(1294 views)
Shortcut
|
|
I think Wiz nailed it with "stagy"
[In reply to]
|
Can't Post
|
|
I actually enjoy this little look at how everyday orcs really behave in a nutshell, but it does seem a little staged. Why aren't more scouting parties in pairs coming close to the hobbits? Why do they only come across these two? Isn't it a little too convenient that they speak the Common Tongue? The list goes on. I do enjoy it, because it would seem even less realistic that the hobbits, who are not trained wilderness-survival types like Aragorn, are able to wander in Gondor with so little with so little risk of capture, and we learn more about orc-culture and their perspective on things through this episode.
I like Frodo's observation about orc behavior too, even if he seems to slip a little too conveniently into the role of omniscient narrator here. So what--I'm a reader with questions, and here I get some answers.
Of all your questions, Chair, this one is particularly good:
3b. Is it efficient use of soldier orcs to have one guarding only one tracker orc?
No, it's not, but I like to think that dictatorships are inherently inferior to freer societies, so this makes me feel good that I'm right for a change. Sauron is losing his resources by having the orcs at Cirith Ungol wipe each other out, and then he has to double up other resources because he can't trust ANY of his minions and must keep guards on top of trackers. Later, when the hobbits are captured on the road by marching orcs, we see how orcs are whipped by their own kind just to keep them moving. Is that anything Aragorn, Faramir, or Eomer would do to their marching armies? No, nay, never!
|
|
|
Hamfast Gamgee
Tol Eressea
Sep 22 2016, 11:47pm
Post #6 of 6
(1254 views)
Shortcut
|
We often talk about the characters point of view. But I do believe we actually in this chapter get a rare glimpse into Sauron's mind. The dark power was troubled by events in the West, a bright sword he saw and his mind was troubled by reports of two bold spies that had his borders.
|
|
|
|
|
