[sindohte]

Discussion of the Quenta Silmarillion - Of the Coming of the Elves and the Captivity of Melkor will begin officially on Tuesday 4/13

Anyone wandering by this thread should feel free to raise questions or make comments.

Please try to keep the comments on this thread strictly related to discussion of the Silm.

[sindohte]

Okay folks, time to get busy and start posting in this particular thread. Given all the Elf lovers out there, I certainly hope that things will get busy with our little discussion group!!!

*Sindohte pulls on her stiletto heeled black leather boots and cracks her whip*

So get busy with reading and discussing.

[Anna]

Ok, as a certified PEF I always enjoy reading this chapter! Soo many thoughts are crowding my mind, yet I have no idea where to begin...

Loooved when Tulkas is urging the other Valar to go to war with these words: "Shall one alone contest with us for ever?"
Absolutely adore that the first sound the elves heard was "the sound of water flowing, and the sound of water falling over stone"! Not so surprising, I suppose, since I´m a huge fan of Ulmo.
Furthermore, I quite like the way Oromë found the elves. I especially like the fact that he "was filled with wonder, as though they were beings sudden and marvellous and unforeseen; for so it shall ever be with the Valar". It helps reminding me that the Valar are no gods. Indeed, they are as surprised and stunned as anyone would be, I think, when faced with the wonders of Eru. Granted, they handle it far better than I would´ve done, I´m sure...

I don´t have time to write anything else right now. Will continue later!

Just one more thing for now! Am I the only one who thinks it seems that the main reason behind the Valars´ wish to bring the elves to Valinor is of a somewhat selfish nature? Sure, they were worried for their safety in ME, but I always get the picture that it was mainly because of the elves´beauty the Valar wanted them to come to Valinor. The book says; "they were filled moreover with the love of the beauty of the Elves and desired their fellowship. At the last, therefore, the Valar summoned the Quendi to Valinor, there to be gathered at the knees of the Powers".
Hmmm, this sounds suspiciously a lot like the Valar wanted the elves to remain in Valinor as some kind of singing, beautiful decorations...

Ok, now I really must go!

[BittenBuggy]

[inglor]

Anna,
I think you may have hit a nerve with your reasoning. That was one of the seeds that Melkor planted in Feanor and that really seemed to get Feanor (and the rest of the Noldor) worked up.
Or... were the Valar just being lazy: protecting the Elves would be easier in Valinor than in ME or rooting out all Melkor's toadies. Eru put the Elves in ME for a reason, seems they overlooked that point...
Would have saved everybody a lot of trouble if they'd have just gotten off their collective hienies

[sindohte]

I wonder what sort of torments the kidnapped Elves underwent in order to transform them from Illuvatar's children into twisted parodies of what they once were. That leads me to the question of nature vs. nuture. Did the kidnapped Elves have the potential for evil contained within them from the moment they were born (nature) or did Melkor take these poor hapless creatures and due to his overwhelming power managed to twist the Elves into Orcs?

As for me, I am a fence sitter on this particular argument. I believe that every being has the potential for either great good or evil. Melkor just helped things along a wee bit and made some Orcs.

[Anna]

I fully agree with you, Sindohte! I don´t believe in perfection. Everybody (even the pretty, pretty elves...) are both good and bad, I think. IMHO, some people need to be a bit more 'convinced' than others to turn bad, and I´m sure Melkor could be VERY convincing.
I find the origins of orcs to be extremely fascinating, indeed. We´ve already discussed this a little bit in another thread ("Of Aulë and Yavanna", I think), but there are sooo many unanswered questions concerning this. Aargh, it´s so frustrating!
Seriously, would it have killed Tolkien if he had been a bit less vague?!
Anyway, someone (sorry, don´t remember who) wrote something about not believing the orcs having souls. I have to disagree with that assumption, though. Granted, they probably didn´t possess the greatest and wittiest personalities one could imagine, but I do believe they had souls. Otherwise they would´ve been like zombies, right? If they had been soul-less nothing would´ve mattered to them, I think. They hated the elves with a vengence, for instance. They obviously liked pillaging, killing and generally behaving like vermin. See, they even had hobbies!
Seriously, it is awful to think about! At least the first orcs must´ve known on some level what Melkor had robbed them of. Well, they held no great love for him, anyway. In "Of the coming of the Elves" it says that "deep in their dark hearts the Orcs loathed the Master whom they served in fear, the maker only of their misery". Also, I seem to remember a passage in LOTR (?) where two orcs are talking about how nice it would be if they could get rid of Sauron and be their own masters. Have I imagined it all or does anyone know what I´m talking about?

Speaking of Sauron; does anyone have an idea where he hid after the Valar had won the Battle of the Powers? And why was Melkor blindfolded when he was brought to the Ring of Doom?

[Andreth]

Okay, you asked for it. Another long post.

That would be me who brought up the possibility of the Orcs not having souls. Although I didn't say that's what I believed, I said it was one of the possibilities Tolkien came up with when trying to decide the origins of the Orcs. Though it says here in the Silmarillion and in LotR that the Orcs originated from corrupted Elves, Professor Tolkien started to rethink that in later years and on the typescript of the Annals of Aman (part of the texts Christopher Tolkien pieced together the Silmarillion from) in this section discussing the original Orcs, Professor Tolkien noted "Alter this. Orcs are not Elvish."

This led to different essays in which Tolkien tried to sort out the origins of Orcs, but he *never* decided on one. It's not that he's vague about it - he's just up in the air because he apparently couldn't find one that worked well enough for him.

As to their being soul-less, it was a considered option. From Morgoth's Ring: "In summary, I think it must be assumed that 'talking' is not necessariliy the sign of the possession of a 'rational soul' or fea. The Orcs were *beasts* of humanized shape (to mock Men and Elves) deliberately perverted/converted into a more close resemblance to Men. Their 'talking' was really reeling off 'records' set in them by Melkor. Even their rebellious critical words - he knew about them. Melkor taught them speech and as they bred they inherited this; and they had just as much independence as have, say, dogs or horses of their human masters. This talking was largely echoic (cf. parrots). In The Lord of the Rings Sauron is said to have devised a language for them.

The same sort of thing may be said of Huan and the Eagles: they were taught language by the Valar, and raised to a higher level - but they still had no fear.

But Finrod probably went too far in his assertion that Melkor *could not* wholly corrupt any work of Eru, or that Eru would (necessarily) interfere to abrogate the corruption, or to end the being of His own creatures because they had been corrupted and fallen into evil.

It remains therefore terribly possible there was an Elvish strain in the Orcs. These may then even have been mated with beasts (sterile!) - and later Men. Their life-span would be diminished. And dying they would go to Mandos and be held in prison till the End.

Note: The assertion "that it remains therefore terribly possible there was an Elvish strain in the Orcs' seems merely to contradict what has been said about their being no more than 'talking beasts' without advancing any new considerations. In the passage added at the end of the text the statement that 'Orcs are beasts' is repeated."

The other essays go on to discuss the Orcs' origins in different ways and there, Tolkien teeters back to the idea that the Orcs could have been sentient beings. He never ultimately decided on the origins or whether or not they had souls. If you want to know the whole discussion you can read the Myths Transformed section of Morgoth's Ring 'cause it's waaaayyy too long to post here.

[Andreth]

Melkor would have been very coercive, indeed, and not always by force or torture. In the Valaquenta it says "For of the Maiar many were drawn to his splendour in the days of his greatness, and remained in that allegiance down into his darkness; and others he corrupted aftwards to his service with lies and treacherous gifts."

So if Morgoth was that good at corrupting and turning the Maiar, who were very powerful beings that had once stood in the presence of Eru himself, imagine what Morgoth could to the lesser beings of Elves and Men. Although considering his opinion of the Chlidren of Eru and the fact that he just wanted them obliterated out of existence, I doubt he took the time to play mind games with them. Probably more enjoyed just going straight to the torture.

As for Sauron's doings after Morgoth was imprisoned - in HoMe it says that he hid (doesn't say where) while the Valar hauled Morgoth away, and then afterward Sauron stayed and rebuilt the fortress of Angband and took over the breeding of the Orcs. Which is supposed to explain why there were so many Orcs everywhere by the time the Noldor came to Middle-earth.

In this chapter I found it interesting that the Misty Mountains were raised by Morgoth to hinder Orome's riding. I wonder if that's why so many of the nasty things chose to hang around the Misty Mountains in later ages?

Anna

[Anna]

Ooo...wow...
I love when you get all educational! Very impressive, indeed.
I know; I´m such a geek...

[BittenBuggy]

Anna....

Just kidding dear, I am glad you are so knowledable Makes the rest of us look smart when we can go 'Oh, I get it!' and then of course.... we dont!

[Mara]

First of all, thank you for this interesting topic!

If I recall correctly, the Silm says that Orcs live and multiply in the same way than the Children of Ilúvatar. So, I have a few questions:

As orcs are basically a degenerated subrace of Elves, does it mean that Orcs are also inmortal? I think the answer would be yes; they are virtually inmortal, but the orcish way of life -war, killing, etc., doesn´t provide a long life. I doubt an Orc can even reach a Man´s middle age before being butchered in a battle...

But then again, if we stick to the souless theory, inmortality would make not much sense; in fact it would make much more sense for Melkor to breed a mass of short-living beasts without soul --and therefore, without a will of their own, than dealing with hords of thinking beings. Thinking is a very dangerous thing for any tyrant.

Also, the subject of reproduction brings more unanswered questions. If Orcs indeed multiply like Elves and Men... well, there must be she-orcs somewhere, although I ´ve never heard of them. Also there is the not very canonycal movie version, in which we see the Uruk Hai rising from a bubbling mud-thing (?).

Coupling customs of the Orcs. Yeah, nice conversation theme for lunch time

Could anybody enlighten me a bit?


Mara

[Andreth]

Tolkien addresses the immortality in his usual vague terms at first, then gets more concrete about it. Again from Morgoth's Ring, Myths Transformed:

"And are Orcs 'immortal', in the Elvish sense? Or trolls?"....[Later in the essay] It does however seem best to view Melkor's corrupting power as always starting, at least, in the moral or theological level. Any creature that took him for Lord (and especially those who blasphemously called him Father or Creator) became soon corrupted in all parts of its being, the Fea dragging down the hroa in its descent into Morgothism: hate and desturction. As for the Elves being 'immortal'" they in fact only had enormously long lives, and were themselves physically 'wearing out', and suffering a slow progressive weakening of their bodies." ....

[Later again] "It remains therefore terribly possible there was an Elvish straing in the Orcs. These may then even have been mated with beasts (sterile!) and later Men. Their life-spanwould be diminished. And dying they would go to Mandos and be held in prison until the End."

[Skipping over to the next essay] They (Orcs) needed food and drink, and rest, though many were by training as though as Dwarves in enduring hardship. They could be slain, and they were subject to disease; but apart form these ills they died and were not immortal, even according to the manner of the Quendi; indeed they appear to have been by nature short-lived compared ith the span of Men of higher race, such as the Edain.

This last point was not well understood in the Elder Days. For Morgoth had many servants, the oldest and most potent of whom were immortal, belonging indeed in their beginning to the Maiar; and these evil spirits like their Master could take on visible forms. Those whose business it was to direct the Orcs often took Orkish shapes, though they were greater and more terrible. Thus it was that the hisories speak of Great Orcs or Orc-captains who were not slain, and who reappeared in battle through years far longer than the span of the lives of Men."

As for their reproduction, I guess that's left to those of us who are brave enough to use our imaginations for it. Tolkien repeatedly uses the words "breed", "bred", "breeding", and like you pointed out above, states that they multiplied after the way of the Children of Iluvatar, so to me that means there were female Orcs and reproduction occurred just like it does with Elves and Men. Heck, Tolkien wouldn't even discuss human sex, so it doesn't surprise me that he wouldn't discuss Orc reproduction except in vague, necessary terms.

Although there are those who believe otherwise and have come up with good arguments to the contrary, so in the end it's another one of those things that we tend to interpret for ourselves.

Hope that helps with your questions!

Anna

[Mara]

Thanks a lot

Mara

[Thuriniel]

I feel terrible that I haven't posted sooner ... but you guys always have such wonderful insights I sort of get lost reading your posts!

Just one more thing I would like to add up to this thread. The stars. When I first read the trilogy I found it very intriguing how mesmerized the Elves seemed by the stars. It wasn't until I read this chapter that I understood why ... it was the only thing that could be seen in the Heavens. I've tried to put myself in the situation of being in a world illuminated by the two Lamps of the Valar (it does say that the light was like the light of day) ... I think I would've been quite caught up by those points of light shining in the firmament!