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Beware That Baker in the Kitchen! - Page 2

© Michael Martinez

Good, in the sense of what is best for the community, also existed among the Orcs. Aragorn pointed out that they would travel a long way to avenge a fallen captain. Why? The Orc was dead, after all, right? What was in it for the living Orcs to risk their lives trying to pay back someone who had killed a captain they probably hated? Pride. But not just pride. There had to be a pack sense, a tribal feeling which underlay all the inevitable abuse. The growling and fighting and snarling was part of the social pecking system. Chickens determine a social hierarchy and so do Orcs. That's just the way things are. So what if the head Orc probably killed five other Orc chiefs to take over the tribe? The Orcs were loyal to their masters. They fought and died by the thousands for Melkor, Sauron, and Saruman. Many of them may have lost their free will, but even Melkor (Tolkien argues in one of his essays) couldn't directly control them all. They hated their masters but feared them. And yet, some of the Orcs seemed to take pride in their service. Shagrat, for example, was fiercely determined to see to it that Frodo was delievered to Barad-dur. Why? Gorbag and his boys didn't seem to feel compelled to stay on the path. Even when Shagrat was told an Elven warrior had breached his defenses, he insisted on sending the prisoner to Lugburz (though in the end only Frodo's mithril coat was taken). Shagrat was a "good Orc". He would be the kind of Orc you'd want working for you if you controlled Orcs. Gorbag wasn't all that good. But that isn't to say that the Orcs' values should have been on a par with those of the Elves and Dunedain. The Orcs lived their lives according to the will of their masters. They could not know there was an absolute standard of good and evil, ultimately derived from the values of Iluvatar. It would be His values which prevailed over all, and they might not necessarily match those of the Elves and Men. Iluvatar, for example, permitted evil to exist. Why? That same question has been asked of the Judeo-Christian community for a long time. Why does God permit evil to exist? The New Testament answer is that, if God were to end evil today, then nearly everyone would perish. He delays his judgement to give people as much time as He deems reasonable to reflect upon their sins and turn away from them. Iluvatar's purposes are not so clearly explained. In fact, Tolkien was troubled by the implications of extending that principle to Iluvatar. He recognized that if the Orcs were rational incarnates, like Men and Elves, then Iluvatar was creating spirits which were doomed to live lives of evil. Why would Iluvatar do that? It wasn't predestination which would doom the Orcs so much as their circumstances.

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