Real Orcs Don't Do Windows - Page 6
© Michael Martinez
Yet Tolkien's fascination with "real Orcs" did not end with The Lord of the Rings. He hinted very strongly in the abandoned sequel to LoTR, The New Shadow, that Orcs had become little more than a memory haunting Dunadan history and sensibility in the Fourth Age Gondor. Boys played at being Orcs, having no real idea of the harm Orcs had once inflicted.
In the space of a few generations, Tolkien supposed, the memory of "real Orcs" had faded and been replaced by a more playful concept. And how like true English history might that have seemed to him? Beowulf's Orc was forgotten and replaced in the popular imagination by a French goblin. But who shall ever forget the Uruks?
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