The Moral Universe of Middle-earth

[vison]

I take your point, Voronwë, and actually, it is my point. I think the Orcs were a terrible mistake, to be honest. And I think Gollum was, too. I think the potential for wickedness of men is sufficient, for the purpose of elucidating the power or attraction of evil.

There are many times when I think LOTR is a rather troubled pudding, with bits of a children's tale mixed with a great romance, mixed with a bit of horror fantasy. The overall pudding is delicious and filling, but no pudding can take any amount of deconstruction.

The rest of your post is interesting. He brings in that troubling word "Faery", which has utterly, totally, and forever escaped my comprehension. Why it troubled HIM I am not sure, although he does try to explain it. I have toiled through Tolkien's essay "On Faery" about a dozen times and get no further along any road to understanding. I sometimes think I see it glimmering before me, drawing me on, and then, poof! It's gone.

His creation of Middle Earth in LOTR stands alone, for me. He needn't have written another word beyond LOTR. I "like" the Silmarillion, have read it about twenty times, enjoy bits of it quite a lot, but cannot "love" it the way I love LOTR. I view it as the backstory, a sort of self-written Cliff's Notes kindly provided by the author.

One of my friends, with whom I have argued LOTR many times, has always asserted that we must take an author's work as we find it. The author may write and write explaining himself, or excusing himself, or educating the reader, but we are as free to ignore it as to accept it, and needn't take it into account when we enjoy the story. I tend to agree with her.

"Tend" being the operative word.

Generally, I find, knowing much about an artist does me no good and usually harm. I always seem to learn something I don't like. Tolstoy was an unloving husband who despised his wife. Hemingway was a macho poseur. John O'Hara was a snob who sneered at other snobs.

Tolkien? Well, there isn't anything to despise or fear about Tolkien as far as I know. He seems to have been an earnestly good man, kind and civilized. He evidently took the responsibility of having created a masterpiece very seriously, as such a man would. But I don't need to know any of that, any more than I need to know the Silmarillion to enjoy LOTR. I can truthfully say that reading it added nothing of importance to my appreciation of LOTR. I know that's not true for you and for many others. It is my loss, and I know it.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

My dear vison, no one can tell you that your way of appreciating something is the wrong way. Not me, not yourself, and not Tolkien.

I had probably read the LOTR 25 times before I ever read the Silmarillion (let alone the UT and the HoME). It had a profound effect on my spirit when Fëanor was nothing more then a name and a mystery, and the identify of the dark lord that Sauron was but a servant to was a puzzle the answer to which I had no need to know. So I do have a good idea of where you are coming from.

It is true that as I have gotten older (and perhaps as my life has gotten more complex), I have become more attracted to the granduer and -- dare I say it -- the darkness of the Silmarillion. It is interesting to note (or maybe not, but I'll note it anyway ) that for Tolkien it was in a way the opposite. The darkest of his tales were formed in his younger years, perhaps when the horror of the trenches of WWI, and the loss of his parents were still fresh in his mind. And though LOTR, which was produced when he was in late middle-age, itself has much darkness in it, it is ultimately a tale of redemption and grace.

[Athrabeth]

An honest and thought-provoking post, vison. Thank-you.

I suppose I love both the Silmarillion and LOTR, but very differently. I touched briefly on that thought in another thread, when I said that when I analyze and write about the Sil, it's more with my "head", and when I analyze and write about LOTR, it's more with my "heart" (although there are moments in both when the balance between thought and feeling is simply perfect for me).

As for Orcs and Gollum............

I think I raised a question about Orcs in the Sil thread (no idea on which board) when we were talking about Aulë creating the Dwarves. Without the divine gift of free will, Aulë's creations are nothing more than puppets that act as he wills, and it is upon receiving this gift, through the direct intervention of Eru, that they fall before Aulë and entreat for his mercy. At that moment, they change from being mindless slaves of another's thought to being capable of forming their own thought. And in that instant of becoming dynamically sentient, they have an immediate understanding of what "mercy" means. For if they did not, how then could they plead for it? And, taking the thought further, if they inherently know what mercy is, then surely this means that they have formed an understanding and a connection to the "other"; that they, themselves, through conceiving of this thought, are capable of extending mercy to one "outside" of themselves.

This is where I think the ideas behind Tolkien's Orcs get very fuzzy indeed. He had, I presume, the option of making Orcs the creation of Melkor in much the same way that the original Dwarves were the creation of Aulë; that is, mindless automatons driven by a master will. But he chose instead to make them "corrupted" Elves, tortured and "engineered" into a monstrous sub-species. Yet even as such, they are portrayed inconsistently, especially in LOTR. At the fall of Barad-dûr, Tolkien writes:

As when death smites the swollen brooding then that inhabits their crawling hill and holds them all in sway, ants will wander witless and purposeless and then feebly die, so the creatures of Sauron, orc or troll or beast spell-enslaved, ran hither and thither mindless....

The behaviour in that passage just doesn't seem to "fit" with the longings of two Orcs who talk about "setting up" somewhere without any "bosses", does it? I could easily "write off" the creatures described in the above passage, but Shagrat and Gorbag, THESE are creatures that I can actually empathize with. I COULD show them mercy, I believe. The question is.........would they be able to accept it? Would they know what mercy was? And if they did, what would that say about the possibility of their redemption? That's basically what makes me just a little uneasy about the Orcs in LOTR, and their role in Tolkien's moral universe. They seem to be written as being entirely beyond redemption, and yet................ I really have no idea why Tolkien didn't sort this all out.........I suppose because he simply never really nailed down the definitive nature of the Orcs; but it DOES seem to be an inconsistency in the foundation of the greater tale, at least for me (and presumably vison )

Old Gollum, on the other hand........now there's a creature that knows what mercy is. He pleads for it, he recognizes (in his own way) its grace, he longs to extend it to Frodo, and he falls, finally and irretrievably, when he denies it to the one who offered it, freely, to him. I have no problem with the creature, Gollum, within the construct of Tolkien's moral universe, nor, actually within my own little personal version of a moral universe. I think he is a symbol of what seems utterly lost and irredeemable, of the lowest point to which any creature somehow connected to the "other" can sink; but he is still "us" at that almost inconceivably tiny centre of empathy and decency that survives within him, until it is finally and forever extinguished on the stairs of Cirith Ungol.

[Alatar]

Although I enjoy the Silmarillion I ache at what it might have been. I wish with all my heart that the full Quenta could have been as fully expanded as it was in the narratives in "Unfinished Tales". It's only there that we see the Silmarillion written in the narrative style of Lord of the Rings and unfortunately none of those pieces cover Fëanor. Is there anything in HoME?

[truehobbit]

Re-reading this again, something clicked in my head as to why many people prefer LOTR to the Silmarillion. LOTR is largely about characters that say "yes" (in the sense that Jn describes) when faced with this moral choice. Primarily Frodo, Aragorn, and Gandalf, but most of the other characters to a lesser extent as well. However, the Silmarillion and its related works are largely about characters of great power and majesty that demonstrate that possibility of saying "no" that Jn described. Melkor and Fëanor and Ar-Pharazôn are the most vivid examples, but even among "good" characters, the theme repeats itself, from Aulë creating the dwarves and the Valar selfishly bringing the Elves to Valinor, to Thingol bringing destruction upon himself out of greed and pride.

I think that is why Tolkien was so anxious to have the two works published together. I think that they do balance each other, and together present a fuller picture of the moral universe of Middle-earth as conceived by Tolkien then either do by themselves. Because I don't think that one can fully understand the significance of Frodo's ultimate success without also considering the significance of Fëanor's failure.

I think that's beautifully put and I fully agree.
I've always thought of the Sil as the Old Testament to the New Testament of LOTR.

Some wonderful points here, but I must admit I don't understand a word of what Rashi, as quoted by Frelga, means about the separation of light and darkness having to do with removing the light from the grasp of the wicked - I'm probably just not getting it, but it sounds very off to me.

And, vison, I completely agree with almost everything in your post about being able to appreciate LOTR fully on its own!

Got to go now, but will try to say more later.

[Túrin Turambar]

Tolkien's views on what Orcs were exactly changes throughout his myth. My final opinion is that the Orcs are not sentient - they are animated by the spirit of Morgoth, and their own disloyalty and infighting is simply a result of Morgoth's own chaotic and destructive nature. I can't prove that, though.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Although I enjoy the Silmarillion I ache at what it might have been. I wish with all my heart that the full Quenta could have been as fully expanded as it was in the narratives in "Unfinished Tales". It's only there that we see the Silmarillion written in the narrative style of Lord of the Rings and unfortunately none of those pieces cover Fëanor. Is there anything in HoME?

Al, I think you've nailed down another reason why many people prefer LOTR to the Silmarillion. There are only fragments of tales written in the expansive, narrative style of LOTR (The Wanderings of Húrin is one such fragment). Fëanor remains a very two-dimensional character. One of the only fragments that I can think of that expands upon his character at all is a short essay printed along with The Shiboleth essay in The People of Middle-earth entitled "The names of the Sons of Fëanor with the legend of the fate of Amrod.

Amrad and Amras, the youngest of Fëanor's sons, were twins. Their mother, Nerdanel, originally gave them both the same mother-name, Ambarussa ('top-russet') because they were both red-haired and they were much alike.

When Fëanor begged that their names should at least be different Nerdanel looked strange, and after a while said: 'Then let one be called [Ambarto >] Umbarto, but which time will decide.

Fëanor was disturbed by this ominous name ('Fated'), and changed it to Ambarto... But Nerdanel said: "Umbarto I spoke; yet do as you wish. It will make no difference."

The essay then describes how when "Fëanor became more and more fell and violent, and rebelled against the Valar" he and Nerdanal became estranged. When in became clear that Fëanor was leaving Valinor forever, and taking their sons with him, she begged that he leave with her the two youngest, or at least one of them.

Fëanor replied: "Were you a try wife, as you had been till cozened by Aulë, you would keep all of them, for you would come with us. If you desert me, you desert also all of our children. For they are determined to go with their father.' Then Nerdanel was angry and she answered: 'You will not keep all of them. One at least will never set foot on Middle-earth.' 'Take your evil omens to the Valar who will delight in them,' said Fëanor. "I defy them'. So they parted.

The essay then tells how Fëanor "filled with malice" aroused Curufin and f few of those closest to him and set the ships of the Teleri aflame, to the dismay of all but a few, since many possessions were still on board, and the ships would have been useful for further journeying.

In the morning the host was mustered, but of Fëanor's seven sons only six were to be found. Then Ambarussa (the sixth son) went pale with fear. 'Did you not then rouse Ambarussa my brother (whom you called Ambarto)?’ he said. 'He would not come ashore to sleep (he said) in discomfort.' But it is thought (and no doubt Fëanor guessed this also) that it was in the mind of Ambarto to sail his ship back [?afterwards] and rejoin Nerdanel; for he had been much [?shocked] by the deed of his father [meaning the kin-slaying].

'That ship I destroyed first,' said Fëanor (hiding his own dismay). 'Then rightly you gave the name to the youngest of your children,' said Ambarussa, 'and Umbarto "the Fated" was its true form. Fell and fey are you become,' And after that no one dared speak again to Fëanor of this matter.

I have always found this little tale quite chilling, and very much in line with the heavy emphasis that Tolkien often placed on 'doom' and 'fate'. But the question I always wonder about is, did Nerdanel merely foretell her favorite sons demise (albeit indirectly) or did she pre-ordain it?

[vison]

I have always found this little tale quite chilling, and very much in line with the heavy emphasis that Tolkien often placed on 'doom' and 'fate'. But the question I always wonder about is, did Nerdanel merely foretell her favorite sons demise (albeit indirectly) or did she pre-ordain it?

Both, in the manner of these tales. Remember Frodo saying to Gollum: ".....If you touch me ever again, you shall be cast yourself into the Fire of Doom."

It is SO hard to connect this tale, to LOTR, in my heart. It's like the Greek myths, or the Iliad. I know they are part of the backstory of OUR world, but I am always shocked and horrified by the deeds in those tales.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Its not a pleasant story, that's for sure. Not the least because Nerdanel does not come off much better then Fëanor himself. But quite revealing, I think.

[Sassafras]

I have always found this little tale quite chilling, and very much in line with the heavy emphasis that Tolkien often placed on 'doom' and 'fate'. But the question I always wonder about is, did Nerdanel merely foretell her favorite sons demise (albeit indirectly) or did she pre-ordain it?

A very grim tale, indeed.

You know, V., I am slowly coming to the conclusion that Tolkien freely mixes both free will and fate in these stories and that one does not cancel the other out. Why that should be, I'm not quite sure.

Something for me to think about.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

And I. And all of us.

[vison]

And I. And all of us.

Precisely the difficulty I have had with it for years. I just try not to think about it.

That way lies madness.

[Jnyusa]

Well, there is this very old idea that it is buying into prophecies that makes them come true. You know, we behave as if it is going to come true, and that very behavior is what fulfills the prophecy.

We see a bit of that idea in The Mirror of Galadriel, when she warns Sam that some of the visions will never be unless one turns away from one's path to prevent them.

Jn

[Impenitent]

I think I raised a question about Orcs in the Sil thread (no idea on which board) when we were talking about Aulë creating the Dwarves. Without the divine gift of free will, Aulë's creations are nothing more than puppets that act as he wills, and it is upon receiving this gift, through the direct intervention of Eru, that they fall before Aulë and entreat for his mercy. At that moment, they change from being mindless slaves of another's thought to being capable of forming their own thought. And in that instant of becoming dynamically sentient, they have an immediate understanding of what "mercy" means. For if they did not, how then could they plead for it? And, taking the thought further, if they inherently know what mercy is, then surely this means that they have formed an understanding and a connection to the "other"; that they, themselves, through conceiving of this thought, are capable of extending mercy to one "outside" of themselves.

This is where I think the ideas behind Tolkien's Orcs get very fuzzy indeed. He had, I presume, the option of making Orcs the creation of Melkor in much the same way that the original Dwarves were the creation of Aulë; that is, mindless automatons driven by a master will. But he chose instead to make them "corrupted" Elves, tortured and "engineered" into a monstrous sub-species. Yet even as such, they are portrayed inconsistently, especially in LOTR. At the fall of Barad-dûr, Tolkien writes:

As when death smites the swollen brooding then that inhabits their crawling hill and holds them all in sway, ants will wander witless and purposeless and then feebly die, so the creatures of Sauron, orc or troll or beast spell-enslaved, ran hither and thither mindless....

The behaviour in that passage just doesn't seem to "fit" with the longings of two Orcs who talk about "setting up" somewhere without any "bosses", does it? I could easily "write off" the creatures described in the above passage, but Shagrat and Gorbag, THESE are creatures that I can actually empathize with. I COULD show them mercy, I believe. The question is.........would they be able to accept it? Would they know what mercy was? And if they did, what would that say about the possibility of their redemption? That's basically what makes me just a little uneasy about the Orcs in LOTR, and their role in Tolkien's moral universe. They seem to be written as being entirely beyond redemption, and yet................ I really have no idea why Tolkien didn't sort this all out.........I suppose because he simply never really nailed down the definitive nature of the Orcs; but it DOES seem to be an inconsistency in the foundation of the greater tale, at least for me (and presumably vison )

Whether orcs have their measure of free will or are puppets...

If they are puppets, animated by their master (as demonstrated by the quote given at the fall of Barad dur), then they have no need of redemption - both because they are not fully sentient creatures with free will of their own, and also because they are not responsible for their own evil. If they do only Sauron's will (having none of their own) then they cannot help what they do, or the fabric from which they were made.

And yet it seems to me, if they are merely puppets, redemption is easy! They need only another puppeteer.

Ridiculous, of course, we know that is not possible - any more than the Ring can be wielded for good.

So do they need or deserve redemption? Do they need or deserve mercy? I think the two questions are quite separate, and I don't have an answer to either right now. I'll have to devote some quiet midnight hours to ruminating over that.

The ambivalence we have regarding the orcs, that so many worry that they cannot feel sorry for them, or consider them at all, or extend any merciful thought towards them is very telling and a pertinent reflection on the nature of evil in our own moral universe. For where is the evil that is irredeemable? Who is unworthy of mercy? Is it not arguable that those who can least appreciate mercy are those most in need of it and of our compassion?

Tolkien here, by accident perhaps, has provided us with a mirror - what is evil? And is there absolute evil that we recognise or is absolute evil a theoretical absolute only? And can mercy be measured? For that matter, can redemption be measured?

I'm getting lost in my own esoterics.

Not that Tolkien intended all of this. But I believe that one of the reasons that the problem of the orcs bothers us so much is that Tolkien could come to no untimate decision about evil/free will/mercy/redemption either. He could not solve it in his own mind without creating a simplistic mould and so left it unresolved - hence all those conflicting statements. He just never could make up his mind on this and for very good reason.

[vison]

For me, one of the "problems" with the Orcs is that they aren't REAL. I used to think that Tolkien made them up so that when they needed to be slaughtered in their thousands, for instance at Helm's Deep and on the Pelennor Fields, their deaths were no cause for remorse, either for the people in the book, or for us, the readers. I used to think he had seen enough men killed in real life, so he thought that Orcs could be an enemy no one would avoid killing, no one need carry the weight of their deaths on his conscience.

Yet at the same time, in the same story, he has men fighting for the same cause as the Orcs. The touching passage in the woods of Ithilien, where Faramir's men ambush the Southrons, has more of truth, savagery, remorse, fear, than all the deaths of all the Orcs ever spawned.

I wish, to be honest, that he hadn't bothered with the Orcs. As debased Elves they were to be pitied. But that aspect of Orchood was set aside. As puppets, or near-automatons, they were just.....droids.

I know I've said it before, but I'll say it again: the Orcs had no inner life. They had no background, no homes, no wives, no Orclings. They had nothing of humanity about them! Killing an Orc was less than stepping on an Ant. I hate that. I hate it being in the book I love so much. They are just wrong.

The two who talk together of "setting up somewhere quiet, with no bosses" after the war, why, those aren't Orcs! Those are men. If all the Orcs had been like that......well, they weren't.

I can't see any aspect of "free will" in an Orc, they have no will of any kind, to any end. They are wind-up things, set moving by The Enemy. They are/were created to be killed with no meaning as their lives had no meaning, to be cannon fodder quite literally, to be like ugly wallpaper. I like to think, to imagine, that Tolkien would have taken them out, or brought forward more strongly the debased-Elf theory, if I'd had the chance to talk to him.

I wish Clifford Simak was still alive. He'd have plenty to say on this subject.

[Impenitent]

Vison, with regard to your question on Faery, I happened to come across this fabulous post by Twiggyleaf (one of my vanished favourites) talking about why Manwë sent Oromë and Tulkas northward to search for Melkor (Manwë believed that Melkor wished to return to one of his old strongholds in the north) and addressing the issue of why was the south left unexplored and undeveloped.

"In Tree and Leaf, Tolkien spoke of Faerie Stories and one of the central ideas he expounded was that the stories mirrored environments and situations in our real lives. As an avid reader of fantasy literature and as an experienced games-master and creator of worlds for the purposes of role-playing, I believe strongly in the importance of the concept of "hinterland", this being the place that is hidden, shadowed, or out of reach.

The hinterland used as a tool of the author or creator presents a place within the created world that does not have so much sophistication of structure. It can be used as a place of banishment, enigma, or escape. In the hinterland, not all things need to be explained and strange laws and weird concepts can exist without adversely affecting the central or "known" world.

The way in which this mirrors our own world can be seen in trying to imagine a modern hinterland that we all recognise. There are no longer any geographical parts of the planet that we can say are unknown. I would suggest that our modern use of the concept of "hinterland" has moved into space and other occulted dimensions - deep space, parallel universes, alternate planes of existence and pockets of the supernatural - these are the "hinterland" of modern day human beings, and think how much interest there is in these places.

Having established the usefulness of a hinterland, let us now discuss position and placement within the ancient fantasy world that is "Middle-Earth". The question posed was: "Why South?" One of Tolkien's ambitions in the creation of Middle-Earth was to develop a mythology for England. As such, it makes sense that he would base his central world in a northern hemisphere similar in locality to England. This would lend an obvious tending towards south in the placement of a hinterland.

However, even if Tolkien had not consciously depicted his world in the northern hemisphere, due to his growing up in England, he would probably still have set his world in a northern hemisphere because most of his experience had been in that place.

One must also consider the politics of cartography that encourages us to think of North at the top and South at the bottom. If the early dominant civilizations had become prominent in Australia as opposed to Europe and Indo-China, we may well be viewing our present world upside-down.

In relation to the vastness of the universe, are the notions of North and South not interchangeable? It is just that in terms of our present historical and ideological development, it seems strange to envisage Antarctica sitting like a huge white hat on the world with all the industrial areas of Europe, Asia and North America pasted like stubble onto its metaphorical chin.

This doesn't directly resolve your problem but it does speak to the issue of the importance of faery as the mysterious unknown.

EDIT

Vison, I see the same contradictions, but rather than saying "here the 'orc' is man" and "here the 'orc' is convenient embodiment of evil" etc. I try to approach them as a contradictory and uncohesive whole - like seeing through a prism.

[vison]

Thank you, Impenitent! What an interesting post. It doesn't quite solve my difficulty, though. I mean, I get what Twiggyleaf is saying. It's not that.

My difficulty with Faery (as in Tolkien's essay) is that I just can't see WHAT Tolkien meant. Perhaps he meant to say "alien-ness"? I don't know. The thing is, I often had the feeling, reading that essay, that he could not get there, himself. He had a vision, but he couldn't show us.

*sigh* The Orcs mostly don't trouble me. I try not to think about them.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

And I. And all of us.

Precisely the difficulty I have had with it for years. I just try not to think about it.

That way lies madness.

Then I must be mad, because for me, far from being a difficulty, I find this merging of free will and predestination to be one of the most profound things about Tolkien's work. As I said in the Silmarillion discussion.

To me, the beauty of Tolkien's construct is that free will exists despite the fact of Eru's being infinitely everything.

[Túrin Turambar]

Whether orcs have their measure of free will or are puppets...

If they are puppets, animated by their master (as demonstrated by the quote given at the fall of Barad dur), then they have no need of redemption - both because they are not fully sentient creatures with free will of their own, and also because they are not responsible for their own evil. If they do only Sauron's will (having none of their own) then they cannot help what they do, or the fabric from which they were made.

And yet it seems to me, if they are merely puppets, redemption is easy! They need only another puppeteer.

Ridiculous, of course, we know that is not possible - any more than the Ring can be wielded for good.

Evil in the Tolkienverse takes on many forms. I tend to view the Orcs as puppets (as I said above) and I think that I’m supported by the characters in this. For example, even Treebeard glorifies the killing of Orcs. As such, the Orcs come across to me as tools. Unreliable ones (see Shagrat and Gorbag’s conversation) but tools nonetheless. As such, they are not redeemable any more than their weapons are, and the merciful thing is to kill them. I do not believe that they posess fëa.

Back to the nature of evil –

As Tom Shippey points out, evil in Middle Earth is both Boethian and Dualistic. Boethian, because it comes from the inside and is an unnatural state and the absence of good, and dualistic, because it is a force in itself that threatens characters from the outside. The Orcs come across as a perfectly dualistic manifestation of evil to me.

As such, they are one weapon of the forces of evil, and at one extreme. The other extreme is the One Ring, which plays on the characters own desires to corrupt them.

[vison]

Lord_M said: "As such, they are not redeemable any more than their weapons are, and the merciful thing is to kill them. I do not believe that they posess fëa. "

I can't bear this, to be honest. This is the thing, above all others, that makes me pull my hair out and then set it on fire.

A creator, either Tolkien or god, who makes beings/creatures/tools who are beyond redemption, whose deaths are mercies (to whom?), who exist only TO be killed/stepped on/erased, who are meant to personify or exemplify some nameless, faceless indescribable evil, is a creator I --- I want to say "despise", but I won't.

The thing is, in LOTR it was Tolkien who "created" the Orcs. He began well, when he theorized that they were debased Elves. THAT is one thing. But then, to abandon them to .... being soul-less and less than bugs! You can say they are no more than their weapons, but that's not true. Even one Orc speaking of hunger or fear or triumph or desire has lifted them all out of the world of "unalive-unthinking" things into sentience. The sword, the mace, the club, do not speak, do not have longings, do not fear. The Orcs do.

In the RW, the creator has not created such beings. Everything that lives has value and purpose. All sentient beings are capable of redemption. There is not an Orc alive on this Earth and never was! I wish Tolkien hadn't put them in Middle Earth. They lessen his creation in my eyes and heart.