Impromptu Stream with Ed Greenwood, Tim Kask, & TSR CCO

[nedjer]

A look at the door to Moria indicates that Tolkien was well-versed in the Christian esotericism associated with Art Nouveau, the Arts and Crafts movement and the Celtic Revival. Perhaps unsurprising that he came up with a story involving a quest, various way-stations and popping into the under/ otherworld.

He also had access to Victorian and Edwardian mash-ups of history and folklore which mixed formative archaeology with much older symbolic texts. That allowed him to draw widely on legend and folklore, but without situating much of it.

Apparently, Orkney was seen as fascinating because the Picts were considered as a bit scary, a bit fey, and a bit lurking in the mist. And, at a time when Tutankhamun's tomb had triggered huge interest in tombs and treasures, the recently investigated Neolithic monuments on Orkney were labelled tombs and seen as part of a contiguous tradition. In amongst that are Norse/ North European traditions such as the duergar. Tolkien had no end of sources around him.

 

[Umbran]

Yes, and in fact for Tolkien the "orc" came to represented the human brutalised by the world of war.

Agreed. With the understanding that Tolkien was, at least in part, approaching the story as allegory, it plays for us to not take it quite so literally. Much of the work can be seen as symbolic. This author was not really trying to simulate a different world - he was trying to tell you things about our world.

 

[aramis erak]

Specifically, Lewis returned to religion after meeting Tolkien.

And the two were working on their religious-inspired works at the same time... LOTR and Chronicles of Narnia... The cross influence is quite strong in the first two Narnia books. Lewis' later works lack a certain something in terms of worldbuilding, but also gain something in lacking Tolkien's influence for expansive travellogue narration.

 

[Omand]

Agreed. With the understanding that Tolkien was, at least in part, approaching the story as allegory, it plays for us to not take it quite so literally. Much of the work can be seen as symbolic. This author was not really trying to simulate a different world - he was trying to tell you things about our world.

Interestingly, of course, right in the introduction to LOTR Tolkien makes the claim that he hates Allegory in all of its forms, and that the tale he telling is not allegorical (that the war in LOTR is not the Great War [WW1], etc.).

I would take him at his word. I believe he did not plan or set out to directly create an allegorical work. I would argue, however, that more subconsciously he did add in parts of the tale that would inform on the real world, but perhaps not in the direct sense some think.

Cheers

 

[Umbran]

I would take him at his word.

I do. Just a few posts up, I quote a letter he wrote to his son speaking of the allegorical nature of what he's writing.

I don't require him to be perfectly consistent. His work can have both allegorical and non-allegorical elements.

 

[Dausuul]

This is not supported by Tolkien's text. Orcs are seen making their own decisions time and again in the work - they even argue amongst themselves, trying to exert.. you guessed it... their will upon each other. If they lacked free will, there'd be no argument in orcish ranks.

I don't believe Tolkien ever really worked out the nature of orcs to his satisfaction. He tried and discarded a number of ideas over his life, and never settled on a definitive answer. I have the impression that he was caught between the theological limits he wanted to place upon Morgoth, the "devil" of Middle-Earth (Morgoth can corrupt but not create sapient life), the fact that orcs are clearly sapient, and the desire to have a race of innate, irredeemable baddies who can be killed without a qualm.

My personal headcanon is that Morgoth crafted the orcs from inanimate material, much as Aule crafted the dwarves; but where Aule received the intervention of Iluvatar to give his creations souls, Morgoth got no such gift, and instead had to imbue the orcs with part of his own being. Every orc is Morgoth in miniature--without his power and memories, but with all of his malice. If you locked two Morgoths in a room, they'd claw each other to pieces, so orcs behave the same way.

(That still leaves the question of how they reproduce, but at least it addresses the free will issue.)

 

[Umbran]

I have the impression that he was caught between the theological limits he wanted to place upon Morgoth, the "devil" of Middle-Earth (Morgoth can corrupt but not create) and the desire to have a race of innate, irredeemable baddies who can be killed without a qualm.

Tolkien himself specifically and explicitly avoided calling orcs irredeemable. In The Letters of JRR Tolkien, Letter 153, he says of orcs:

"They would be Morgoth's greatest Sins, abuses of his highest privilege, and would be creatures begotten of Sin, and naturally bad. (I nearly wrote 'irredeemably bad'; but that would be going too far. Because by accepting or tolerating their making — necessary to their actual existence — even Orcs would become part of the World, which is God's and ultimately good.)"

(Emphasis mine)

The irredeemability of orcs is thus a D&Dism, tied to simplified and absolute alignment, which is not a Tolkien thing.

Tolkien hated war, but was not impractical about things. Whether they are technically redeemable or not just isn't the issue - they are on the other side of a war.

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

Having just started The Nature of Middle-Earth, it's fascinating to see the extent to which Tolkien wrestled with his writing. It illustrates how he went back and forth between ideas, calculating what had to be for dates and distances to make sense, reasoning out, for example, that Angband must either have been on the same site of Utumno, or already existent itself before Morgoth took up residence, because otherwise there just wasn't enough time for it to be built.

At times, he very much sounds like a historian trying to make sense of clues from centuries past rather than an author at work writing.

I don't believe Tolkien ever really worked out the nature of orcs to his satisfaction. He tried and discarded a number of ideas over his life, and never settled on a definitive answer. I have the impression that he was caught between the theological limits he wanted to place upon Morgoth, the "devil" of Middle-Earth (Morgoth can corrupt but not create sapient life), the fact that orcs are clearly sapient, and the desire to have a race of innate, irredeemable baddies who can be killed without a qualm.

Underline added, because central to Tolkien's world is the idea that even as Melkor attempted to subvert the music of creation, Eru Iluvatar revealed that even Melkor's attempts to subvert the song were made part of that music, were part of Eru's plan.

Tolkien himself specifically and explicitly avoided calling orcs irredeemable. In The Letters of JRR Tolkien, Letter 153, he says of orcs:

"They would be Morgoth's greatest Sins, abuses of his highest privilege, and would be creatures begotten of Sin, and naturally bad. (I nearly wrote 'irredeemably bad'; but that would be going too far. Because by accepting or tolerating their making — necessary to their actual existence — even Orcs would become part of the World, which is God's and ultimately good.)"

(Emphasis mine)

The irredeemability of orcs is thus a D&Dism, tied to simplified and absolute alignment, which is not a Tolkien thing.

Tolkien hated war, but was not impractical about things. Whether they are technically redeemable or not just isn't the issue - they are on the other side of a war.

Also wanted to say that I'm perfectly happy at the direction this thread has taken...