XPost: rec.arts.books.tolkien, alt.fan.tolkien   
   From: jon.lennart.beck.its.my.name@mail.its.in.danmark   
      
   "Troels Forchhammer"  skrev i meddelelsen   
   news:Xns9C898A4BDD77CT.Forch@147.243.252.16...   
      
   > In message    
   > Stan Brown  spoke these staves:   
      
   >> I've just finished reading /The Children of Húrin/, and unless I   
   >> read extremely poorly many of those battles and skirmished took   
   >> place in daylight.   
      
   >> Yet by /The Hobbit/ and /LotR/ the Orcs could not endure sunlight.   
   >> When did this change?   
      
      Story-internally: did it?  In TH and LotR the Orcs avoided sunlight when   
   they could.  The ones whom Bilbo pushed past escaping from their tunnels   
   pursued him for a while, but turned back without a thorough search because   
   they didn't like sunlight.  Not because they were badly harmed by it, like   
   the Trolls earlier.  In the LotR Orcs endured sunlight - without joy.  The   
   Uruk-hai of Saruman endured it with little liking.  The Northerners, who   
   were used to their Mines, liked it even less, but between Uglúk's bullying   
   and the fear of the Rohirrim they ran across the plains in bright sunlight.   
   At Helm's Deep the Orcs fought like mad during the night, but when Aragorn   
   addressed them before dawn they expressed their willingness to go on   
   fighting after it.   
      By the author's narrative, Silmarillion Orcs, The Hobbit Orcs and LotR   
   Orcs had this in common: they could endure sunlight.  I don't remember   
   reading anything about Orcs shunning sunlight in the Sil.  In the other two   
   works, where we see more of them,  not merely as the storm troopers of evil,   
   we also learn that they hate sunlight, both by the author's narrative and by   
   comments by eg. Aragorn and Treebeard.  We also know that Orcs, driven by   
   need or the whips of their masters, often did things that they hated.   
      
    > In LotR we have Treebeard, supposedly one of the original Ents who has   
   > been around long enough to actually remember the First Age, saying that   
   > 'It is a mark of evil things that came in the Great Darkness that they   
   > cannot abide the Sun.'   
      
      But by Tolkien's own admission Treebeard did not know everything.  To   
   him, and to other characters in the books, the observation that Orcs shun   
   sunlight may have become exaggerated in their thought to mean that they   
   cannot abide it at all.  This is common enough when people think of hated   
   enemies: any actual trait of theirs is exaggerated.  This is demonstrably so   
   in RL humans.  Why not in Ents and other characters in Tolkien's books?   
      Treebeard notices that Saruman's Orcs endure sunlight, apparently better   
   than other Orcs.  We notice the same in the chapter "The Uruk-hai".   
   Treebeard seems to think that this implies that Saruman has done something   
   to his breed of Orcs to make them tolerant of sunlight.  Maybe Saruman has,   
   by breeding or by training.  But it seems to me more that he has made his   
   Orcs better able to endure sunlight than other Orcs than making a full phase   
   change, as it were.   
      
   Jon Lennart Beck.   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)