XPost: rec.arts.books.tolkien, alt.fan.tolkien   
   From: Troels@ThisIsFake.invalid   
      
   In message    
   "Raven"  spoke   
   these staves:   
   >   
   > "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.   
      
   I think that you understate their reactions here. The Orcs in TH suffer   
   adverse physical effects of being in the Sun -- 'it makes their legs   
   wobble and their heads giddy' in TH or, in the first draft 'it makes   
   them quickly faint and feeble.' I believe that tt is this that   
   Treebeard refers to as their not being able to 'abide the Sun,'   
   something which is also confirmed by other characters in LotR such as   
   e.g. Aragorn.   
      
   > The Uruk-hai of Saruman endured it with little liking.   
      
   Precisely -- a rather different thing than what is said for the normal   
   orcs. 'But we can't run in the sunlight!' they protest, and while this   
   turns out not to be literally true, the events don't contradict the   
   specific statements that the Sun 'makes their legs wobble and their   
   heads giddy' and that they cannot 'abide the Sun.'   
      
   > 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.   
      
   None of which contradicts the statements made elsewhere about their   
   dislike of the Sun and the physical effects they suffer from being in   
   direct 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.   
      
   This, however, was Saruman's uruks, that we know were more tolerant   
   than normal Orcs. This is even implied in their response to Aragorn.   
      
   >    By the author's narrative, Silmarillion Orcs, The Hobbit Orcs   
   > and LotR Orcs had this in common: they could endure sunlight.   
      
   Or whatever we should call it, yes :-)   
      
   > I don't remember reading anything about Orcs shunning sunlight in   
   > the Sil.   
      
   That was one of my conclusions also -- there are hints, even, that they   
   fight in direct sunlight without any ill effects.   
      
   >  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.   
      
   Yup. And this is the difference that Stan, as I understood him,   
   referred to. I tried to address whether this difference could be traced   
   back to any story-internal events, but I failed to do so, and so   
   concluded that the 'when' of the change must be story-external rather   
   than story-internal.   
      
   >> 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.   
      
   Right.   
      
   > 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.   
      
   In this case, however, this is corroborated by statements by other   
   characters as well as the narrative voice (in _The Hobbit_).   
      
   Not that it is really relevant to my argument. I used Treebeard to show   
   that the dislike of the Sun is not something that is supposed to have   
   developed later on -- that the Orcs (and other evil creatures that   
   'came in the Great Darkness') had _always_ had this dislike of   
   sunlight, this inability to abide the Sun.   
      
   > 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?   
      
   Of course they could (the characters -- the statement in _The Hobbit_   
   is made in the narrative voice and has another status).   
      
   As I understand the word 'endure' used in Saruman's statement that   
   'Saruman's Orcs can endure [the Sun], even if they hate it', I agree   
   that the implication of the statement, that other Orcs cannot endure   
   the Sun, is hyperbolic and probably an example of Treebeards less than   
   perfect knowledge, though I don't get the same impression of his use of   
   'abide' -- the latter seems to fit the descriptions in _The Hobbit_ and   
   in LotR quite well.   
      
   Another possibility that I failed to discuss is that the transference   
   of this element from _The Hobbit_ (wobbly legs, giddy heads, quickly   
   faint and feeble) to _The Lord of the Rings_ is possibly not 1:1 -- in   
   _The Lord of the Rings_ the Orkish dislike for sunlight appears in LotR   
   is mainly psychological as compared to the clearly physical effects in   
   TH (I suppose one could make a case for the effects described in TH   
   being psychosomatic, but I think that would be going too far). In that   
   case we should, however, still consider the effect on normal Orcs to be   
   very profound -- the Moria Orcs are truly terrified at the prospect of   
   running under the Sun, and only an immediate danger to their lives make   
   them change their minds -- even when forced to run, the Northerners run   
   slower than the Isengarders, and when the latter overtake them '[t]hey   
   were flagging in the rays of the bright sun' and 'their heads were down   
   and their tongues lolling out.'   
      
   >    Treebeard notices that Saruman's Orcs endure sunlight,   
   > apparently better than other Orcs. We notice the same in the   
   > chapter "The Uruk-hai".   
      
   It is often difficult to know where exactly to stick one's comments --   
   I believe that I have addressed this in the above, though. (It is   
   occasionally frustrating to think that 'Oh, but I wanted to say that in   
   response to this, but I cannot now move it without a considerable   
   effort of rewriting.' ;-))   
      
   > 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.   
      
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
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    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)