From: Troels@ThisIsFake.invalid   
      
   In message    
   temujin  spoke these staves:   
   >   
   > On Tue, 23 May 2017 16:45:56 -0500, "Michael F. Stemper"   
   >  wrote:   
   >>   
   >> On 2017-03-31 17:21, temujin wrote:   
   >>>   
   >>> The movies are to the books as the orcs are to elves,  ie an   
   >>> irredeemable but virulent corruption of the original.   
   >>   
   >> Did Tolkien call orcs "irredeemable"? That would seem   
   >> inconsistent with his Catholicism. However, I'll admit  that I've   
   >> never read any of his letters.   
   >   
   > Orcs as degraded elves who Eru restores to grace after   
   > death? I don't think direct religious allegory was Tolkien's   
   > thing but it's an interesting thought.   
      
   W.H. Auden, in his review of /The Lord of the Rings/, ‘Good and Evil in   
   /The Lord of the Rings/’, complained about this very point, pointing   
   out that   
       Unlike us, too, are the Trolls of Mordor and the Orcs, for they   
       appear to be irredeemably evil and incapable of repentance: on   
       meeting either, there is only one thing to do: kill. I must   
       confess I am not quite happy about these beings, for their   
       existence seems to imply that it is possible for a species that   
       can speak, and, therefore, make moral choices, to be evil by   
       nature.   
   (/Critical Quarterly/, Volume 10, Issue 1-2, 1968, pp.138-9.)   
      
   Auden had also contacted Tolkien about this, and a part of Tolkien's   
   answer is given as no. 269 in /Letters/.   
       With regard to The Lord of the Rings, I cannot claim to be a   
       sufficient theologian to say whether my notion of orcs is   
       heretical or not. I don’t feel under any obligation to make my   
       story fit with formalized Christian theology, [...], Book Five,   
       page 190,1 where Frodo asserts that the orcs are not evil in   
       origin. We believe that, I suppose, of all human kinds and sorts   
       and breeds, though some appear, both as individuals and groups to   
       be, by us at any rate, unredeemable.   
   (Carpenter, Humphrey (ed). /The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien/ (Kindle   
   Locations 7559-7563). HarperCollins Publishers. Kindle Edition.)   
      
   The point here seems to be that Orcs /appeared/ irredeemable, and that   
   there were no instances of anything any Man or Elf might have done that   
   had redeemed an Orc.   
      
   Tolkien, in these answers considering the concept of irredeemability,   
   is guarded and doesn't come right out and say or acknowledge that Orcs   
   are /actually/ irredeemable or redeemable, but instead he speaks of   
   whether any such redemption may be achieved through the actions of   
   Elves and Men, and he emphasises that they were not evil in their   
   origin but were corrupted as a race. This is perhaps the most explicit   
   in Text X of 'Myths Transformed' in /Morgoth's Ring/:   
       But even before this wickedness of Morgoth was suspected the Wise   
       in the Elder Days taught always that the Orcs were not ‘made’ by   
       Melkor, and therefore were not in their origin evil. They might   
       have become irredeemable (at least by Elves and Men), but they   
       remained within the Law. That is, that though of necessity, being   
       the fingers of the hand of Morgoth, they must be fought with the   
       utmost severity, they must not be dealt with in their own terms   
       of cruelty and treachery.   
   (/Morgoth's Ring/ p. 419, 'Myths Transformed' text X)   
      
   My three quotations are here given in reverse chronological order.   
      
   It is, I think, an interesting question, not least because Tolkien   
   dodges any straight answers, and continued to do so. This presumably   
   has something to do with the history of the history of the Orcs (so to   
   speak) -- i.e. how Tolkien's conception of the story-internal origin of   
   the Orcs evolved.   
      
   Until late in the writing of LotR, the Orcs were created as such by   
   Morgoth in mockery of the Elves. This is the story told in the c. 1937   
   'Quenta Silmarillion' and repeated by Treebeard in LotR. It does not   
   seem to have been until the much later musings by Frodo and Sam on the   
   Stairs of Cirith Ungol that Tolkien changed his mind in earnest. At   
   that point he realised that Melkor should not be able to create free-   
   willed creatures (or, if you prefer, creatures with a /Fëa/), and hence   
   the comment by Frodo that he refers to in the letter to Auden.   
      
   But at that point, the concept of the Orcs as irredeemable cannonn-   
   fodder for the heroics of his primary heroes was firmly established,   
   both in the tales out of the First Age and in the story of LotR (see   
   e.g. Legolas and Gimli's 'game' during the Battle of the Hornburg --   
   such a game would in itself be an evil if Orcs were redeemable   
   creatures with their own soul). Tolkien, to my mind, /never/ managed to   
   come up with a truly satisfying solution to this conundrum that he had   
   created by disallowing the solution that had worked so well for several   
   decades: the Orcs as the evil infantry of the old war, (with thanks to   
   Tom Shippey).   
      
   --   
   Troels Forchhammer   
   Valid e-mail is    
   Please put [AFT], [RABT] or 'Tolkien' in subject.   
      
         The major problem [encountered in time travel] is quite   
       simply one of grammar, and the main work to consult in this   
       matter is Dr Dan Streetmentioner's Time Traveller's   
       Handbook of 1001 Tense Formations.   
      - Douglas Adams, /The Restaurant at the End of the Universe/   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)