: Of course Orks are bad, they're corruptions!
: Well, dwarfism is technically a corruption of the
: "normal" human form, and certainly not all
: dwarves (real dwarves, not Tolkien dwarves) are evil.
: So, I feel that for Tolkien to make all Orcs bad
: simply because they are of a corrupted form, is to
: cop-out. It's lazy writing. It's explaining the
: actions of an entire people based solely on their
: physical nature, instead of delving into what their
: actual motivations would have been.
Whiel, yes, Orcs are corruptions, to a large extent their evil can be put down to the brutal and unforgiving society which they live in. Tolkien rarely gives the reader a decent view of Orc society, but, as I see it, it seems to boil down into three main groups:
The Snagas: The smallest and weakest of the orcs, these seem to fight for evil mainly because larger and more powerful minions of the Dark tell them to do so- and death in battle would probably be a lot less painful than the death which the displeasure of their masters would lead to.
Grishnak and Orcs like him: One word. Ambition. Grishnak understands the laws which bind his society, that the powerful tread on the weak. Thus, it is necessary to gain as much personal power as possible, or be crushed beneath the iron-shod boots of your superiors.
Uruk-hai: The Uruks combine a ferocious loyalty to their creators with arrogance. They fight humans because their masters order it, and because they know they are better than their opponents, combined with a certain esprit de corps. In Orc society, simply being an Uruk gives one a perfect right to do anything one wishes to a Snaga. Snagas are less powerful than Uruks. Humans are less powerful than Uruks. In the minds of the Uruk-hai, this would be all the justification they needed.
Is that any better?
