What is the true origin of the Orcs?

Question

There are a bunch of theories about the true origin of the Orcs. Tolkien tried out a few different origins for his Orcs throughout his life but died before he could fully revise The Silmarillion with his final view on their origins and nature.

There is a list of origins proposed by Tolkien (source):

1. Made of stone and slime through the sorcery of Morgoth.
2. East Elves. The Silmarillion contains a suggestion that Orcs are descended from East Elves captured by Melkor, their minds and bodies distorted and corrupted.
3. Sentient beasts. Another of Tolkien's theories proposes that Orcs may have begun as soulless animals of vaguely humanoid shapes, empowered by the will of the Dark Lord (Morgoth) and learning language only as parrots do.
4. Fallen Maiar. There are hints in the History of Middle-earth series of books, (especially in Morgoth's Ring in the section "Myths Transformed"), that some Orc leaders, such as the First Age's Boldog, or the Great Goblin encountered by Bilbo and the Dwarves, may in fact have been fallen Maiar which had taken Orc form.
5. Corrupted Men. While Tolkien at some point saw all Orcs as descended from the original corrupted and tortured Elves, later comments of his indicate, according to Christopher Tolkien in Morgoth's Ring, "Myths Transformed" text X, that he began to feel uncomfortable with this theory. At about the same time he removed the references to the Thrall-Ñoldorin, he also began searching for a new origin for the Orcs. It seems Tolkien wanted to change the origin of the Orcs to make them corrupted and twisted Humans.
6. A mix of corrupted Elves and Men. A late idea of Tolkien seems to be that Orcs (or Orks, showing the late spelling change) had a mixed origin of Elves and Men.
7. Some cross-breed with Men. Tolkien also suggested that Men were cross-bred with Orcs under Morgoth's lieutenant, Sauron (and possibly under Morgoth himself). The process was later repeated during the War of the Ring by Saruman. This possibly refers to the way the Uruk-hai and the Half-Orcs were created, in The Lord of the Rings.

Of all these theories, which is the most accepted, and which did Tolkien agree with the most? I always thought that orcs were made of East Elves, as explained in The Lord of The Rings, but the story goes beyond this, there are the stories in many other books that explain different things.

What can you tell me about this?

Answer 1

Perhaps the best answer is why do we need to define Orcs as having a single origin? It is possible that all of these answers are correct or none of them are. Tolkien may have decided there may have simply been a number of ways Orcs came into existence. From purely a scientific point of view, there have been at least three different hominid species to have come into existence on Earth, why would there be only one way to make an Orc on Middle-earth? In fact, all of your definitions could explain why there were so many different kinds of demi-human life on Middle-Earth.

Consider:

• No being but Ilúvatar could truly bring anything to life. The Dwarves were a gift to Aulë, who wanted to make life but could not, and he was a Valar. After crafting them only Ilúvatar could give them life.

• Morgoth wanted to make life and he was the second most powerful of the Valar. Since he could not, it was rumored he transformed the Elves into the First Orcs. Seeing how he eventually created an entire army to wage war against the Valar, he spent the bulk of his time re-crafting Life to serve as his agents.

• There is no reason other Valar or Maiar could not have done the same thing, that is, corrupt a living being and turn it to a new and unsavory purpose à la the Uruk-hai Orcs.

Since there were also goblins and other demi-human life forms in Middle-earth, corrupting Life may have simply been making the best of a bad situation where Beings who were keen on making Life would have to corrupt what source material was available since creating new life was simply the province of the One primal deity of the Middle-earth universe.

Answer 2

Update: 29th May 2014

The late essay Of Dwarves and Men contains what seem to have been Tolkien's final thoughts on the matter. Christopher Tolkien dates this to at least 1969, based on strong evidence ("It was written on printed papers supplied by Allen and Unwin, of which the latest date is September 1969") and the bulk of it was printed in History of Middle-earth 12, but the relevant section was extracted to form part of the Drúedain material in Unfinished Tales.

An author's note (note 5) to this material states:

To the unfriendly who, not knowing them well, declared that Morgoth must have bred the Orcs from such a stock the Eldar answered: "Doubtless Morgoth, since he can make no living thing, bred Orcs from various kinds of Men, but the Drúedain must have escaped his Shadow; for their laughter and the laughter of Orcs are as different as is the light of Aman from the darkness of Angband." But some thought, nonetheless, that there had been a remote kinship, which accounted for their special enmity. Orcs and Drûgs each regarded the other as renegades.

This, of course, never made it into the main stories and was omitted from the published Silmarillion because of that.

The only final interpretation that seems reasonable to me is that:

• There is no known "true origin" for Orcs within Middle-earth; what we're presented with is a bunch of in-universe theories.
• One of those theories is that Orcs were bred from corrupted Elves.
• Another is that they were bred from Men.
• And some believe that the Drúedain were a likely candidate.

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Original answer - February 2013

There are a number of problems with all of the origin stories that may explain why Tolkien never settled on a definitive one himself.

If Orcs come from corrupted Elves, are they immortal within Arda? What happens when they are killed? Do they go to the Halls of Mandos, and can an Orc repent and be restored to his Elf-dom?

If Orcs come from Men, what of the timeline problems? How did Morgoth manage to breed so many in such a short time? You can see Tolkien grasping in this direction with some of his later revisions, moving the origin of Men further back, for example.

Problems with Morgoth not being able to create life himself have already been discussed, but at a stretch could be handled by the story of Morgoth disseminating his power throughout Arda.

Ultimately this was never resolved so there is no "true" origin. Orcs must be viewed in the same light as Tom Bombadil; one of the world's unknown and unknowable factors, and we must be content to leave it so.

Answer 3

Here is an idea. If you remember from The Silmarillion, when Eru Ilúvatar composed a theme in his music, Melkor attempted to always mess up the theme, thereby causing Eru to introduce another theme, which in turn was "messed up." After a time, Eru allowed the Valar to actually see the overall composition materialized, including the elements Melkor had introduced. The Orcs could have been Melkor's "attempts" realized when Eru materialized the composition. Eru did not have to directly create the Orcs, but only indirectly, as the Orcs were originally Melkor's idea. Eru Ilúvatar was bound by his own self-imposed limits to materialize everything within the composition, whether good or evil.

Answer 4

The problem with Orcs is that of hereditary evil. Morgoth might be able to corrupt individual Elves to evil, but how does that evil then pass on, automatically, to the next generation? Is Morgoth powerful enough to introduce damnation to a species: a species born bad with no hope of redemption?

That was Tolkien's dilemma, having introduced Orcs into Arda. Morgoth cannot create new life (only puppets à la Aulë's original dwarves), but if he corrupts existing life forms how can he make them hereditarily evil through all generations thus putting them outwith Eru's grace?

Tolkien's idea of making them into animals addresses this issue (no souls to begin with), but scarcely gels with the undoubted sentience and intelligence of the orcs we encounter in tLotR. Who knows how Tolkien would have resolved this? Maybe Orcs, left to themselves and without the false religions of Melkor and Sauron worship, would have come to Eru's grace in time, had they survived long into the Fourth Age?

Answer 5

The most accepted and solid theory is that Orcs come from Elves. That's what all the published novels say (as far as I remember). The other theories survived in some of Tolkien's notes, but he never made the effort of including them in any story, I think. However, I don't see any reason for rejecting the other theories alltogether. They "could" be true, why not? Except for the theory that puts men as the origin of the first orcs. That's completely impossible in the version of the story that survived, because when men awoke there was already plenty of orcs.

Answer 6

I don't believe orcs were corrupted elves although it is ambiguous;for although Tolkien states in a letter (Rhona Beare 1954) that 'trees may go bad as in the Old Forest;Elves may turn into Orcs and if this required the special perversion of Morgoth, still Elves themselves could do evil deeds', in another letter (Peter Hastings 1954) he quotes LOTR Chapt I, Book VI '(the Shadow) cannot make real life of its own. I don't think it gave life to the Orcs, it only twisted them and ruined them'. And earlier in the same letter he specifically defines Orcs as a race of 'rational incarnate creatures' and quotes Treebeard's statement that Morgoth did not 'create' them but made them in counterfeit of certain creatures pre-existing'. In other words, Orcs need not be corrupted from the Elvish race (at least not solely);there were plenty of humanoids available for Morgoth to give them their demonic shape.

Answer 7

During the first war between elfs and orcs, orcs managed to win a couple of time, and I think Tolkien made it clear that elfs were superior to human in most ways. So maybe Morgoth's corrupted elfs were a strong race of Orcs who could fight elfs, and later he corrupted men to create a lower race of Orc. Then the two races could have been crossed (or not) and allowed different army corps and one common race. And we can imagine that the snaga are corrupted hobbits ! :)

Answer 8

At the point in the story where Sauron realizes that the Ring is at Mount Doom and is in imminent peril, it is stated that the orcs had wills only when Sauron (their master) was pushing his will into them, and that when he shook his mind loose from his thralls they suddenly lost the capacity to think. Tolkien goes on to state that the Men under his rule were not subject to this effect.

This suggests that Orcs are a lesser order of being than the Children of Iluvatar, and suggests that they were raised up by Morgoth from some lower fauna of Middle Earth, and bestowed with just enough smarts to understand language (in the same way that apes can be taught sign language), but remained animals and are not of the same order as the Children of Iluvatar. At the fall or Morgoth they became a very diminished race and did not constitute a threat again until the rise of Sauron.

This solves the two main issues with giving the Orcs an elvish or mannish origin. There aren't a gob-load of Orcish spirits dwelling in Mandos, and still allows Orcs to be present before the awakening of Men. The chief argument against this theory is that Tolkien did not directly suggest it.