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    Do orcs have families?



    Do orcs have families?

    Explore the best of fantasy and sci-fi in depth, with analysis of the worlds of Lord of the Rings, Game of Thrones, The Witcher and more.

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    View 44 Comments

    44 Comments

    1. @CraigFlowersMusic on

      We don't know because nobody asked. Thematic change for contemporaneous reasons not only alienate any counter culture but any future culture via the embarrassing dating, triple whammy of douchery and just another example of what's gone wrong. Jackson didn't insert his politics into the movies (although fran's contributions were all awful and cringy and stick out like a sore thumb), and just like the sacrelige of elrond heart galadriel in the amazon race to worst writing of all time, this is equally offensive to me. Trying to insert the whole sympathetic villain trend. I h@te amazon for this, it's trolling at this point right? Amazon is trolling us right?

    6. @fvefve12 on

      I'm an 64 year old who read LotR when he was 16 twice. In one long hot summer of 1976. We're talking the mid seventies here. Even then I asked myself if the Orks had women and children. It was one of the things I didn't like about Tolkien. He imagined enemies without a soul. It made the whole story less heroic to me. Tolkien had some weird absolute ideas about right and wrong.
      To be honest I think Tolkien as an English Catholic might have thought that Oswald Mosley wasn't wrong.
      Thev whole right and wrong in the Lord of the Rings is more fascist than democratic…

    8. @Manda-LORE on

      The impression I got from reading the silmarillion and the apendicies, is that while orcs did reproduce in "the manner of the children of Illuvatar", they did so in a less than wholesome way. Not with lady orcs, but rather with captured human/elvish women from raids and you can probably guess the unfortunate outcome there…

      This would also be in line with the power of Morgoth's inability to create life, rather to contort and corrupt it and since women in many mythologies, some of which Tolkien undoubtedly studied, reveared women as life bringers and associated them with creation, it would be on par for there to not be female orcs.

    9. @tom9627 on

      I view the "Orc" as a role. Morgoth and Sauron can engineer several different circumstances that result in the creation of a conceptual "Orc".

    12. @justthinkingoutloud2538 on

      I imagine males treated females like chattle and children were born in litters, and they survived to adulthood by their strength, cruelty and cannabalism. All nurturing instincts were long ago bred out of them, as Morgoth and Sauron practically manufactured them like weapons.

    13. @wolfen8622 on

      I can’t imagine a world where orcs are raised by loving orc parents.

      In my imagination, orc babies are born and raised by a large, harsh orc matron, appointed to “care” for the young ankle-biters without any compassion. Their upbringing is as brutal and unforgiving as possible—marked by violence, survival of the fittest, and even occasional cannibalism. They’re fed scraps or whatever they can scavenge from the waste of larger orcs. Something along those lines…

    15. @buttercup9884 on

      Congratulations – you have kicked the hornet's nest 😉 It is obviously forbidden to quote Tolkien now if his words in any way anger the very people who claim to protect his legacy.

    17. @EtruskenRaider on

      I wish I could have seen the world Adar glimpsed when he put on Nenya. Perhaps not the Uruk redeemed but their pain eased and in harmony with the free peoples.

    20. @PatrickLongblkwhtrbbt on

      If you watch peter Jackson's adaptation of Return of the King, you definitely hear some feminine voices among the seigers on pelinor fields. Particularly the one who calls for catapults, and who tells the corsairs to "get off your ships, you sea rats!"

      Also, listen VERY closely to the "GROND" chant.

    21. @Cosper79 on

      I have a question:

      Where do all the 'Letters from Tolkien' come from?

      Specifically the ones he writes right readers?

      What is a thing back then to write a copy of every letter you sent?
      Did the fans donate the letters back to the Tolkien Estate?

    22. @davidfwooldridge3430 on

      It’s not clear to me why people would doubt orcs have families. They have a society and language. Hell, Goblintown had a theme song. The orcs are said to be clever in certain trades like blacksmithing. All that requires more than senseless violent monsters. Language requires socialization, trades require education. It’s not a stretch that orcs would have family units.

      I think more the issue is the orc families make people uncomfortable by implication. It becomes more problematic if you frame orcs as a slave army driven by a dark lord who’d otherwise have their own culture if you want them to be faceless bad guys that it is okay for the heroes to kill in mass.

    25. @samuelvine on

      My speculation is that different tribes of Orcs probably did things differently from each other. We see some very strong differences between the "Isengarders", Mordor Orcs, and the Misty Mountains Orcs during the PoV chapters of Merry and Pippin's captivity. My thinking is that some tribes had a more "nuclear" type family structure, but those in the service directly to a Dark Lord were probably more like slaves than anything else.

    26. @fvefve12 on

      The real problem with this show is that they want it to be 'inclusive'. Any Asian or African viewer wouldn't have objected to a story with only white characters. If the story is good, colours don't matter. And I'm not a Critical Drinker fan, but my God. how Hollywood and millions of people seem to love to give fuel to him and his cult!

    28. @sarge2742 on

      If I remember rightly Gollum caught a goblin 'imp' before he met Bilbo, so there were certainly goblin/orc children. I'm just trying to imagine how you bring up an orc teenager…

    32. @lancewalker2595 on

      "Are the Orcs redeemable?"
      Here's the answer, and it is, contrary to what many are now so unfortunate to believe: NO. Absolutely, and unequivocally NO. Why? How do I deign to be so arrogant and indignant about this? Because the Orcs don't have souls, ergo, THERE IS NOTHING TO REDEEM. End of discussion. If you want morally ambiguous Orcs, go read a Brandon Sanderson novel, but in Tolkien's cosmology only one entity is capable of endowing a creature with soul and it SURE AS HELL ain't Morgoth or Sauron. 2:45 – No, they are NOT "enslaved", THEY ARE SLAVES; they have NO agency, NO free will, and NO TRUE CONSCIOUSNESS. This is not trivial in Tolkien's philosophy, if any but Eru were capable of utilizing the Flame Imperishable THE WHOLE OF Eä WOULD MAKE ZERO FUCKING SENSE. The only area for discussion is concerning the manner of Orcish creation: are they PRODUCED from base matter (in the manner that Peter Jackson depicted, which I personally prefer because it eliminates any potential confusion as to their ontological status)? or do they REPRODUCE sexually? Or is it some combination of both? Those are all perfectly legitimate, albeit relatively superficial, questions to ask. But the matter of whether or not Orcs have SOULS is NOT a legitimate question, THEY ABSOLUTELY DO NOT because they absolutely CANNOT.

    35. @freemantle85 on

      This video reminded me of one of Spoony's Counter Monkey vlogs where he retold stories of his D&D groups having heated arguments about killing Orc women and children.

    37. @FrankBocker on

      Gorbag and Shagrat are clearly… Roommates. Friends with a mysterious closeness. They were never known to marry or breed, and lived together for the rest of their days in an abandoned shack with a few trusty lads. That sort of friend.

    38. @freemantle85 on

      I would be interested in more stories from an Orc's perspective. The only ones I know were the Warcraft movie and Bright which was a clumsy attempt at being social commentary about racism.

    40. @dancallan7907 on

      The ONE thing Warhammer does better is it has its Orks multiple by spores falling off them like mushrooms. Solves the issues of feeling bad for the women and children Orks. Just evil beings that grow like weeds.

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