In the back lore of The Lord of the Rings it tells how the race of Orcs were created from the Elves, unfortunates captured and tormented generation after generation until their nobility and innocence degraded away into ultimate bitterness and despair, how Morgoth the great enemy unable to create true life on his own mocked the creation of life with the corruption of life. Morgoth was eventually cast out, denied any access to the living lands, in time his great captain Souron met the same fate.
But the fate of the Orcs lingered on, it is said Aragorn gave them a land to be their own, that they have a place to live what life might remain to them after the fall of their masters. The King was as generous as fate would allow, even though he must have understood the fate he sent them to. No tale tells of them after the fall of Souron, their ultimate end is not known. I doubt they endured long, deprived of the will of their masters I doubt they would have reproduced in great numbers, such despair as would have been theirs does not do good things for fertility.
In my darker moments I sometimes wonder what became of them as the ages unrolled from then till today. I visit their fate when the fate of my land and times weighs heavy on my thoughts, for surely our world, troubled and evil as it might be, cannot compare to the world known by those last generations of the Orc. Free from the will of their masters the comparison between their fate and that of the other speaking peoples would surely have been a crushing burden to bear. At times I listen to my world, listen to the whispers below the whispers, at times I think I can still hear the echo of their last despair in the first winds of winter. I hear their laments in so many places, to many places.
The Orcs of Morgoth are fictional, but there are those whose despair is coming to reprise them into modern reality. Compassion is the only true antidote, and the resolve that they should be the last such creatures to ever endure mortality burdened to such an existence. It is the least of things, really, to endure such an understanding, and it is the greatest of things to dedicate all effort to translating that resolve from a passing thought into the facts of history. It is actually a great deal of what powers my life, when you get right down to it.
Sometimes I think Tolkien was a modern-day prophet. He certainly foresaw the environmental devastation happening now; his descriptions of Mordor are terrifyingly like nightmare scenarios that might still happen if we humans go on as we've been going.
ReplyDeleteBut I seem to remember that no Orcs survived the Passing of Sauron; or if they did, they were far away from Mordor and had never resubmitted to Sauron's will. Aragorn gave the Land of Mordor, not to Orcs, but to Men who the Dark Lord had seduced or conquered. Yet you're right; one never finds out what happened to those Men...
I'd read it as "the slaves of..." which I'd assumed would include the orcs, but you might be right, it might have been other peoples that were refered to. Next time I'm wandering in middle earth I'll look again.
DeleteThis information is probably in The Return of the King, Book II, Chapter 4, "The Field of Cormallen", and perhaps more is told in the next chapter, "The Steward and the King."
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