orc-goblins

Last September I re-read The Lord of the Rings, and then over the last few weeks I've been reading it aloud with my spouse (who has never read it before). I have a lot of thoughts about it, in particular how the LotR is very different as written than the received idea that people have about what LotR is like (some, but not all of which can be blamed on the film adaptation). But right now I have the most thoughts about orcs and goblins.

Now, much has already been written on Tolkien's orcs, particularly on the question of the racism in their portrayal. I highly recommend this article on the ambiguities in Tolkien's own presentation of them.

It is actually quite important in LotR that 'orc' and 'goblin' are two words for the same thing. Orc, as I'm sure you are aware dear reader, is a word whose modern usage begins with Tolkien and has only the loosest literary antecedent. And yet it is clearly the preferred word in LotR for goblin. I think that this reflects the dual literary heritage of orc-goblins in Tolkien: on the one hand (as in the hobbit) they reflect Germanic traditions of cruel, underworld 'fairy' (the name being a bit of a misnomer due to their typical unloveliness) creatures, while on the other they descend directly from the foreign masses of heathen/infidel/pagan enemies in premodern heroic narrative.

Elements of both of these can be discerned:

• Like ugly fairies, there is a definitional enmity between orc-goblins and dwarves, elves, ents and hobbits, the other fairy-story inhabitants of Middle-Earth. They also here draw their hatred for celestial lights and growing things, qualities that the 'paynim hordes' of romance do not share.
• Like heathen foes, orc-goblins are both cowardly and cruel, but muster for war in great numbers under captains who command their loyalty, fear or both. They desire conquest of the mortal world in a way that fairy-creatures typically do not.

There are also significant differences in their portrayal:

• Although most epics and romances paint the infidel with a broad brush, individual infidels can sometimes be distinguished either as honorable foes or even turncoats who abandon their foul religion. This is not true of orc-goblins. No orcs, nor indeed any of their captains (with the possible exception of Saruman, who began as a friend and is shown mercy as a foe) are portrayed with positive characteristics. In battle of the fields of the Pelenor, only the evil Men in Sauron's armies muster once the Rohirrim break the lines of the ocs. There are no orc-knights.
• Folkloric goblins are often solitary fairies, living in terrifying lightless places and seeking the ill of those who come there. Gollum, who is not in fact an orc-goblin, comes the closest to this portrayal; orc-goblins, too, dwell in darkness, but only in strength of numbers.
• The reverence of the elves for celestial lights and growing things and the hatred of orc-goblins for the same is the closest this enmity comes to the a 'religious' character that defines the heathen as an enemy. However, there is no sense that orc-goblins could (as Gimli does) come to be elf-friends if they learned to love stars and trees. When Treebeard gives a stretch of the long Entish name for orc-goblins, he mixes descriptions of their physical horribleness with those of their wanton disregard for trees; both, to him, seem to reflect natural characteristics.

I don't have big conclusions here, but I will add. Both source traditions of orcs bristle with racist (or to the extent that they precede the notion of race, anti-foreign) elements. Using orc-goblins as foes rather than historical races or nationalities does not really avoid their identification with those nationalities, especially given 1) the explicit alliance of Eastern and Southern Men with the orcs against the Men from the West and 2) the way the physical descriptions of the orc-goblins align with racist caricature and stereotype. To the latter point, one may not use folkloric goblins as a shield, for European folkloric ugliness aligns quite well with not only racist portrayals of foreigners but also portrayals of internal 'enemies' (Jews and Roma, to name prominent ones).