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The hero Tuor, a Man, slays the Orc Othrod: scholars have suggested that for Tolkien, Orcs were a conveniently wholly evil enemy that could be slaughtered without mercy. [15] 2007 illustration by Tom Loback. Scholars have noted that Tolkien's Orcs are depicted as wholly evil, meaning that they could be slaughtered without regret.
Tolkien, a devout Roman Catholic, created what he came to feel was a moral dilemma for himself with his supposedly wholly evil Middle-earth peoples like Orcs, when he made them able to speak. This identified them as sentient and sapient; indeed, he portrayed them talking about right and wrong.
Tolkien's Roman Catholicism gave him a clear sense of good and evil, and a ready symbolism to hand: light symbolises good, and darkness evil, as it does in the Bible. [ 10 ] [ 11 ] In The Fellowship of the Ring , the first evil being that the Hobbits encounter after leaving the Shire on the quest to destroy the One Ring is Old Man Willow , a ...
[4] [5] Tolkien's orcs serve as a conveniently wholly evil enemy that could be slaughtered without mercy. The orc was a sort of "hell-devil" in Old English literature, and the orc-né (pl. orc-néas , "demon-corpses") was a race of corrupted beings and descendants of Cain , alongside the elf, according to the poem Beowulf .
Tolkien was similarly equivocal about the nature of evil, as seen through the One Ring, created by the Dark Lord Sauron to dominate the whole of Middle-earth; it behaves both as an inanimate object, and as a thing with constantly evil intent, seeking to enslave whoever bears it. Shippey admired Tolkien's ability to balance between pagan and ...
Tolkien, while denying that absolute evil could exist, stated that Sauron came as near to a wholly evil will as was possible. Commentators have compared Sauron to the title character of Bram Stoker's 1897 novel Dracula, and to Balor of the Evil Eye in Irish mythology.
Tolkien went on to create his first novel "The Hobbit" published in 1937. Almost twenty years later, the sequel "The Lord of the Rings" followed in three volumes, in 1954 and 1955.
The Wizard Saruman turns to evil and is wholly corrupted, lured by pride and power, but never gets the Ring. Tolkien uses the Ring to illuminate the moral choices made by each character. Sméagol kills his friend Déagol to gain the Ring, and is corrupted by it, becoming wholly miserable as the creature Gollum.