Becoming Orcs

How Tolkien warns us about our own corruption.

Michael Jefferies

May 17, 2024

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The Scouring of the Shire by Owen William Weber. Visit his website here.

This is part 3 in a series on the Inkling’s environmental warnings. As discussed in part 2, J.R.R. Tolkien’s work is filled with prime examples of a positive vision of how life should be lived that corresponds with a respect and care for the natural world through the societies of hobbits and elves. By understanding that positive vision, we are able to more fully appreciate Tolkien’s warning for us contained in his depiction of the corrupt creatures called orcs.

Tolkien’s warning for society goes much deeper than using the examples of orcs as caricatures of evil, however. Ever realistic in his presentation of human nature, Tolkien’s writings reveal that we ourselves have the capacity to become internally corrupt as well; in other words: we have the potential to become spiritual orcs. This warning can be seen by examining the corruption of the wizard Saruman and the hobbits’ homeland, the Shire, in light of the lifestyles of orcs.

Orcish Societies

If elvish societies can be characterized by their preservation and cultivation of beauty at the expense of haste, then orcish societies (since orcs are merely corrupted elves) can be characterized as only valuing brute function at the expense of beauty in order to allow for increasing laziness. Scholars Matthew Dickerson and Jonathan Evans give a characterization of orcish society based on an encounter with orcs in The Hobbit:

“Although ‘they make no beautiful things’, they at least ‘make many clever ones.’ … Goblins [aka orcs] are said to have invented ‘some of the machines that have since troubled the world,’ ingenious device that make use of ‘wheels and engines and explosions.’ - Ents, Elves and Eriador: The Environmental Vision of J.R.R. Tolkien, pg. 17, internal quotes are from The Hobbit.

Dickerson and Evans go on to describe how they use these machines to encourage sloth since “whatever labor cannot be done by machines the Orcs avoid by using slaves”.

The totality of their fallenness is shown in the disunity of their societies. While elvish societies (at least in the Lord of the Rings) are largely characterized by an almost heavenly harmony, orcish societies are highly individualistic, often seeking power and gain for themselves. They are averse to the building up of community that isn’t forced by coercion or violence from their superiors, and they are seen constantly quarreling and killing each other over petty matters.

The effects of the orcs lifestyles can be felt on their surroundings, namely the dark pits of environmental destruction in Mordor, the land where most orcs live. Mordor is characterized by air filled with thick, noxious gases due to industrial production and harmful mining practices. This corrupt way of living manifests itself through a general disregard for nature. When tracking a company of orcs, the elf Legolas remarks “It seems their delight to slash and beat down growing things that are not even in their way” (The Two Towers, Bk. III, Ch. i.)

Saruman & The Shire: Case Studies in Corruption

Saruman and the Corruption of Power

While the bulk of the story of Lord of the Rings focuses on the looming wars between the mostly good armies of elves and men and the thoroughly evil armies of Mordor, it would be a mistake to think that Tolkien views the threat to harmonious living as being primarily external. Instead, Tolkien’s warning is that even the seemingly purest people and societies can be corrupted, even if they aren’t obviously conquered by external forces, a clear allusion to Tolkien’s Christian beliefs in the pervasiveness of original sin.

Nowhere in Tolkien’s work can the pervasiveness of original sin be seen more clearly than through the wizard Saruman, considered to be the wisest of his kind, who became corrupted through his lust for power. And one of the signs of this corruption is a lack of care for nature.

Treebeard, a living, walking tree creature, saw the corruption happen first-hand over centuries and comments: “I think that I now understand what he is up to. He is plotting to become a Power. He has a mind of metal and wheels; and he does not care for growing things, except as far as they serve him for the moment.” (The Two Towers, Bk. III, Ch. iv). The orcish comparison to what Dickerson and Evans describe in the Hobbit could not be more clear. The corruption becomes complete when Saruman eventually has the orcs come and live in his palace of Isengard. Now that Saruman had become thoroughly orcish, he finds no objection to allowing his spiritual kin to dwell with him.

The Shire & Societal Corruption

When Frodo and his hobbit friends finally return to the Shire, after the destruction of the titular ring, they expect to return as conquering heroes to the home they saved. Instead, they find something out of a nightmare.

Many hobbits find themselves becoming enslaved to machines at a mill, while others partner with the new power in town (which is just Saruman in disguise) in order to gain more power for themselves. Hospitality to strangers becomes outlawed and the hobbits become radically distrustful of one another. In other words, the heroes return to discover that their beloved countrymen are on the fast track to becoming orcs.

One of the signs of this corruption is through the environmental destruction and the abandonment of beauty:

“The pleasant row of old hobbit-holes in the bank on the north side of the Pool were deserted … Worse, there was a whole line of ugly new houses all along Pool Side where the Hobbiton Road ran close to the bank. An avenue of trees had stood there. They were all gone. … And looking with dismay up the road towards Bag End they saw a tall chimney of brick in the distance. It was pouring out black smoke into the evening air.” - The Return of the King, Bk. VI, Ch. viii

“This is worse than Mordor!” Sam remarks, “Much worse in a way.” Frodo responds: “Yes, this is Mordor … Just one of its works.”

Slavery to Mordor

The end of all of this is slavery. Slavery to the corruptive power that emanates from Mordor. Slavery for the orcs, slavery for the Hobbits in the Shire, and even slavery for Saruman. Frodo remarks that despite the seeming power he gained, Saruman “was doing [Mordor’s] work all the time, even when he thought he was working for himself. And the same with those [hobbits] Saruman tricked …” (ROTK, Bk. VI, Ch. viii).

It is through the theme of a slavery to Mordor that the Christian undertones in Tolkien’s work becomes clear. When we plot to gain power for ourselves and use other people and things as mere tools to further our power and influence, we end up becoming slaves of a power greater than us. In St. Paul’s language we become slaves to sin and the corrupting effects of sin leads to spiritual death (Rom. 6:16-23).

The Reach of Mordor Today

N.S. Lyons

accurately wrote that Tolkien was one of the most accurate dystopian writers of the 20th century, and we must examine Tolkien’s warnings carefully to uncover the ways in which we have become orcish. A full cultural analysis is not appropriate here, but we can briefly identify a few items to be concerned over.

Like the highly individualistic orcs, we have dissolved traditional communities in exchange for the isolation which has led us to having loneliness declared to be an epidemic by the U.S. Surgeon General, with health consequences that are as deadly as smoking 15 cigarettes a day. Like orcs, we are trying to find new ways to pawn off our work onto machines, machines which we increasingly find ourselves enslaved to since we spend so much time with screens, preferring the comfort of home entertainment and social media over messiness of authentic community.

Like orcs, we make few beautiful things, but many crafty ones. This has resulted in a crisis where many people no longer claim there such a thing as objective beauty, cutting us off from one of the three transcendentals (the other two being goodness and truth, which are also under attack).

Environmentally, some of the most visible problems have improved thanks to the successful implementation of legislation like the clean air act (both the British and American versions) and the shift from coal to natural gas for energy production. Smog no longer fills the sky of our cities like the skies of Mordor. But the problem has become more invisible (at least in the developed world). For just one example, The World Health Organization reports that nearly 7 million people die each year from air pollution, and some studies estimate that about 3 million of those deaths come from the burning of fossil fuels.

Resisting Mordor, Finding Freedom

If Mordor has become dominant, how do we become free? We can learn a lesson from Tolkien’s own life on this. Tolkien was so dismayed by the damage that the highway system had on his beloved English countryside, that he gave up his car. Obviously, most of us can’t afford to have such a reaction (I know I can’t), but the key is to identify the ways in which we can resist, even if we have little reason to believe we will overthrow it in the near-term.1

We can resist the increasing isolation by the fostering of intentional, faith-based communities centered around authentic friendship and prayer where we can raise our kids. We can also create boundaries with the time-absorbing black holes that are our screens by downloading distraction blocking apps like Freedom.

We can embrace beauty by using our leisure time to read great works of literature and watch films that communicate the transcendentals. We can demand beauty in the spaces we have influence over, such as our homes and local churches. We can use our money to purchase beautiful well-made things that will last rather than those items that only meet function.

We can get re-connected to nature by learning to garden and cook and intentionally spend more time outdoors in green spaces.2 We can also support sane and rational policies like placing a price on carbon pollution that will incentivize the reduction of air pollution through market mechanisms rather than government control and give the money back to people to protect working families from energy price hikes.

Most importantly, we can resist servitude to Mordor by serving Him who no longer calls us servants but friends (John 15:15). It is Christ who teaches us how to live and restores us into image-bearers of God, rather than the bent distortions of humans that sin wants to turn us into. Prayer, fasting, scripture, the sacraments and the fostering of virtue will help us to become the saints God made us to be and will further his kingdom on Earth as it is in Heaven.