Which real race were the Orcs modelled upon?

[Kyriakos]

This question could have been posted in the arts forum, but i am mostly interested in the examination of it from the scope of history. Were the Orcs meant to depict certain races, or were they, at least, partly created to reflect the characteristics attributed to such races?

I should say that i am not familiar with Tolkien's world (if the Orcs originate there) other than through the celecrated movie trilogy, and my reading of the Hobbit.

It did seem to me from those that the orcs are supposed to be monstrous personifications of lowly qualities. In the past eras people were popularly demonised in pamphlets for example, showing them as equally horrible depictions of anything sinister.

 

[Racsoviale]

If you are to take early 20th century racial views into consideration. Then the orcs would be based on africans, where elves would be based on aryans. The basic traits racial theory in the 20-40s prescribe to those various "races" synch very well with what Tolkien, he was as far as I know the first to mention orcs, describes those races as.
Orcs being very crude, primitive and helpless and elves being the epitomy of civilization, beauty and skill.
This somewhat biased review of the Lord of the Rings should clear everything up http://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/unused-audio-commentary-by-howard-zinn-and-noam-chomsky-recorded-summer-2002-for-the-fellowship-of-the-ring-platinum-series-extended-edition-dvd-part-one

 

[bombshoo]

Tolkien once wrote "we were all orcs in the Great War".

 

[Racsoviale]

damit I should never have done this, now I'm finding myself reading that review for a third time and have to go to work tomorrow

Btw. I'm pretty sure I'm gonna get dachspwned when he sees this topic but what can you do

 

[North King]

Not sure why you think there is a race he based it off of. On whom exactly do you think he based Elves and Dwarves?*


*This is a trick question. He didn't base either of them on anything. "Elves as Aryans" is utter bull; Elves aren't supposed to be human at all, and Tolkien stresses this many, many, many times in his writings.

 

[Ajidica]

I don't really know if Tolkien based the orcs off any particular race. The orcs were 'created' when he needed a foe for the Elves of Gondolin which was one of the first LotR stories he wrote during the Great War. He had the orcs represent the destructive machine-like and dehumanizing nature of trench warfare and how it was destroying the romantic ideas of war and civilization.

 

[Evie]

Aryan elves get less and less defensible the more you actually read what Tolkien wrote, especially the Silmarillion; these elves are infinitely more ancient but their history is essentially one screw-up after another, and for all of their "advanced" status, it's clearly established and recognized by the elves themselves that it's not their earth anymore and that all they can do before leaving is try to help the human (whose world it will become) fix a little of the mess the elves' own serial screw-up have created. Hardly a master race outlook.

Also of course the popular image of the blond haired, blue eyed elf is actually based on lack of research; Tolkien's elves in general went for the black hair, blue eyes look, not the blond-and-blue one.

Probably also worth noting that the elves while they provide advice and wisdom, usually let the "lesser races" actually, you know, save the day and do all the heroics (how many elven heroes - not sidekicks - can you name in Tolkien's stories?). Which again is not a very master race-y representation.

There's been a much more defensible theory that the elves were inspired by Celtic mythology about the earlier inhabitants of the British isles, before they were displaced by the incoming waves from the east.

 

[Junius]

Maybe i'm wrong, but it seems what latent racism exists in Tolkien's works has to do more with the easterlings than the Orcs.

 

[bombshoo]

Maybe i'm wrong, but it seems what latent racism exists in Tolkien's works has to do more with the easterlings than the Orcs.

I don't know for sure about the Easterlings, but with Umbar and Harad, IIRC a good portion of their leaders (and some of the most evil ones) were actually Black Númenóreans, so from the same stock as the people from Gondor, so the blame for their evilness doesn't only fall on the native peoples there.

 

[Leoreth]

In my opinion, when people accuse Tolkien of being racist, it tells us more about these people than about Tolkien.

 

[Hornblower]

I'm pretty sure that the Silmarillion explains that the Orcs were an attempt at reproducing the elves by the dark lord so that he could challenge the creator. That they came out like they did was because of his own twisted evilness. So surely if they were based on anything it would be the elves right?

 

[Lord Baal]

Seeing the races of Middle Earth as symbolic of any of Earth's races is something that neo-Nazis came up with. Tolkien himself based most of his work on British folklore, seeing as how he was an expert at it. He even flat-out said so once or twice. The idea of races in Tolkien's works being akin to races on Earth is something that was created later by others, and which Tolkien himself argued against.

As for the Orcs in particular, what Ajidica said is correct.

 

[Omega124]

I swore Tolkien used Mongol to describe the orcs at one point in the Two Towers.

 

[innonimatu]

Indeed. If Tolkien had any agenda regarding the modern world, it was about industrialization, which the orcs and their lords represent. Especially obvious in the last portion of the book. WW1, the first long, industrialized war, with the meat grinder sustained year after year by industry, much beyond the initial illusions of a quick, decisive war, probably did had an influence on that.

 

[Communisto]

Tolkien much detested allegory in all its manifestations.

 

[Ajidica]

I swore Tolkien used Mongol to describe the orcs at one point in the Two Towers.

I just finished Two Towers and I don't recall seeing that word. I know he used Morgul a couple of times to refer to the orcs the Uruk-Hai encountered while carrying Pippin and Merry to Isengard.

 

[Traitorfish]

Also of course the popular image of the blond haired, blue eyed elf is actually based on lack of research; Tolkien's elves in general went for the black hair, blue eyes look, not the blond-and-blue one.

Which, incidentally, is an image traditionally associated in the United Kingdom with people of Gaelic descent, one who were, as you may expect, ranked squarely second to the "Nordic" Anglo-Saxons in the race science of the day. Tolkien's elves owe more to romantic notions of faded Athurian glories than to any idealised Teutonic superman.

I swore Tolkien used Mongol to describe the orcs at one point in the Two Towers.

I think what you're referring to is a rather notorious excerpt from one of his private letters:

...they are (or were) squat, broad, flat-nosed, sallow-skinned, with wide mouths and slant eyes; in fact degraded and repulsive versions of the (to Europeans) least lovely Mongol-types.

While this is, beyond question, a hugely insensitive sort of description, I think that it owes more to the casual racism of his era than it does to the construction of concious racial analogies. Aside from anything else, his descriptions of their stature and body shape are ape-like, which isn't a stereotype that is traditionally associated with East or Central Asian peoples.

I don't know for sure about the Easterlings, but with Umbar and Harad, IIRC a good portion of their leaders (and some of the most evil ones) were actually Black Númenóreans, so from the same stock as the people from Gondor, so the blame for their evilness doesn't only fall on the native peoples there.

Personally, I like to imagine that this was something of a dig at the Nazi insistence that all civilisations across the globe had been constructed by "Aryan" ruling classes fleeing Atlantis, upon which Númenór was based, as if he was suggesting than any such diaspora displaying the Nazi ideal of "Germanic" behaviour would be as tyrannical and uncivilised as the Nazis themselves. But, of course, that's all complete speculation...

 

[ParkCungHee]

Liverpoolians, duh.

 

[Traitorfish]

Liverpoolians, duh.

Actually, come to think of it, if you put together the sickly complexion and lanky, bow-legged figure, then there probably was something of the impoverished working class of the British industrial cities in the design of the orcs. He was pretty big on the idea of industrial capitalism as a dehumanising force.

 

[ParkCungHee]

Actually, come to think of it, if you put together the sickly complexion and lanky, bow-legged figure, then there probably was something of the impoverished working class of the British industrial cities in the design of the orcs. He was pretty big on the idea of industrial capitalism as a dehumanising force.

I of course, skipped most this thread and answered based solely on dere ax-scent and fings.