Do Orc Lives Matter?

I have been meaning to write this while The Rings of Power Season 2 was still on air, but I guess there is no better time than now. So, many of us LOTR fans heard TROP will show an orc family. It miffed a good part of the fanbase, begging someone to take a deeper dive into Tolkien lore on matters of orc kinship.

"For the Orcs had life and multiplied after the manner of the Children of Ilúvatar..." - The Silmarillion, Of The Coming Of The Elves.

Tolkien had gaps in his lores. Not much is known about orc-wives or orc-children. Or the manner of their reproduction. Tolkien came up with a reason that explained why these things are not mentioned in the books:

"There must have been orc-women. But in stories that seldom if ever see the Orcs except as soldiers of armies in the service of the evil lords we naturally would not learn much about their lives. Not much was known." - Tolkien, 1963, letter to Mrs. Munby.

But, there are mentions of orcs mating in Orcs VIII, Morgoth's Ring, Myths Transformed, which proves orcs are not asexual per se. Maiar-orcs are mentioned to practice "procreation", while some "mated with beasts and later Men." However, in his letter to Scottish author Naomi Mitchison, archived 144, he wrote:

"Orcs (the word is as far as I am concerned actually derived from Old English orc 'demon', but only because of its phonetic suitability) are nowhere clearly stated to be of any particular origin. But since they are servants of the Dark Power, and later of Sauron, neither of whom could, or would, produce living things, they must be 'corruptions'."

It conjectures that Morgoth, who twisted the elves to turn them into orcs, and his servant Sauron are the truly evil ones. Hence, they can only breed not create. This is in line with Catholic theology that says evil cannot make, only mock. So, it begs the question if orcs could reproduce, were they truly evil?

In a letter to his son, Christopher Tolkien, who was serving in the RAF in the Second World War, Tolkien wrote of orcs as appearing on both sides of the conflict:

"Yes, I think the orcs as real a creation as anything in 'realistic' fiction ... only in real life they are on both sides, of course. For 'romance' has grown out of 'allegory', and its wars are still derived from the 'inner war' of allegory in which good is on one side and various modes of badness on the other. In real (exterior) life men are on both sides: which means a motley alliance of orcs, beasts, demons, plain naturally honest men, and angels."

The orcs are more complex than people usually let on. They did heinous deeds, killed, pillaged, and r@ped. But so did the Men in the stories, especially Southern Men and pirates. I do not like the route taken by the new TV show, The Rings of Power because it is pandering at this point instead of good writing. But fans using the name of Tolkien to say orcs were an "irredeemable evil" and "A RACE THAT EXISTED FROM PAIN AND TORTURE AND DEATH AND EXISTS TO CAUSE PAIN TORTURE AND DEATH" is disingenuous to the author's point of view. Tolkien hated allegory. He states as much in the foreword to his book The Lord of the Rings. He was straightforward in his description of the orcs, stating that orcs had free will and a moral sense. It is their subservience to evil that doomed them in the eyes of everyone.

However, in the defense of the vocal fanbase, the orcs sometimes acted savagely. The orcs hated elves and men more. After Morgoth's defeat and before the return of Sauron, orcs of the Misty Mountains raided nearby villages. They did it out of their own volition, and no one forced them to. But as far as the discourse on orcish families is concerned, Tolkien's books unintentionally speak about an unconventional family borne out of brotherly love.

In The Two Towers, Book IV, Chapter 10: The Choices of Master Samwise, the orcs Shagrat and Gorbag talked about running away from the cursed war they found themselves in:

'I'd like to try somewhere where there's none of 'em. But the war's on now, and when that's over things may be easier.'

`It's going well, they say.'

'They would.' grunted Gorbag. `We'll see. But anyway, if it does go well, there should be a lot more room. What d'you say? - if we get a chance, you and me'll slip off and set up somewhere on our own with a few trusty lads, somewhere where there's good loot nice and handy, and no big bosses.'

'Ah! ' said Shagrat. "Like old times.'

Tolkien changed his mind about the morality of Orcs throughout his life. But they had a degree of free will from the get-go, which is inextricably linked to their lifestyle, making the Tolkien stories even richer.