Orcs: Tolkien Couldn't Decide If They Had Souls | Tolkien Lore Explained

Tolkien's Orcs pose the deepest contradiction in his legendarium. A war story needs a disposable enemy you can kill without guilt. But his Catholic theology forbids it - no rational soul can be created evil, and no living thing is ever beyond redemption. Writing to Peter Hastings in 1954, he began to call Orcs irredeemably bad and stopped himself mid-sentence. For forty years he tried to escape the trap. Corrupted Elves, corrupted Men, mindless talking beasts, puppets animated by Morgoth's will - every origin fixed one problem and broke another. The corrupted-Elves version in the 1977 Silmarillion is one Christopher Tolkien printed out of necessity, after his father privately rejected it in the Myths Transformed essays. The novels show Orcs with conscience and grievance - Shagrat, Gorbag, the deserters of Mordor - and Gollum proves mercy can save even the seemingly lost. Tolkien died in 1973 having never resolved whether an Orc could be redeemed, and that unfinished sentence may be his most serious moral act.