[DonaldPShimoda]

The thing you're missing is that Tolkien didn't "dehumanize" the enemy, because the enemy were literally not humans. Orcs are a deformation — a creation intended to be evil from the beginning. They have no inherent good in them, as a fact. I believe Tolkien wrote about this in some of his letters: that the Orcs are really truly evil creatures, by design, and that questioning that fact is against the purpose of their existence in the story. They're a manifestation of the evil of Morgoth.

In contrast, bad men are handled quite differently. Shortly after Frodo and Sam meet Faramir in The Two Towers they find themselves on the edges of a battle between the Rangers and a company of Haradrim (supposedly "evil" men from the East):

> Sam, eager to see more, went now and joined the guards. He scrambled a little way up into into one of the larger of the bay-trees. For a moment he caught a glimpse of swarthy men in red running down the slope some way off with green-clad warriors leaping after them, hewing them down as they fled. Arrows were thick in the air. Then suddenly straight over the rim of their sheltering bank, a man fell, crashing through the slender trees, nearly on top of them. He came to rest in the fern a few feet away, face downward, green arrow-feathers sticking from his neck below a golden collar. His scarlet robes were tattered, his corslet of overlapping brazen plates was rent and hewn, his black plaits of hair braided with gold were drenched with blood. His brown hand still clutched the hilt of a broken sword.

> It was Sam's first view of a battle of Men against Men, and he did not like it much. He was glad that he could not see the dead face. He wondered what the man's name was and where he came from; and if he was really evil of heart, or what lies or threats had led him on the long march from his home; and if he would not really rather have stayed there in peace – all in a flash of thought which was quickly driven from his mind.

Though this is certainly the most explicit instance of a character questioning whether another is truly evil, the theme is present throughout the novel.

(Excerpt copied from "Of Herbs and Stewed Rabbit", the fourth chapter in The Two Towers, pages 660-661 in the 50th Anniversary Edition of The Lord of the Rings as published by HarperCollins in 2004.)

[DanAndersen]

Just to add on to your very good description, Tolkien himself wrestled with the question of the moral/spiritual nature of Orcs. Are orcs just soulless creations of Melkor/Morgoth? Are they twisted/mutilated perversions of Elves and Men? The latter is the interpretation the Jackson films go with, but it wasn't absolutely firm in the books and the legendarium in general. The question of the ultimate fate of Orcs and whether or not they can be saved or if they have good in them is something Tolkien tried to reconcile with his own faith and theology.

The following StackExchange post illustrates further the questions that Tolkien was trying to figure out: https://scifi.stackexchange.com/questions/26725/what-is-the-...

[davidy123]

The willful creatures in the story are representations of humans just as much as talking ants in a Pixar story. Or, the story has no real relevance at all because it's pure fantasy. You can say the stories are about the humans on one side of war, but there are better examples of war novels with balanced perspectives without the fantasy elements. LoTR probably mainly rose to prominance due to the Hobbit being sold as a children's tale, the provenance my comment starts with.

Another comment includes the phrase "orc-crowd" from one of Tolkien's letters. Perhaps Tolkien (to comment on him personally this time) decided to vilify certain behaviours, which is a common enough response.

[DonaldPShimoda]

> The willful creatures in the story are representations of humans just as much as talking ants in a Pixar story.

No, I disagree. Tolkien was emphatic that his stories were not allegories for anything at all.

If you were right, then why would Tolkien also have bad humans? Why not just make all of the enemy into orcs/trolls/etc? Why have the dichotomy if not to show that humans are capable of being both bad and good, thus separating them from truly evil creatures like orcs?

> Or, the story has no real relevance at all because it's pure fantasy.

Yes, that's correct. The story is pure fantasy; it doesn't serve to "teach" about anything. It's literally just a story.

> LoTR probably mainly rose to prominance due to the Hobbit being sold as a children's tale, the provenance my comment starts with.

I think LOTR became prominent because it literally invented modern high-fantasy and created a gigantic world the scope of which had never really been seen before. The Hobbit touched on it, but LOTR really goes into far more depth about many things than The Hobbit ever did.

[forapurpose]

> Tolkien didn't "dehumanize" the enemy, because the enemy were literally not humans

I think the GP is saying the same thing, but from another perspective (and I agree). Effectively, the GP says:

the enemy were literally not humans so Tolkien literally "dehumanizes" the enemy.

Another way to to look at it: In the Lord of the Rings, you can identify someone's character by their appearance and 'race': Orcs are evil; odd-looking people (some in Bree, IIRC) are questionable; Elves are just and wise; Dwarves are greedy and sturdy; etc.

[DonaldPShimoda]

It seems to me that this interpretation would only make sense if all of the enemy are orcs/trolls/etc. But that's not the case at all. Tolkien draws a clear distinction between the truly evil non-human creatures and the bad/misled humans.

> odd-looking people (some in Bree, IIRC)

"The Southerner", who is later speculated to in fact be a rather human-looking orc if I remember right.