Wk9 Bk6 Ch2: Sam and Frodo as Orcs?

[Stormrider]

From: AnnieofTR (Original Message) Sent: 5/18/2003 7:46 PM

In Mordor and Detail of In Mordor
Copyright John Howe. All Rights Reserved
www.john-howe.com

Wk9, Bk6, Ch2, DISCUSSION: Sam and Frodo as Orcs?

"We’re trapped," Frodo said and he looked wildly up at the frowning wall . . . He ran to the other side and looked over the brink into a dark pit of gloom. "We’re trapped at last." And Frodo sank to the ground beneath the rock and bowed his head. Sam agreed and he sat down next to Frodo and waited. The orc troop marched by and it seemed that they would be overlooked sitting there at the side of the road. After half of the line had gone by, a slave driver spied them and flicked his whip at them. "Hi, you! Get up!" But Sam and Frodo did not move, did not speak. The slave driver halted the company and yelled again, "Come on, you slugs!" Recognizing the devices on their shields he assumed they were deserters. So, Sam and Frodo had no choice but to join the marching orcs.

My only question: How could Frodo and Sam be mistaken for Orcs? Does anyone have any ideas on this? There seems to always be an explanation somewhere but this one totally baffles me.

[Stormrider]

From: Colleen Sent: 5/18/2003 10:11 PM
That always baffled me, too. However, there are a few reasons I can think of. First, Frodo and Sam were wearing orc gear which disguised them at least somewhat. Second, there seem to be lots of different races of orcs -- some big, some small. Disguised as they were, Frodo and Sam could have passed for one of the smaller breeds. Mostly, however, there was confusion. None of the orcs knew who or what they were looking for. They also didn't know how many. Was it one Hobbit? Or an Elven warrior? Or were they looking for Gollum? The two orcs sniffing around were tracking Gollum, not the escaped prisioners. Maybe by keeping orcs in the dark (no pun intended) Sauron let Frodo and Sam make it.

Colleen

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From: William Huggins Sent: 5/19/2003 5:27 AM
As Colleen I belive orcs come in all sizes and shapes. They were breed "in envy and mockery of the Elves" so why couldn´t some orcs be small, chubbie and have unproportioned big feet?

Another encounter were hobbits were "almost" mistaken for orcs, were when tree-beard meet Merry and Pippin for the first time.

"if I had seen you before I heard you, I should have just trodden on you, taking you for little Orcs, and found out my mistake afterwards. Very odd you are, indeed. Root and twig, very odd!'".

Perhaps it is becouse they look different from the main "good hearted" races of Middle-Earth, it could be easy to assume they were made in mockery of something, with their big feet and short bodies, something Morgoth or Sauron would have created.

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From: Desi-Baggins Sent: 5/19/2003 8:30 AM
I always tossed it up to the fact they were wearing orc clothing and there were many different orc breeds/size and there was lots of confusion between the orcs! William makes a good point that Treebeard almost mistaked them for orcs! The thing that gets me is the Hobbits have such cute faces and that was the main thing not hidden or disguised. I thought maybe since the orcs were bred in mockery of the Elves that orcs have bad eye site and Elves have great sight! I can't wait to see how the movie does this scene, maybe when we get a visual we will see how close a Hobbit can resemble an orc!

Desi

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From: Colleen Sent: 5/19/2003 12:36 PM
Another thought that occurred to me is that our poor Hobbits had not had a decent meal in quite a while. I imagine they appeared emaciated and sallow -- very unlike the chubby, rosy cheeked Hobbits we tend to picture.

Colleen

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From: Merlin the mad Sent: 5/23/2003 10:54 AM
We have been too influenced by artistic renditions, including (and especially) the movies! Now I will grant that Elijah Wood has a cute face, as also Billy Boyd, and some would say Dominic Monaghan: Sean Astin? Anyways, these are "cute" faces by human (esp. European) standards. Most artists tend toward making Hobbits with "pixie" faces, ears and all, with lots of darling curly hair. Cartoonishly cute faces are very common. Tolkien did not view his Hobbits that way: they were typical in appearance with English bucollic life, pot bellies and all: hardly like pixies, and certainly not elvish either: rather, diminutive versions of their English counterparts, but with rather largish feet. (Let's not get carried away with the feet size either: very sturdy feet with a copious amount of hair on the upper parts is not going to look weird to orcs, who, as has been noted, are accustomed to seeing all manner of weird physical perversions where they come from.) Now, as to orcs/goblins: fangs, horridly proportioned noses and ears, in fact monstrous perversions for faces abound, in the artwork we are used to. Tolkien did not insinuate any such thing for his orcish races. Instead, he viewed them as "...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." (Letters No. 210 page 274) Orcs do have "fangs", but they are only "bared" (seen) when they snarl: indicating that Tolkien did not visualize them as anything more prominent than the fangs on, say, Dracula, which only emerge when he smiles too widely or when he is "thirsty." Hardly the orthodontist's nightmare that PJ shows on all of his orcs in the films. The "Snaga" orcs are much smaller than Uruk-hai: in fact, slightly smaller on the average than even Dwarves: snaga and goblin seem to be interchangeable terms for the same breed. They are VERY numerous. We can thank PJ for this one too: because of the movies (so far at any rate) we are to believe that orcs are huge, hulking monsters, even bigger than the average human warrior. And ugly? Even their mothers would have brown-bagged their darlings before sending them on the bus. But if PJ had stuck by the books, his orcs would (also) have been depicted as masses of swarming little beggers, filthy and tattered, but very well armed too. Frodo and Sam, dressed in Orcish gear, - and with the pinched, dirty faces of starving Hobbits - blended in easily. Only a very direct and close-up examination of their faces, with their hoods thrown back and their helmets off, would have blown their cover visually: and they were not required to attempt the black speech, so their (pleasant) Hobbit voices were not a giveaway either.

MtM

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From: Desi-Baggins Sent: 5/23/2003 3:32 PM
Very good points MtM! When I read the book I never really thought that it would be hard for Frodo and Sam to pull it off, but after seeing PJ's orcs and Hobbits it seemed more difficult. I wonder how PJ will make this work now that he created a monster and not a simple orc!

Desi

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From: William Huggins Sent: 5/24/2003 9:27 AM
This is perhaps a little of topic, but still within the field of orc breeds and how PJ portrait them. If I don´t remember wrong, the orcs that held Frodo captive in the tower were Uruks (or is it me that just are imagening this?). If they were that, the spoiler pictures I found of Shagrat and Gorbag (can be found under "Return of the king pictures" in the picture albums) shows they look different from Sarumans Uruks. Did PJ make a difference between Uruk, Uruk-hai and "Great Orcs" which I alteast consider to be the same breed (black orcs of great strenght)? Or were Sarumans Uruk-Hai a different breed from Uruk-hai that came from Mordor?

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From: galenas Sent: 5/26/2003 4:16 PM
The orcs were being driven at whip to track and find gollum.
Even orcs must get exhausted. In Sauron's ever present darkness, the exhausted orcs probably didn't give the two strangers more than a periferal glance while they struggled for breath and avoiding the whip. I think their tunnel vision tracking of gollum blinded them to the obvious.

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From: Ruscosenda Sent: 5/29/2003 10:07 AM
I think Sam and Frodo could have been mistaken for orcs under the circumstances for the following reasons:

1) It was dark. Thing look quite different in torchlight, especially at a distance.
2) They were wearing orc garments and armor.
3) The hobbits covered their feet with their shields and their faces with their hoods.
4) The Uruks were driving small orcs to battle, so size was probably not an issue.
5) The others smaller orcs were exhausted from being driven by the Uruks.
6) They were too small to be dwarves, elves, or men; and, these orcs probably didn't know about hobbits.
7) Frodo and Sam never spoke.

-- Rusco