Editing Goblin (section)

=Tolkien Goblins=
[[File:Tolkien Goblins.JPG|thumb|The most accepted origin of Goblins in the Middle Earth setting.]]

{{Topquote|Now goblins are cruel, wicked, and bad-hearted. They make no beautiful things, but they make many clever ones.|[[J. R. R. Tolkien]], ''[[The Hobbit]]''}}

Tolkien was not consistent on the relationship between goblins and orcs. Initially he said that "Goblin" was merely the halfling word for Orc, though that was swiftly contradicted. The main narrative text of <i>The Hobbit</i> contains few explicit mentions of orcs at all; it is remarked early on that the name of the sword "Orcrist" translates, in the ancient tongue of Gondolin, to "goblin cleaver", and later Gandalf rebuffs Bilbo's suggestion that the Company walk ''around'' Mirkwood instead of through it by informing him that there is a necromancer's lair to the south and to the north the Grey Mountains are "bristling with hobgoblins and orcs of large and vicious breed". LotR proper and later notes made further statements insinuating that goblins were a specific subtype of orc. Even later notes started to treat goblins and orcs like completely separate creatures, so take your pick, but the most "developed" canon leans significantly towards the "goblins are a runty orc subspecies" reading. Generally, since The Hobbit is the central foundation to his stories and it makes a point of explaining that Orcs are just larger types of Goblins, along with Lord Of The Rings having most Orcs as being not much bigger than Hobbits, Goblins are seen as around Hobbit-sized or even a bit smaller.

Goblins/Orcs have a multiplicity of origin stories from Tolkien and he never really settled on one definitively, although the most prominent one posits that they are the twisted forms of Elves tortured and beat into submission by Morgoth and Sauron. Other origins include: an Asian group of Elves stolen from their people and bred as slaves by Morgoth & Sauron, just being animals uplifted by M&S, fallen Maiar, men who were corrupted rather than Elves (or a mix of the two, with post-corruption interbreeding with humans as yet another possibility), or even just slimy rocks transformed by Morgoth's magic into living beings. Regardless of how they came about, once created they swiftly became the backbone of Sauron's armies (his other monstrous creations mostly not surviving the dwindling of magic over the passing Ages) that are heavily industrialized and produce only ugly things that cause sickness (perhaps a metaphor for wartime industry). On the subject of canon; Christopher Tolkien ultimately decided on them being Elves who were among the first group to awaken but believed Morgoth's whispers that the Valar were beings of evil and fled from them into the woods when the Valar first met the Elves to be later captured by or lured into Morgoth's power, so that's the go-to answer for the Tolkien scholars.

The notion of an entirely evil race conflicted big time with Tolkien's Catholic beliefs, so there are hints that not all Goblins and Orcs were evil, as a few passages indicate no race was wholly united for or against Morgoth; there are independent groups of Goblins in The Hobbit, and a few lines given indicate that Orcs will go to great lengths to avenge their fallen leaders, while in his notes he considered them a race capable of free-choice and thus not the "[[Always Chaotic Evil]]" inborn bloc that many later works paint them to be. Frodo and Sam were even meant to pass through a friendly (if crude) village of pacifist renegade orcs at one point in a scrapped chapter.

Although Tolkien did try to avoid overtly assigning any real-life peoples to his fantasy races, the Goblins are very blatantly Asians with fangs and Tolkein once described them as "Mongol-types". If you want to be ''really'' charitable you could argue that alternatively, in dialect and mannerisms, [[Ork|orcs and goblins are exaggerated Cockney thugs]] or louts from urban South West England, in direct contrast to the very genteel Midland Farm Country hobbits, bumping the caricatures down a notch or two from "out-and-out racist" to "exceedingly classist and provincialist".

Orcs and Goblins are repeatedly stated by the narration to be fantastic inventors and engineers, with one of Tolkien's notes alleging that they have access to rudimentary blackpowder weaponry, but this isn’t really shown. Sure, Uruk-Hai are anachronistic in their munition armor and drilling exercises, but that's entirely thanks to being bred, trained, and outfitted by Saruman. I guess the shantytown metropolis inside the Misty Mountains is a rather impressive feat of construction, but that's really it for stuff they are seen to have actually built themselves.