The Most Unlovable Orc

The Most Unlovable Orc

Phillip Dayan

Lost Among the Virtuous
by Andrea Al-Dojabar
The High Hay Press, 282 pp., $24.99, ISBN 0618391134

The best fantasy serves as an allegory for real life; the dross of fantasy merely serves an escapist function. Few writers can manage the fine line between the two. Skillful writers reveal previously unregarded truths about the world around us without once jarring us from the sensibilities they’ve created; the more ham-fisted scratchers bombard us with trite tropes and meaningless, mixed metaphors. The success of any fantasy depends on its believable connection to real humans, because only then can we sympathize with their motivations. Lost Among the Virtuous is one of those novels that almost manages this balancing act, an act even more captivating in that it does so with an inhuman character who, though full realized and engaging (and repelling), completely fails the test of similitude necessary to evoke sympathy. The author, Andrea Al-Dojabar, is a Fulbright Scholar and Assistant Professor of Old English Studies at the University of Texas, Houston.

Lost Among the Virtuous is a swords and sorcery fantasy straight from the pages of The Lord of the Rings. The main character, Likdelash, is an orc and a former stable master at Sauron’s fortress of Barad-dûr, rendered homeless by his mater’s defeat at the hands of Lord Aragorn and “the most cowardly, stunted pair of treacherous back-stabbers to’ve ever crawled under the cursed sun.” For those unfamiliar with these names and places, you need only rent the epic movie trilogy The Lord of the Rings, or read Tolkien’s original to get up to speed. Readers, however, need to be aware of the few similarities and the great differences between the two works.

For one thing, there’s little sense of nobility in this book, and Likdelash is probably the nastiest piece of work you’re likely to encounter in a work of fantasy; he seems more at place in an pornographic work by Sartre or Bataille. Likdelash engages in graphic scenes of bestiality (disturbing enough given Al-Dojabar’s facility with the language, but further unsettling with the questions it raises as to why we would consider an orc human enough to be judged by human ethical standards); he is a thief, a liar, a cheat, and a murder (albeit of other orcs). Everything about him offends. Also, he is totally incapable of gratitude.

“Not my choice to come here, you rotten pieces of filth! Your choice! Thieves, braggarts, destroyers! My home you took. My lands you razed. My people destroyed, their pride gone. You spit on me, mock me, and chase me away. You fear I steal your lands and your bawling brats…well, fear is your luxury, worms, not mine.”

The novel follows Likdelash as he is driven from one Middle Earth hamlet to the next, begging scraps. According to one of the courtiers in Minas Tirith, “With Sauron’s destruction, all the power that sustained the orcs, trolls and other monstrosities disappeared, and they became our problem. Mordor once again became a desert unable to sustain life. The defeated could have stayed and tried to make a living for themselves, but many escaped here, to find a place in the land’s of men. Of course they didn’t find open arms. But, had the situation been reversed, would they have done the same for us? What a ridiculous notion to pose of an orc.”

Why “the lands of men”? Well, as it turns out, the dwarves and hobbits have both barred the refugee orcs from entering their lands. Only an edict from Lord Aragorn allowed the orcs to travel relatively unmolested through his lands. As we follow Likdelash, we find that no orc can settle in one place for long.

In the absence of the Great Enemy, men have found plenty of other, smaller enemies. The refugees present to most visible, and easiest to assail, threat. They are pitied but not trusted. And they have not attempted to earn that trust. They steal, lie, cheat, kill, and Likdelash, old though he may be, sounds like the worst of them.

This is a Middle Earth bereft of the wisdom of the Elves and Wizards. Gone are the aged counsels of beings centuries old. Supposedly Tom Bombadil still dwells somewhere in the Old Forest outside Hobbiton, and the Dwarves still delve in the deep and presumably have returned to Khazad-dûm, and the Ents are off searching for their wives, but these beings no longer intrude on the world of men. Men are superior, but only because their competition for the top spot is absent. Frailty, greed, and fear reign supreme in a land of lost nobility. Aragorn still rules, but he is never seen in the novel.

Here lays the key fault with the novel. Though inundated by realistic descriptions, Likdelash’s inhumanity, and particularly his total lack of gratitude for having been saved from servitude, fails to connect this story in any meaningful way to reality. And this is strange, because this failure almost precisely mirrors Tokien’s failure to keep his work in the realm of pure fantasy.

Tolkien repeatedly denied that his work was based at all on the European theater of WWII. Most people ignore his denials. Given the fact that Tolkien was British and the Great Enemy of his day, Germany, lay to the east, it is impossible for readers not to draw the conclusion that Hobbiton was Tolkien’s idealized Britain and that Mordor was the industrialized German aggressor (ignoring, of course, Sauron’s employ of the black-skinned Haradrim).

Obviously, the late professor of Old English stole most of his theme of The Hobbit form the sixth book of Beowulf, and that to many of the ancient literary themes of heroism and chivalry he added Christian monotheism and piety. The wizards, known as Maiar, are obviously angels sent to Middle Earth to help humanity, even though they bear uncanny similarities to the Gnostic deities descended from Sophia—and this is a strange coincidence that should be explored.

Lost Among the Virtuous is easy enough to fit into the modern American landscape—especially when you see that the average folk of Middle Earth are asked where Mordor is, they can only indicate some vague, easterly direction—is this so different from your average American who, unable to place either Iraq or Afghanistan on a map, indicate the general Middle East? Al-Dojabar is very familiar with her subject, both Middle Earth and Middle American, and her writing brings the characters to life, particularly the viciousness of Lickdelash. But if he is to represent a refuge of war, then he is too over-the-top to effectively bring humanity to this work. And he is not human, after all. He is an orc. How much, then, should we expect this work to affect us as good satire should?

Likdelash seeks nothing more than to live, whereas refugees are (or at least should) be grateful to their host countries and seek to contribute to the well-being of their host society. Likdelash is selfish and not loveable; he is an old orc, set in his ways, full of bitterness towards the victors, accustomed to a world of lies and deception, and he looks with scorn on the virtuous was of those who defeated his master, Sauron.

“How can I eat this filth?” Likdelash asks of one rich human who has offered him a plate of food.

“Filth? How can you call this filth? This is the finest food from my own table, the likes of which one of your kind would never had had the opportunity to eat otherwise.”

“And will you give it to me tomorrow? Will you be here to help me every day after that? No. You expect me to think you are a good person, so that you can think you are a good person. You do this to feel good. Away with you, worm! I will not be used in this way. I am not the worm to grovel in the dust, begging for boon. You are. You want me to forgive you. This will never happen. Swine! Filth!”

“You dare?” said the man, drawing his sword.

“Dare? That is a human word, a worm’s word. Likdelash does. Likdelash calls you what you are. What can you do to me? Kill me? Kill me, yes, release me. Slave you say I was, but here I am less. Here I am ashamed. Grateful for your kindness? You destroyed me home!”

What do we make of the fact that both Al-Dojabar and Tolkien studied Old English literature? For Tolkien, a native of England, the choice is perhaps less obscure. Al-Dojabar’s scholarly work and Lost Among the Virtuous seems to be an exploration and search for the roots of American sensibilities, particularly honor.

So, Lost Among the Virtuous lacks the political savy and insight into human nature that would pull it out of the realm of the purely imaginary into the grittier realms of political commentary the author seems to have been aiming for. For example, Lickdelash is never thankful for being released from his captivity. Nor does he ever appreciate the opportunities living in the West have provided him; instead, he seems to scorn, again and again, the offers made to him by well-intentioned locals. Tolkien wanted to keep his work in the realm of pure fantasy, but failed. Al-Dojabar wants her work to comment on American society today, but fails. Fantasy, by definition, is a world in which the impossible is possible, and it is not possible for anyone in the real world to behave with such reprehensible scorn as Likdelash. Al-Dojabar asks for far too much suspension of disbelief. Her work is just escapist fantasy masked as political commentary, instead of the reverse, which would have been so much more profitable.

The novel ends with this rather odd scene: Likdelash is walking down the road, having been driven from yet another hamlet, and he is singing a tune “from his army days”: “Where’s there’s a whip, there’s a way,” he sings. I could find no mention of this lyric in any of Tolkien’s works, so its inclusion is mystifying, its message uncertain.


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Phillip Dayan* is an emeritus professor of history at the University of Galvand, and is currently teaching at Holmstock University. He edited Pen Towards the End, an anthology of essays about Shakespeare studies, and is the author of I’m My Father’s Country.






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* Al-Dojabar: Thank you so much for agreeing to the interview.

Writer: Are you kidding? No problem at all. You must have realized by now how much I love talking to people.

Al-Dojabar: So, where did you get the inspiration for this little tale?

Writer: Well, I’ve always been one to pick out little details in books or movies and wonder what would happen to them after the story is over. I got to wondering about what an orc would be feeling after Sauron’s defeat, and then you came along shortly thereafter.

Al-Dojabar: Does you're being an immigrant have anything to do with the tone of the reviewer?

Writer: Of course. And having grown up in a very white part of the United States certainly played a part as well.

Al-Dojabar: Judging from the details in the story, I would say you are quite a fan of The Lord of the Rings.

Writer: I don’t know if I’m a fan, but I first read it when I was about eleven or twelve, and I’ve read it quite often since then—maybe thirty times—and I’ve got a good memory for stories.

Al-Dojabar: You've said before that all writing is interested, that no writing is neutral, and that the writing that tries most to appear neutral is the writing by a patriarchy figthing to remain invisible. Yet you intellectualize and satirize. To me, that indicates that you are afraid of something. Of what? Are you afraid of being ignored? Or are you afraid of not being respected?

Writer: What is it to be respected? It's to stand apart, to stand above, to be recognized and envied, perhaps, to move as far as possible from shame.

Al-Dojabar: What is shame?

Writer: Being normal.

Al-Dojabar: Why is that shameful?

Writer: I don't really like people. I am not a people person. I don't like myself that much, either, but in the end, perhaps I am just afraid to rely on others?

Al-Dojabar: The question is in the answer.

Writer: Yes, yes. Others make me. This is writing. Without the reader, I am nothing.

Al-Dojabar: Why an orc?

Writer: I couldn’t stop thinking about what would happen to the orcs after Sauron’s defeat, you know. How would the victors treat them? How would they survive? I couldn’t imagine they would be thankful, and I doubted very much they would just fade into dust.

Al-Dojabar: Isn’t the orc just a metaphor for the writer?

Writer: Who do you mean?

Al-Dojabar: Well, speaking from experience, the writer wants to be independent, not only to create a work independent of the machinations of others, but to also create a work that is self-contained and doesn’t rely any more than absolutely necessary on exterior signs for meaning.

Writer: I guess you could say so.

Al-Dojabar: But the writer can never actually be independent, isn’t that so? The writer needs the reader, more than he or she would ever care to admit. In fact, isn’t it true that without the reader, the writer wouldn’t exist.

Writer: I’d hate to actually think so.

Al-Dojabar: So, you won’t admit Likdelash is a metaphor for yourself?

Writer: Well, like I said: I’d never really thought about it until you pointed out, but I guess it’s possible. Let’s say he is. Then what?

Al-Dojabar: Indeed: Then what? Thank you for the interview. It certainly has been enlightening.

Writer: If you say so. Thank you.