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All great fiction shows us something about ourselves. It sheds light on facets of human nature that we never noticed, or at least never recognized for what they were, until we saw them illuminated in literature.
That’s just as true for fantasy and science fiction as it is for the most serious and grounded dramas. Whether it’s set in a magical alternate past or in a space-faring future, any work of fiction that survives the test of time does so because it has archetypes that stick with us. There are two in particular that come up over and over again.
Recurring archetypes
On one hand, there are the elves. They’re graceful, beautiful, magical, longer-lived and wiser than humans. They live in harmony with nature, and everything they create is as perfect as they are. They embody everything we wish we could be, even if we sometimes hate them for their arrogance and their sense of superiority.
This original depiction of elves, which J.R.R. Tolkien deserves most of the credit for creating, has become a trope that’s endlessly replicated by other fantasy and sci-fi works. Whether it’s Dungeons & Dragons, the Vulcans from Star Trek, or the Na’vi from Avatar, you see elven or elf-like races all over the place.
On the other hand, there are the orcs. They’re brutish, fierce, tough and muscular. They’re often ugly, deformed or possess animalistic features like tusks or claws. They have a warrior culture based on cruelty and violence, where “might makes right” is the only law. They care nothing for nature, if they don’t actively despise it. Like locusts, they despoil and destroy wherever they go and leave wastelands behind.
Again, this is a trope that Tolkien largely invented but other creators have reused and reinvented countless times. Some stories follow Tolkien’s lead in depicting orcs as disposable henchmen or mindless slaves, while others, like the Warcraft video games, portray them as a once-proud race that’s fallen on hard times.
There are other fantasy races, like dwarves or fairies or trolls, that appear across different fictional worlds. But it’s elves and orcs that seem to be the most enduring and the most popular.
Why do these two races, in particular, have so much power to capture our imaginations? I’d argue that it’s because both of them embody traits we recognize in ourselves—both for better and for worse.
Elves are what we aspire to be. Orcs are what we fear we are.
Yin and yang
Like yin and yang, the classic depiction of elves and orcs reflect opposite aspects of human nature. Elves create, orcs destroy. Elves revere nature and love beauty, while orcs are contemptuous of both. Elves think in the very long term, while orcs care only about immediate needs and wants.
We’re neither elves nor orcs, but we have characteristics of both. Like Jekyll and Hyde, these fictional races represent the opposing faces of humanity drawn out and given separate form. If you read the headlines, you can see how these conflicting impulses tug us back and forth.
For example, although no one enjoys being at war with the threat of death constantly hanging overhead, anyone who studies history could be forgiven for getting the opposite impression. Our record as a species is a melee of bloodshed, invasion and conquest. Horrendous wars have started for the most trivial of motives, and sometimes for no discernible reason at all.
And we haven’t yet outgrown our violent past. It’s no coincidence that Ukrainian defenders refer to Russian invaders as “orcs”. It draws on everything that fiction says about brutish, barbarian hordes who come only to kill and destroy.
It’s not just in war that the orcish mentality manifests. When fascist strongmen threaten democracy, arguing that they deserve to rule because they’re tougher and more vicious than their rivals, or when legislators pass extravagantly cruel laws aimed at immigrants, minorities and the downtrodden—that’s orcish thinking in action. It’s the mentality that treats raw strength as the only virtue and cruelty as a positive.
When we see ocean gyres choked with plastic and city streets buried in garbage; when forests are cut down to make cardboard Amazon boxes and disposable fast-food packaging; when investors demand ruinous layoffs just to bump up next month’s dividends—that too comes from our orcish side. It’s the wasteful, heedless, short-term mentality that does things just because we have the power to do them, and cares nothing about long-term consequences.
Thinking like an elf
But it’s not all bad. We have our elvish side too.
Elves, unlike orcs, aspire to higher things. When we imagine a solarpunk future, powered by clean energy from sun and wind, where people live peacefully in eco-cities blossoming with trees—that’s thinking like an elf. It’s born of respect and love for nature, and the wish to live in harmony with the world rather than to subdue it and extract from it.
When we make wise decisions that protect the future, steered by the knowledge that our children and grandchildren will have to live with our choices—that’s the long-term outlook of elves. We do this when we protect endangered species and ecosystems, when we choose lives of simplicity and less consumption, when we plant trees for the sake of the people who’ll enjoy their shade far in the future.
When we create beauty purely for its own sake, that’s characteristically elvish. When we make art and music just for enjoyment; when we cultivate gardens and parks; when we want to fill the world with beautiful things, for no better reason than that it lifts our hearts to gaze upon it—that, too, is elvish philosophy.
We have it in us to be better, just as we have it in us to be worse. Instead of the old folk saying about the “two wolves” inside each of us, I prefer to think of an elf and an orc battling it out.
But it’s not a battle of arms or a contest of force. It is—it ought to be—a contest of imagination. It’s a question of whose idea of the world, of the future, is more appealing.
A contest of imagination
The orc mentality appeals to the part of us that craves instant gratification, that wants to live for today and forget about tomorrow. It appeals to the brutish impatience and self-righteousness that wants to rule by force, rather than the slow and difficult work of persuasion and consensus-building. But if we all think like this, in the long term, we’ll end up with a world that’s desolate, ruined, and unlivable.
The elves’ way, as befits a long-lived species, is slower. It requires more patience, more foresight, more imagination. It’s also more difficult, because building something is harder than tearing it down. But the rewards are infinitely greater.
The biggest factor in the elves’ favor is that nobody wants to live like orcs. If you go by most fiction, even orcs don’t want to live like orcs. They, too, long for a life free from the ravages of war. They fight not because they enjoy it, but because it’s all they know. Most of them can’t imagine anything different, or at least, they can imagine it only in fleeting fantasies that lack the power to alter their behavior.
If we want to win this battle, it can’t be done with violence. Instead, we have to supply the imagination they’re missing. We have to paint an appealing image of the future, one that people will want to live in. We need optimism, and beauty, and the fellowship of people coming together to build a better world for everyone. If we do this well enough, the orcish side of our nature will quiet down, and the elvish side will flourish.