Good, Evil and Ethics in J.R.R. Tolkiens The Lord of the Rings Essay

Good, Evil and Ethics in J.R.R. Tolkiens The manufacturing business of the ringProfessors Comment This student was very wise not to summarize Tolkiens Lord of the Rings. The students primary intention was to describe the ethical themes that fag end be found in the keep. The first part of this essay describes Tolkiens go through on the temper of good and evil, while the second part deals with his morality of individuals. Excellent spend a pennyIntroductionThe Lord of the Rings, by J.R.R. Tolkien, has been called by nigh one of the greatest books of all date and has recently earned the hold of greatest book of the 20th century in a study by Britains Channel 4 (Ohehir). Yet at the same time scholars have often dismissed The Lord of the Rings as a visionary childrens story. While the validity of either claim can be equally well disputed, the The Lord of the Rings and related works by Tolkien nevertheless embody a very clear and consistent deal of ethical themes. These themes define good and evil in terms of nature and provide a framework on which the ethical decisions of individual characters in Tolkiens stories are based. Good and EvilGood and evil in Tolkiens work are, to put it simply, that which is natural and that which is unnatural, respectively. That is, what is left alone to follow the cycles of nature is good. both time that the cycles of nature are disrupted (such as the felling of a tone or the enslavement of a free people), there is evil. There are constant references to this in Tolkiens stories, as when Bilbo Baggins neighbors remark on his mysterious muscularity and extreme old age, It isnt natural, and trouble will come of it (21). Or when surface-to-air missile Gamgee says of the Gandalf the wizard, Dont let him turn me into anything unnat... ...ase ones decisions, it is nevertheless interesting to see how they play pop out in Tolkiens novel. If there is anything that can be said of The Lord of the Rings in general, it is that it d isplays an amazing amount of consistency in every verbalism of the tale. This consistency extends even to its ethics, a rare phenomenon in a book of fantasy/sci-fi. One may not agree with Tolkiens view of technology or fellowship, but the ideas are well thought-out and well developed in the story. They make the book worth reading whether you consider it a fanciful childrens tale as some do, or a masterpiece of its genre, as do I and many others.Works CitedOHehir, Andrew. The Book of the Century. Salon.com 4 June 2001. 29 May 2002. .Tolkien, J.R.R. The Lord of the Rings. 3 vols. Boston Houghton Mifflin Co. 1994.