So, Lord of the Rings. Who hasn’t heard of Lord of the Rings? In fact, I dare you to name one source of media that Lord of the Rings hasn’t been on. Television, movies, books, and now an essay written by one Kathleen E. Gilligan who studies English at Rutgers University in Camden, New Jersey. This essay looks at the Lord of the Rings trilogy, by John Ronald Reuel Tolkien, through the eyes of a religious scholar by connecting some of the main characters, points and objects of the trilogy to things that are written in the Holy Bible. Gilligan’s reason in writing this essay seems to be that she wants to explain a different way to look at the movies or books to the super-fans of the trilogy (you know, the ones that buy the games and go to the comic-on dressed like Frodo or Sam). Although Gilligan does not seem to center on one audience alone, she does address both the people who are interested in the book by itself and the people who are interested in what possible religious phenomenon that Tolkien (unknowingly?) put into his trilogy. Luckily for us, Gilligan agrees with herself on the subject of her essay. The Lord of the Rings does seem to follow a path of temptation and resolution. It is a subject her readers would appreciate because it deals with how the characters in Tolkien’s trilogy react to the temptation of the ring and if they give in to it or not. Gilligan choses to sight both work of Tolkien and the Bible, that people understand and have heard of before. Her choices are a great support for her claim/thesis that “In The Lord of the Rings, and the first volume—The Fellowship of the Ring—in particular, Tolkien argues for a religious reading by showing that the struggle for the characters to fight the temptation of the Ring is a direct reflection of the temptation faced by those in The Bible.” Also, with said resources, Gilligan organizes her thoughts in a neat fashion. Each paragraph has a purpose, with the resources mixed in with each other (not a whole bunch of mish-mosh throughout the paragraph). There is only one point in the essay where Gilligan brings in a resource seemingly out of the blue, a dictionary reference. The reference itself fits with what Gilligan is talking about in her essay, but the dictionary was not. She would have gotten a better reaction from her audience if she had used a commonly used dictionary like the Webster’s Dictionary. In addition to her resources impacting the readers, her use of formal diction and personification/similes connecting things from Lord of the Rings to what is described in the bible. On numerous occasions thought her essay she brings up the “ring” gives it direct quality of being tempting on a grand scale. Gilligan does not really establish herself as an acceptable authority in the subject because she gives the authority to the authors/tellers of her resources. In looking at Kathleen E. Gilligan’s essay has taught me some new things about this this kind of writing style. I learned that you can take any day sample of literature and make a great example of it.
