Effect Of Power In The Lord Of The Rings

The Corrupting Effect of Power in “The Lord of the Rings” as Depicted in the Film Version

This research studies the corrupting effect of power in “The Lord of the Rings” as depicted in the film. The introduction consists of four elementary parts: background information, statement of problems, purposes of study and research questions.

Background

The Lord of the Rings written by John Ronald Reuel Tolkein, J.R.R. Tolkein, is an epic fantasy novel as a trilogy. The story of The Lord of the Rings is set in a pre-historic era in an invented version of the world which Tolkein called by the Middle English name of Middle-earth and is relevant to The Hobbit (Who was Tolkein, n.d.). According to The Hobbit, a main character, Bilbo Baggins who is a

This literature review includes a wide range of information close to this topic. The following paragraphs consist of five parts of the literature review: definition of power, power corrupt, power corrupts leaders, power and moral thinking.

Definition of Power

Many researchers defined the word ‘power’ in different meanings. They can be divided into two groups. The first group is the meaning of the word ‘Power’ in general. According to Dahl (1957), power is a relation between people which expressed in symbolic code. This relation is related to two or more persons. He also stated that if A has power over B, A can get B to do something even B does not want to do.

The second group is the definition of the word ‘power’ in negative ways. Power has another meaning in the negative way which is the word ‘Evil’. It also controls people’s behaviors, leads to defeat and ruin people (Modin, 2008; Schein and Greiner 1988, as cited in Power social and political, 2015).

Moreover, Power Corrupt (n.d.) explained that power turns people to be powerful people with bad behaviors and be men who are above the law. People might seek for power to gain their particular aims, such as higher position in

In the beginning of their careers, many of them devote their efforts to change the political system. They desire to help the poor and to eliminate corruptions. After that, when they actually get into positions of power, they become different people (Martin, 1990). Furthermore, John Antonakis, a professor of organizational behavior at the Faculty of Business and Economics of the University of Lausanne, and his colleagues inspected how power influences leaders in leadership positions. The findings revealed that leaders who were less honest had a higher possibility to reveal more corrupt behavior than those who had high standards of honesty (Antonakis, Zehnder, Pralong & Bendahan,