First, this is much too brief — I can’t tell anything about your paper.
Also, your topic is all over the map — the discussion of Christian virtues is extraneous to your subject.
You do not seem to have your ideas at all organized — A sentence such as “A big part of my paper will be on evil as sins such as temptation are of evil” simply has no meaning. If you want to do a paper on Tolkien’s depiction of evil in LOTR (there is a good discussion of this in the chapter in Shippey assigned for this week) that is enough topic for one paper!
This is to be a research paper and a large part of it should deal with what scholars have said about your topic. You make no mention of this in your outline Lydia Fish October 30, 2008, at 12:04 PM
Christianity in The Lord of the Rings
J.R.R. Tolkien was a Catholic throughout his life. He held many accomplishments such as poet, English writer, professor at Oxford teaching Anglo-Saxon, creator of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, influencer of many other fantastic novels, veteran of World War I, philologist, and husband. Not to mention, he was friends with C.S. Lewis. (Maybe a little more background information about Tolkien and his religious views). Some people would disagree, but many people are sure that at least two major factors were influences in Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings: World War I and Catholicism. There is evidence of both. Through the discreet use of Christianity and war in his trilogy, Tolkien definitely shows us his view on many things in the world. I will explore the Catholicism throughout The Lord of the Rings in this paper. Here I will list the major points that I will be covering in this paper.
Evil: —A big part of my paper will be on evil. Temptation is a big part of the story and that is evil.
-Sauron and Lucifer are alike: they both try to enslave and rule creatures
-Sauron is the evil behind the ring (the ring is not evil in itself) because he created it in his quest for world domination
-The three evil things that lead to the destruction of Sauron
-Temptation
-Sauron and God are opposites: you usually hear the word of God, but Sauron’s presence is a huge eye for seeing
-Frodo is a character that is used to represent a creature that falls to temptation
The Call
-Why did the ring come to Frodo?
-The call of the ring is similar to the call to follow Christ
Characters that are portrayed as religious figures
-Sauron as Lucifer
-Gandalf as God
-Tom Bombadil as divine
-Aragorn as Christ
-The Undying Lands as eternal life with Christ
-Frodo as a servant to Jesus
Conclusion —A recap of the main points in my essay
