Themes of The Lord of the Rings This is, according to Shippey, a very modern, 20th-century theme, since in earlier, medieval times, power was considered to "reveal character", not alter it. Shippey mentions Lord Acton's famous statement in 1887, that ""Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men..."" He then goes on to point out authors that were dealing in the same themes of power and corruption at around the same time as Tolkien wrote his work. These authors include George Orwell with "Animal Farm" (1945), William Golding with "Lord of the Flies" (1954), and T. H. White with
The Beach (novel) as "Heart of Darkness" and "Lord of the Flies", and the anonymous memoirs of an escaped Australian prisoner. Although set in Thailand, Garland wrote the book while living in the Philippines and in particular was inspired by similar geography on the island of Palawan . Novelist Nick Hornby referred to "The Beach" as "a "Lord of the Flies" for Generation X", and the "Sunday Oregonian" called it "Generation X's first great novel". "The Washington Post" wrote that it is "a furiously intelligent first novel" and "a book that moves with the kind of speed and grace many older writers can