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
Lord of the Flies (The X-Files) co-star Robert Patrick had a difficult time with the episode; he later explained, "I couldn't deal with some of the material. As an actor, I found some of it to be a little silly." Accordingly, Manners helped Patrick traverse the script, helping him achieve the desired delivery for his lines. The aggressiveness of flies in the episode was inspired by the actual habits of Australian blow flies. A few of the flies on the dead body of "Cap'n Dare" were real, but the rest were created via CGI, according to special effects supervisors John Wash. Conversely, when filming the scene