The story Lord of the Flies by William Goulding and A Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood both give the reader a harsh lesson on reality and how it relates to one’s dignity and authority. The value and relevance of these two books counteract each other to represent a broad range of perspectives when it comes to power and fear. Such events that occur in both stories resemble true power and authority. The characters in Lord of the Flies are young boys who are stuck on a stranded island and do not know what to do. But two boys, Ralph and Piggy, discover a conch shell on the beach, and Piggy realizes it could be used as a horn to summon/control the other boys. Once assembled, the boys agreed to elect a leader and devise a way to be Handmaids are assigned to bear children for couples of the elite class that have problems conceiving. Though Offred is not her real name, since it was given by the commander and the handmaid of a certain person, in this case, commander Fred. Offred makes the Commander seem as if he is somebody he’s not, “He was not a monster, to her. Probably he had some endearing trait: he whistled, offkey, in the shower, he had a yen for truffles, he called his dog Liebchen and made it sit up for little pieces of raw steak. How easy it is to invent a humanity, for anyone at all. What an available temptation” (Atwood, 145-6). This quote explains the moment when Offred remembers watching a documentary about a woman who was the mistress of a guard at a concentration camp. She recalls how the woman insisted that her lover was not a “monster” and compares the woman’s situation to her own, as she spends her evenings with the Commander. In this case, the commander represents the one with all of the The commander in this case, impregnates Offred. But he was married to Serena Joy, yet uses Offred to try and bare a child, being unable herself to conceive. When Serena learns that Offred has been conducting an emotional affair with the Commander, after finding lipstick stains on her blue shawl, of which Offred had worn as a disguise when she visited Jezebel's with the Commander. While stranded on the island, the young boys agreed to separate and have their leader, which was Ralph. The biguns and littluns all believed the pig head was considered as the “Lord of the Flies” since there were flies buzzing around it. Ralph insists that he’s the leader and he should be called the Lord of the Flies and that everyone does what he says. These two cases are similar in empowering another for their own
Authority plays a vital role in the modern world through contrasting forms of government and the struggle for power between leaders. The leader of a society asserts power over its citizens with the aim to create the laws, which hold the society together. Once authority is demolished within a community, the power spreads to its citizens in which total chaos collectively overtakes the society. The process of law-making and a struggle for power takes precedence in William Golding’s allegorical novel, Lord of the Flies, through the conch shell found upon the shore. The conch grants superiority to one member of the group over the others, it is used to call assemblies and assists in choosing the speakers during important meetings. When the conch
For all their differences the Lord of the Flies and Simon have one singular trait in common; they both know what the pig’s head really means for the boys on the island. At first glance, the Lord of the Flies is just a pig’s head on a stick, however it is so much more than that. The moment Jack and his hunter’s kill that pig, a part of them is lost forever and this lost part is their moral sense of right and wrong (149).
Civilization struggling for power against savagery was shown throughout Lord of the Flies. These opposite mindsets are shown battling while determining who had the right to speak during assemblies, when the group hunted pigs, throughout the struggle over Piggy’s glasses, and finally with Simon’s death. These polar opposites are shown throughout these examples and reveal the desperation of clinging to civilization while savagery took over the actions of the some of the boys in Lord of the Flies.
William Golding’s novel. Lord of the Flies, is an exceptional novel focusing on the difficulty of effectively running a civilization, society, and government. In the midst of evacuating Britain due to a rampant war, a plane carrying schoolboys was shot down and crashed on a deserted island. After gathering all the boys up, the boys realized they are alone, without adults or supervision, and assume responsibility of their own caretakers. The boys establish a hierarchy and democratically vote Ralph to be their leader against his counterpart Jack. Ralph appoints Jack to be in charge of the choirboys, which Jack decides their purpose will be to serve as hunters. Things start off presumable well until Ralph and Jack begin to clash ideas. Ralph’s main focus is getting off the island and getting rescued. When Ralph realizes that focus is not Jack’s main goal, he becomes infuriated. Instead of lighting a fire that could have been seen by a nearby passing boat, Jack’s focus was ritualistically hunting a wild pig. The situation and clash of ideas lead to major polarization and eventually, separation, in the group.
Offred is one of the Handmaid’s in the Republic of Gilead. This used to be known as the United States of America but now it is Gilead, a theocratic state. Because of an issue that occurred, women lost all of their money and rights. Handmaid’s were then assigned to higher class couples that were unable to have children, that was the new job for the Handmaid’s. Offred was assigned to the Commander and Serena Joy, his wife. Offred was once married to a man named Luke and they had a baby girl together. When this issue started occurring and Offred lost her rights, her, Luke and their daughter tried to escape to Canada but were caught. Offred has not seen Luke or her daughter since that incident. In Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, the most unorthodox characters are Offred, Serena Joy, and The Commander.
Offred, among other women depicted in this novel, tries to overcome this dominion. In her own way, she attempts to do this by ensuring the Commander’s expectations of her behavior which could result in her freedom. Thus, there is a present power struggle between the Commander and Offred throughout The Handmaid’s
Throughout the novel Lord of the Flies, William Golding is able to touch on the many aspects of our civilization through the various characters he creates. Leadership plays a very important role in the novel as it does in real life because the characters need to feel some sense of security in order for them to survive. The two main leaders in the story, through their similar and different leadership characteristics and objectives fight back and forth to gain the discipline of the other boys on the island and generally the power to make the decisions that they feel should be made. Both leaders, Jack and Ralph, experience leading the group in their own style, which is similar in their desire for control yet different pertaining to their leadership qualities and their objectives while on the island.
To deal with the desolation that he feels, he illegally seeks out to meet with Offred, his handmaid. They make “ an arrangement. It’s not the first such arrangement in history, though the shape it’s taken is not the usual one”(Attwood 154). The Commander puts their lives immediately in danger after the first time he asks Offred to join him in his room. She is not the first handmaid that the Commander has outreached to, and she soon realizes why his previous handmaid hung herself. He justifies his illegal desires with an excuse that he simply wants Offred’s life more bearable to her. She realizes that “the Commander exists in a different realm altogether (a realm of duty, obligation; a realm in which love does not exist)” and does not realize how miserable Offred really is (Miner 154). He does not offer her love in return for everything that she has lost, but he does allow her small physical freedoms like reading and lotion. The things that Offred wants, seem ridiculous to the Commander which “wasn’t the first time he gave evidence of being truly ignorant of the real conditions” that handmaids live under (Attwood 159). What he does not want to admit is that he needs Offred’s company as much as she needs his. The Commander uses Offred as someone to relax
Incarnation, this shows Offred’s opinion on not only herself but her mother. I think the reason why Offred tolerates being a Handmaid is because she does not want to be like her
In The Handmaid’s Tale there are three types of women: handmaids (the breeders), wives (the trophies), and the marthas (servants.) The narrator of the novel is Offred, who is a handmaid. Handmaids are women with viable ovaries. Every two years, handmaids are assigned to a commander; the leader of the household. Weekly, the handmaid and Commander try and conceive a
William Golding’s Lord of the Flies exemplifies man’s capacity to unveil his innate primal nature when there is a breakdown of social order and a thirst for power. The characters of his novel portray the monstrosity of evil which dwells within human beings. For instance, Kunwar’s analytical essay about Golding’s novel states, “Though the young kids are in a place which is far from corruption, a place with no outside infl...
The main character in the book is Offred, one of these unfortunate servants whose only right to exist depends on her ovaries’ productivity. She lives with the Commander and his wife in a highly supervised centre.
Offred is one of the main characters in The Handmaid's Tale. She was the faithful wife of Luke, mother of an eleven month old child and a working woman, before she entered the Republic of Gilead. She was given the name "Offred", when she entered Gilead. This was to make it known that she was a handmaid. Offred becomes psychologically programmed in Gilead as a handmaid, and the mistress of the commander who is in power of all things. She was used for her ovaries to reproduce a child, because they are living in an age where birth rates are declining. Offred was ordered by Serena Joy, the handmaid's barren wife who develops some jealousy and envy towards her to become the lover of Nick. Nick is the family chauffeur, and Offred becomes deeply in love with him. At the end of all the confusion, mixed emotions, jealousy, envy and chaos towards her, she escapes the Republic of Gilead. Offred is given treatment and advantages by the commander that none of the there handmaids are given. During the times the commander and Offred were seeing each other secretly, he began to develop some feelings for her that he tried to hide. Somewhere along the times when Offred and the commander began having secret meetings with each other, Offred too began to develop some feelings for the commander. Offred is also a special handmaid, because she has actually experienced love, the satisfaction of having a child years before. She knows what it is to feel loved, to be in love and to have someone love you. That is all when she has knowledge, a job, a family and money of her own. That is when her life was complete. Because all of that has been taken away from...
The central character in Lord of the Flies are Jack, a boy that emphasizes acquiring food and hunting; Ralph who tries to live in civilization while they carry out the goal of rescuing; Piggy the idealist on the Island who eternally agrees with Ralph’s ideas and last is Simon, the symbol of purity and nature. In this arrangement of boys, Jack makes up himself the chief even though part of the boys do not agree with his ideas. At the onset of the novel, everything is going well but finish quickly when they loss the opportunity of rescue caused by Jack’s hunting obsession. Behind this event the re...
As The Handmaid’s Tale is considered an allegory of the social injustice women face against traditional expectations of their role in society, the symbolism of the Handmaids and other women as a whole for repressed feminine liberty and sexuality allows Atwood to connect her work to the theme between gender and expectations in her society. As Handmaids in the Republic of Gilead, females are stripped of their previous identity and are defined as a tool of reproduction for the men who is assigned them. At its core, these females are forced against their will to be mere tools, experiencing unwanted sex at least once a month, which Gilead names “The Ceremony”, hiding its true nature as a form of rape. Offred