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Analytical essay of lord of the flies
Analytical essay of lord of the flies
Ethical dilemma in Lord of the Flies
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Lord of the Flies:
Man’s Capacity for Evil
William Golding’s Lord of the Flies portrays the lives of young British boys whose plane crashed on a deserted island and their struggle for survival. The task of survival was challenging for such young boys, while maintaining the civilized orders and humanity they were so accustomed too. These extremely difficult circumstances and the need for survival turned these innocent boys into the most primitive and savaged mankind could imagine. William Golding illustrates man’s capacity for evil, which is revealed in man’s inherent nature. Golding uses characterization, symbolism and style of writing to show man’s inhumanity and evil towards one another.
Ralph is the novel’s protagonist and tries to maintain the sense of civility and order as the boys run wild. Ralph represents the good in mankind by treating and caring for all equally, which is completely opposite of Jack’s savage nature. Jack is the antagonist in the novel and provokes the most internal evil of all the boys. Jack is seen at first as a great and innocent leader but he becomes t...
Although the main protagonist and antagonist of the novel can be seen as “Ralph and Jack”, the other boys play a significant role in the novel, as well.
In the novel, Lord of the Flies, William Golding writes about a group of boys stranded on an uninhabited island during the time of World War II. He uses many symbols to show how we all can resort to savagery. Shown through the natural instincts of the boys and the turn of events on the island, Golding uses a psychological allegory to illustrate the savagery built into human nature.
On the dystopian island of Lord of the Flies, authored by William Golding, one can observe the boy's’ descent into madness. When a group of young children were abandoned on an island without adult supervision, chaos rampaged. This loss civility is most clearly demonstrated by Jack and his effect on others. The text illustrates how quickly he succumbed to the savagery, the way his thirst for power and his dire situation brought him to barbarity, and how the boys followed suit, losing all their humanity.
William Golding’s novel ‘The Lord of The flies’ presents us with a group of English boys who are isolated on a desert island, left to try and retain a civilised society. In this novel Golding manages to display the boys slow descent into savagery as democracy on the island diminishes.
In the lord of the flies novel written by William Golding the characters are faced with several obstacles that leads them to have unfathomable ramifications. Atrocious acts of cruelty are shown in the novel that transpire out of fear and anarchy within the main characters. Acts of cruelty are vital to this novel because they function as a political factor in which the characters seek to have a well established form of society. In addition, these acts of cruelty reveals several things about the victims and the perpetrator.
Ralph in this novel is presented to be a fair boy with a respectable figure and a charismatic personality (Golding 6). Jack on the other hand is characterized with an inferior description: “he was tall, thin, and bony; and his hair was red beneath the black cap. His face was crumpled and freckled, and ugly without silliness” (Golding 20). As the novel progresses an enmity develops between the two characters over the subject of power and then towards the end, Jack finally resolves to kill Ralph (Golding 265). By inferring that this plot contains an allusion to the bible, the characterization of Ralph as a protagonist like Abel and Jack as an antagonist like Cain is created and the dangerous capabilities of humans as a result of sin is called to
By the end of his lifetime, Golding was widely recognized for his book, with millions reading his book all over the world. Bringing a new meaning to the definition and ideals behind savagery, Golding’s Lord of the Flies brings a new light to the instinctual primitiveness of humankind. The parallels in Golding’s own life and his book allow the reader to have a new understanding of Golding and how he relates to the book. Golding’s many life experiences gave him the knowledge he needed to be able to relate to fictional children as an adult. At the beginning of his career, Golding had no steady job; in fact, once he graduated from college after switching his degree from science to English, he had already considered being an actor, a poet, or a pianist as a career (Dirda 2).
William Golding’s Lord of the Flies tells the story of a group of young british schoolboys who must learn to survive together when their plane crashes onto a deserted island. At the beginning of the book, the boys are young and childish, and some believe that their stay on the island is just a game. However, as the novel progresses and the boys decide to act violently, their personalities turn from young and innocent to brutal and vicious. They lose all sense of their innocent childhoods and their innocuous personalities deteriorate. Golding shows how loss of innocence occurs when young boys have to act like grownups, causing them to act rashly and violently, hurting those around them.
Ralph is one of the few boys who realize that the only way to survive is through peace and order. Because he summons the boys at the beginning of the novel with the conch he and Piggy find, they look upon him as the most responsible of the boys and elect him as a chief over the humiliated Jack. Ralph creates a stable and peaceful society for the children to live; this significantly bothers Jack because he wants to have fun and do things that he never did back in the civilized society. Jack is eventually successful of pulling nearly all of the children out of Ralph’s control to form savages. Ralph represents the civilization, and Jack represents the primitive society.
Over millions of years, man has transformed from a savage, simple creature to a highly developed, complex, and civil being. In Lord of the Flies, the author William Golding shows how under certain circumstances, man can become savage. During nuclear war, a group of British schoolboys crash land on an uninhabited island to escape. Ralph the elected leader, along with Piggy and Simon, tries to maintain civilization, while Jack and his group of choir boys turned hunters slowly become savages obsessed with killing. Through characters’ action and dialogue, Golding illustrates the transformation of civil schoolboys into bloodthirsty savages.
The Lord of the Flies by William Golding is tale of a group of young boys who become stranded on a deserted island after their plane crashes. Intertwined in this classic novel are many themes, most that relate to the inherent evil that exists in all human beings and the malicious nature of mankind. In The Lord of the Flies, Golding shows the boys' gradual transformation from being civilized, well-mannered people to savage, ritualistic beasts.
This paper will explore the three elements of innate evil within William Golding's, Lord of the Flies, the change from civilization to savagery, the beast, and the battle on the island. Golding represents evil through his character's, their actions, and symbolism. The island becomes the biggest representation of evil because it's where the entire novel takes place. The change from civilization to savagery is another representation of how easily people can change from good to evil under unusual circumstances. Golding also explores the evil within all humans though the beast, because it's their only chance for survival and survival instinct takes over. In doing so, this paper will prove that Lord of the Flies exemplifies the innate evil that exists within all humans.
When viewing the atrocities of today's world on television, the starving children, the wars, the injustices, one cannot help but think that evil is rampant in this day and age. However, people in society must be aware that evil is not an external force embodied in a society but resides within each person. Man has both good qualities and faults. He must come to control these faults in order to be a good person. In the novel Lord of the Flies, William Golding deals with this same evil which exists in all of his characters. With his mastery of such literary tools as structure, syntax, diction and imagery, The author creates a cheerless, sardonic tone to convey his own views of the nature of man and man’s role within society.
The novel Lord of the Flies by William Golding used a group of British boys beached on a deserted island to illustrate the malicious nature in mankind. Lord of the Flies dealt with the changes the boys underwent as they gradually adapted to the freedom from their society. William Golding's basic philosophy that man was inherently evil was expressed in such instances as the death of Simon, the beast within the boys, and the way Ralph was fervently hunted.
William Golding's first book, Lord of the Flies, is the story of a group of boys of different backgrounds who are marooned on an unknown island when their plane crashes. As the boys try to organize and formulate a plan to get rescued, they begin to separate and as a result of the dissension a band of savage tribal hunters is formed. Eventually the "stranded boys in Lord of the Flies almost entirely shake off civilized behavior: (Riley 1: 119). When the confusion finally leads to a manhunt [for Ralph], the reader realizes that despite the strong sense of British character and civility that has been instilled in the youth throughout their lives, the boys have backpedaled and shown the underlying savage side existent in all humans. "Golding senses that institutions and order imposed from without are temporary, but man's irrationality and urge for destruction are enduring" (Riley 1: 119). The novel shows the reader how easy it is to revert back to the evil nature inherent in man. If a group of well-conditioned school boys can ultimately wind up committing various extreme travesties, one can imagine what adults, leaders of society, are capable of doing under the pressures of trying to maintain world relations.