Amplification of Fear Within Fear is within all people. It is hard to control fear but, it is easy for fear to control people. In the novel, Lord of the Flies, by William Golding, the passage on pages 157 to 159 is meant to show fear. Throughout the book, there is a build-up to the moment of finding out if the beast is real and if so, what is it. Through diction, literary devices and structure, Golding reveals the purpose of the passage; amplification of internal terror. There are numerous ways internal terrors is shown to multiply. With Golding’s creation of caustic diction, ambiguous diction, and causal diction, the purpose is clearly presented. The fictional lord of the flies talking to Simon really has him caught off guard. When the lord …show more content…
of the flies says to Simon “This is ridiculous you know perfectly well you’ll only meet me down there - so don’t try to escape” (Golding 157), it tells the shows the reader how much this fictional fear has got the better of him and took over him. The sarcastic word choice explaining how Simon already knows his faith really shows the growth of fear just in this small section of the text. This Caustic tone is making Simon get internally scared causing him to overthink his nightmare. Another way fear swells up within Simon is in the ambitious matter. The lord of the flies is very threatening and ambitious on how he warns Simon. As the Pig head says,“I’m warning you. I’m going to get waxy. D’you see? You’re not wanted. Understand?”(158.)This Quotation s showing the ambitious and anger that Simon had inside him. He is essentially talking to himself and warning himself to act like the others. Overall, Simon is very much like the rest more than he wants to be which internally scares him. Simon’s internal fear also comes from the boys. When the lord of the flies says to Simon “You are a silly little boy said the lord of the flies. Just an ignorant, silly little boy. Simon moved his swollen tongue but said nothing”(Golding 157), it shows the causal tone and connections, Simon, talking to himself has with the boys. The causal calling Simon a silly boy is just how boys would talk to each other which scares Simon because he might think that’s how they actually feel about him. Simon fears enlarged throughout this chapter because of the different use of tones the lord of the flies. The purpose of the passage is best demonstrated through literary devices.
The use of a simile, irony and repetition best shows the expansion of internal fear. Simon’s superego takes over as he never took part in childish and impractical things previously. Therefore, talking to a pig's head it’s completely crazy and unlike him. When the author describes, “the lord of the flies was expanding like a balloon”(58.), it shows his inner terror growing and consuming him. The simile is comparing the lord of the flies to a fragile object that if expanded so much, will explode. This links back to Simon; all his internal stress is making him simile is showing the hallucinations of Simon nonetheless Simon’s id taking over making him see his evil side of him. Just like savagery took over the sanity in Jack through his lust to hunt, Simon’s fear took over his control and led him to have hallucinations. This is shown when the lord of the flies asks Simon “Fancy thinking the beast was something you could hunt and kill!”(158). The use of irony in this sentence shows how Simon’s superego is no longer in control of his own brain and his Id is currently stronger. Simon’s Id is now controlling him as the beast is not something you can kill and hunt as Golding states, it’s Simon’s internal fear. The fear throughout the book has always existed and steamed from the beast. Now finding out it’s nonexistent externally, only increases Simons’s fear as it’s been in him all along, Another way Golding shows the expansion of fear is through repetition. As Simon is not right in the head, it intensifies all his emotions. When the lord of the flies says “You knew, Didn’t you? I’m a part of you? Close, close, close, close!” (158.) This demonstrates Simon’s superego didn’t want him believing in something so childish but his id takes over. Through the novel, the boys are shown breaking down but this is the one time Simon actually loses his composure due to inner
emotions. The use of sentence structure in the passage is a very effective way to prove the purpose of the passage. Fragmented sentences, questions, and complexity help to illustrate the clear purpose of intensified fear. Simon is having an internal conflict within himself is a way his fear is intensified. This is shown when the Lord of the Flies says to Simon “-or else”(59). The fragmented sentence shows how two words can be so effective and have many meanings like threatening tones and fear. As Well, The questions in this passage also portray Golding's message across of fear. When the lord of the flies says “Understand? We are going to have fun on this Island! Understand?”(158.) The repetition of "understand" as a question is telling the reader how fearful Simon really was. His own brain is playing tricks on him and making sure he really is afraid. Finally, the complexity of Golding's writing really portrays inner fear enlarged. Simon is petrified. When described “Simon found he was looking into a vast mouth”(158). Without even dialogue, the complexity of this sentence deeply describes how far Simon is in his own Hallucinations. In Summary, the Golding’s writing styles accentuate on Simon’s growing fear. All in all, Golding’s purpose was to show Simon’s amplified internal fear. If there were no literary devices or a different style in the writing. It would have been difficult or impossible to decipher a true purpose.
Our first aspect of Fear in the novel comes into play with the Beast. This fictional character becomes the center of the boys problems on the island and brings a long chaos and death. Simon is murdered due to the befuddlement of Simon being mistaken as the beast when in fact he was the jesus like figure and his death was a representation of sacrifice. The beast was not something tangible it was simply the boys because the beast was themselves. Our biggest demons in life rest within oneself, and on the island the beast was just a justification for the boys to blame their wrong doings on. William Golding refers to this using the role of simon by stating: “Fancy thinking the Beast was something you could hunt and kill! You knew, didn’t you? I’m part of you? Close, close, close! I’m the reason why it’s no go? Why things are what they are" (158)?
Human's fears should not be taken lightly. Fear could do anything to one's minds, though without fear, man can be as savage as animals. In the book Lord of the Flies, William Golding presented fear of the unknown to be a powerful force in a man's mind. Fear of the unknown is a powerful force, which can turn to either insight or hysteria. The kids feared of not being rescued off of the island, so they made signal fires on top of the mountain. Then, there and gone, Roger's fear of the old rules he abided to. Also, there were the fears of the beast which confused and isolated the kids from the top of the mountain.
Fear is a present topic in Lord of the Flies and the acrostic, False-Evidence-Appearing-Real, directly relates to chapter 9. In Lord of the Flies, by William Golding, a group of young boys were stranded on an island. At first they incorporated the civilization that they grew up with into their lives, but as time progressed they began to accept a savage lifestyle that came with consequences. In chapter 9, while the biguns and littluns gathered in a group, chanting and dancing, Simon came down the mountain after finding out the beast was actually a dead man in a parachute. Because it was dark and Simon was unrecognizable, the boys feared him to be the beast and killed him. If the boys had not been so afraid of the beast then they would not have been prompted to kill Simon. In chapter 9 of Lord of the Flies, William Golding employs diction, repetition, and animal imagery to convey the theme that fear can cause savagery to develop in anyone.
Fear is something me can’t control, it is naturally in us which cause humans to act on their instinct. The beast in the Lord of the Flies by William Golding is represented by fear from the very beginning when the boys first ended up on the island until they were saved by the naval officer. Putting a group of English boys on an island when the last thing they can remember is enjoying their flight on the plane, would instantly cause a sense of unplanned fear. Other concepts like war and innate human evil are based of and caused by fear itself. War begins when two opposing forces fear one another’s power. For example, the constant power struggle between Ralph and Jack because of their fear of each other and what the other was capable of. Innate human evil is the natural evil inside of every human, fear can control your want to oppose to a certain person or idea. The beast in the Lord of the Flies is fear because fear is the cause and drive of the boys basic struggle for survival.
Part of Golding’s intent was to demonstrate that the evil is not recognised in specific populations or situations. On the island the beast is manifest in the deadly tribal dances, war paint and manhunt: in the outside world the same lust for power and control plays out as a nuclear war. Throughout ‘The Lord of the Flies’ Golding has managed to show that evil is present in everyone.
“The thing is – fear can’t hurt you any more than a dream” (“William Golding quotes.”). Fear lives to haunt and torment the person to a point of destruction and can be within everyone. Although a person is able to overcome fear, it is still very dangerous because it affects the person as well as everyone and everything around. In the book Lord of the Flies by William Golding, the boys are all so overwhelmed by fear that the island starts to recede into a state damaged beyond repair. In this case, Jack’s fear of not being leader originally starts to affect him, but it gradually starts to affect Ralph, and the rest of the boys. Ralph’s fear of survival brings out his inner savageness and an innocent life is taken away. Lastly, the boys’ fear of the beast causes them to feel so unsafe and uncertain that they are willing to do anything. As a result of the boys being consumed by these fears, it becomes the most destructive force on the island.
the novel the Lord of the Flies, fear is the root of the trouble that
A distressing emotion aroused by impending evil and pain, whether the threat is real or imagined is described as fear. Fear is what William Golding’s novel Lord of the Flies encompasses. By taking three major examples from the novel, fear will be considered on different levels: Simon’s having no instance of fear, Ralph’s fear of isolation on the island, and Jack’s fear of being powerless. Fear can make people behave in ways that are foreign to them, whether their fear is real or imagined. In response to fear, people may act defensively by attacking, fear can either stop one from doing something, or it can make one behave in an irrational erratic manner.
One of many prominent themes in William Golding's novel, the Lord of the Flies, is Fear. From the very first chapter, until the last, fear plays an important role in this text. It is the only thing, which stops the boys from acting rationally at times, from questioning curious circumstances and it physically hindered so many of the boys, so many times. The active role of fear in Lord of the Flies, was intentionally used by Golding, because he knew what images it would create. Fear is described by Mirriam- Webster's English dictionary, as To be uneasy or apprehensive'. This feeling is mutually experienced by all of the boys on the island in many different ways. Initially the boys have an obvious fear of being alone, which then brings upon the fear of what we know as the beast, or as the littluns refer to is, as the beastie'. While this fear continues for the whole of the novel, we are also exposed to three other incidents of fear. The first of these is the civilised fear of consequences, displayed only when the children are seen as young civilised boys, in the earliest chapters. The final two are of a different nature, with those fears being the loss of power, the fear of rejection and the fear of being in the minority. All of these different fears, then relate back to the character, and as was expertly planned out by William Golding, influences the characters attitudes and behaviours.
All of the boys but Simon are becoming the beast at that moment. In Lord of the Flies, Golding proves that fear draws out man’s inner evil and barbarism. Within the novel, Golding uses characterization of the boys and symbolism of the beast to show the gradual change from their initial civility to savagery and inhumanity. Learned civility, order and humanity become ultimately futile in the face of fear. The author teaches that without logic, fear consumes us endlessly.
One of the most important and most obvious symbols in Lord of the Flies is the object that gives the novel its name, the pig's head. Golding's description of the slaughtered animal's head on a spear is very graphic and even frightening. The pig's head is depicted as "dim-eyed, grinning faintly, blood blackening between the teeth," and the "obscene thing" is covered with a "black blob of flies" that "tickled under his nostrils" (William Golding, Lord of the Flies, New York, Putnam Publishing Group, 1954, p. 137, 138). As a result of this detailed, striking image, the reader becomes aware of the great evil and darkness represented by the Lord of the Flies, and when Simon begins to converse with the seemingly inanimate, devil-like object, the source of that wickedness is revealed. Even though the conversation may be entirely a hallucination, Simon learns that the beast, which has long since frightened the other boys on the island, is not an external force. In fact, the head of the slain pig tells him, "Fancy thinking the beast was something you could hunt and kill! Ö You knew, didn't you? I'm part of you?" (p. 143). That is to say, the evil, epitomized by the pig's head, that is causing the boys' island society to decline is that which is inherently present within man. At the end of this scene, the immense evil represented by this powerful symbol can once again be seen as Simon faints after looking into the wide mouth of the pig and seeing "blackness within, a blackness that spread" (p. 144).
Golding drives the point that the instinctual evil within man is inescapable. At one point in the book, when the Lord of the Flies is representing all evil, this theory is stated as, "The Lord of the Flies was expanding like a balloon" (Golding 130). Along with this idea is the religious symbolism that is used for ineffectively confronting the evil. At a point in the book, Golding has Simon, symbolic of Jesus Christ, confront the Lord of the Flies. This is a pig's head on a stick that is imagined to talk and represent the evil in all humans. Simon tries to act and spread the knowledge of this evil to others but is killed. This is a direct reference to the death of Christ, alluding to the Holy Bible.
Man’s inhumanity to man literally means human’s cruelty towards other humans. This is a major theme of the story and is seen throughout it. Golding himself even states that “man produces evil as a bee produces honey.” A review of the book states how Golding portrays this “because the boys are suffering from the terrible disease of being human.” Piggy, Ralph, and Simon are the “rational good of mankind” portrayed in the book, and Jack and his hunters are the “evil savagery of mankind.” “The beast” is a symbol for the evil in all humans, and Simon and Piggy, or rationality, are almost helpless in his presence. Simon, though, in a book filled with evil, is a symbol of vision and salvation. He is the one to see the evil as it truly exists, in the hearts of all humanity. When he tries to tell the others of this truth, however, he is killed, much like Christ was trying to bring salvation to the ignorant. Simon being there gives us hope; the truth is available to those who seek it. In the book, Jack and his hunters become so evil that they end up killing two boys while on the island. Man’s tendencies towards evil in The Lord of the Flies are also compared to the book of Genesis in the Bible. Nature, beauty, and childhood can all be corrupted by the darkness within humankind. The ending of this truly dark and evil story tells readers how Golding feels about evil within society and where he thinks humanity is headed. Evil will triumph over the intellect and good, unless some force intercedes. In th...
“There is nothing to fear but fear itself” (Roosevelt). “Fear is a chain reaction in the brain that starts with a stressful stimulus and ends with the release of chemicals that cause a racing heart, fast breathing and energized muscles, among other things, also known as the fight-or-flight response” (Layton). Fear affects the brain and can help people or make them in a worse situation than they were in the first place. Fear most motivates/influences people during times of crisis by clouding judgement and becoming a weapon of power.
In William Golding’s Lord of the Flies, the beast gives the children a sense of fear throughout the story. It also shows that it is one of the children's top priorities, as they hunt for it and try to protect themselves from it. The children use the beast to work together, but as the novel progresses the group goes through a separation. The beast is an important role in the novel, having many forms of concepts about it. In the novel Lord of the Flies by William Golding, the concept of the beast as a whole is used as fear, reality, and evil.