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Compare and contrast civilization and savagery
Lord of the flies thesis civilization vs savagery
Compare and contrast civilization and savagery
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The poem “The Man in the Dead Machine” and the novel Lord of the Flies are quite parallel one being how they echo the similar concept of civilization versuse savagery. Both pieces were written in and around World War Two, showing what life was like during the war and how it affect people. Both depict a similar scenario of civilization versuse savagery and our personal fights with inner battles.
Both the poem and the novel have a similar image throughout both pieces. Whether it's the pilots struggle with PTSD in the poem, or the boys fight with civilization versus savagery, both situations paint a scene of dealing with something hard in life and how it affects you. In the poem “The Man in the Dead Machine”, the pilot when he crashes on the island, is trapped in his seat. The seat
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If he were to escape his seat and not die, he would go crazy on the presumed island all by himself. It's a mirror image to the boys situation on the island and how these select boys did escape and now live on the island. The boys have lost their civilization and have turned into savages. Whereas the pilot from the poem was held back in the seat depicted in the second stanza. The leather is cracked, so we know he battled with his seatbelt to be free, so that he could survive. But he was held in place, to hold him back from any savagery that may come from being alone “High on a slope in New Guinea” “where no one has ever been”, and from how the Author describes the scene, he would be the only one there. The second stanza in the poem is an opposite image of the boys, where they do get out of the plane, but it does them no good. As if staying in the plane and dying there would have been better. Because, now the boys have turned savage, many have no hope for rescue anymore, it’s just a battle day to day to survive. The boys, like how the pilot fought his seatbelt for escape, fought each other for civilness versus savagery. The pilot lost his battle and stayed civil
The title of the short story, “First Flight” by W. D. Valgardson, may indicate that someone is attempting to escape an undesirable situation. However, this flight attempt may not go as planned and actually worsen the situation that this individual is facing.
“I had been born into a raging ocean where I swam relentlessly, flailing my arms in hope of rescue, of reaching a shoreline I never sighted. Never solid ground beneath me, never a resting place. I had lived with only the desperate hope to stay afloat; that and nothing more. But when at last I wrote my first words in the page, I felt an island rising beneath my feet like the back of a whale”.
...He is still anchored to his past and transmits the message that one makes their own choices and should be satisfied with their lives. Moreover, the story shows that one should not be extremely rigid and refuse to change their beliefs and that people should be willing to adapt to new customs in order to prevent isolation. Lastly, reader is able to understand that sacrifice is an important part of life and that nothing can be achieved without it. Boats are often used as symbols to represent a journey through life, and like a captain of a boat which is setting sail, the narrator feels that his journey is only just beginning and realizes that everyone is in charge of their own life. Despite the wind that can sometimes blow feverishly and the waves that may slow the journey, the boat should not change its course and is ultimately responsible for completing its voyage.
The author begins the poem with the phrase "From my mother's sleep I fell into the State"(1). This I believe refers to the reflection of the gunner's likeliness to his mother's womb, being crowded in the ball of the plane. The "State" refers to the pilot being drafted into the military. The government drafted most men during this time period and in this poem I think that the speaker was drafted. Like most men, he probably felt it was his duty and honor to serve his country. The author in reference to the second line "And I hunched in its belly till my wet fur froze" (2) might refer to fur around the neck of the pilot to keep him warm from the freezing winds of the sky when hunched down in the ball of the plane. When the author writes "Six miles from earth" (3), I imagine the pilot dropping the plane down from the sky very quickly to hit his target below. I can see the speaker hanging from his little ball not bound by the aspirations that others seek in life, which would be what he is referring to when he says, "loosed from its dream of life" (3). Another thought or interpretation from this line might be that the speaker feels he is not responsible for the lives he is about to destroy on the ground. The following line the
Many important minor themes can come to mind about William Golding's Lord of the Flies, such as hostility, youth, curiousness, innocence, emptiness, primitivity, and meanness. Though this may be true, there is only one major theme of this story: civilization vs. savagery. Throughout the book, these boys battle themselves (and each other) about whether they should act civilized or primitive. Stephen Dobyn’s Bleeder is about a boy who fights the demons within himself who want to harm the handicapped boy at the camp he is counseling at. This, too can have the theme of civilization vs. savagery because of the fact that he has to refrain from being hostile and act normal. These two works of literature shares many of the same and/or similar themes.
I think from the attitude of the diver, he was suicidal. As he dove into the sea, he does so at a high speed and with reckless abandon, taking to account all the details of everything he sees as he plunged deeper into the sea. “swiftly descended/free falling, weightless”. He was doing all he could to forget about life as he descends “…. Lost images/fadingly remembered.” Initially in his descent into the ocean, the diver, having decided to end his life, treated the images in the sea as if they would be the last things he will see before his death, so I think he thought it best to savor his last moments while he had the time. When he got to the ship, he described all that was there. While I read the poem, I couldn’t help but conjure those images in my mind. The ship was very quiet and cold when he entered it but the silence drew him in and he was eager to go in, not minding the cold because at that moment he was suicidal and didn’t care about life. With the help of a flashlight, he saw chairs moving slowly and he labeled the movement as a “sad slow dance”. From this, I think the speaker is trying to point out that there are sad memories on the ship. There is no story of how the ship got to the bottom of the sea, but it seems the ship used to be a place of fun, celebration, and happiness. Now that it is wrecked and in the bottom of the sea, the
The speaker is addressing Knievel directly and begins the first sentence by sympathizing with him and uses imagery to communicate Knievel’s attempts as failures. Even if the reader did not know Evel Knievel the image of a “malfunctioning parachute” witnessed by bystanders can lead to the conclusion that Knievel provided some kind of spectator entertainment and allows the reader to feel not only sympathy, but empathy. Everyone can relate to some kind of public shortcoming or embarrassment. However before this compassionate tone takes over the entire poem, the speak...
When placed on a deserted island, a group of strangers banded together to try to survive. They decided on a leader, problem-solved, fought off a beast, and formed their own society, even if it was somewhat flawed. This was the situation in the famous TV show, Lost. The Lord of the Flies and Lost are similar in these many different ways, with the exception that the show featured a tribe of adults instead of children. That just proves how difficult it is to maintain order in a society; even the adults struggled with keeping it peaceful and civilized. In Lord of the Flies, William Golding presents a broken society of savage boys fighting one another to suggest that man’s capacity for evil is brought out by the need for power and control.
But they left some of them alive so that they could stir the ship. He writes in the final stanza, “It sickens me to think of what I saw, of how these apes threw overboard the butchered bodies of our men”, which he explains how the slaves disposed of the bodies of the crew member after killing them. He then finishes
His satisfaction with the kite’s limited reach indicates appreciation of his mindset trapped by the traumas of war. The kite, or his mind, reflects the same turbulence of the storm, or the war, as the kite against a cloudy backdrop is a “mirror shock” (70). Lightning strikes the kite but the speaker continues into the storm to suicidally let the war engulf his existence. By the end of the poem, he has stopped seeking definition beyond the
In both novels, the main characters are isolated from any form of true civilisation. In Lord of the Flies, the boys find themselves on a desolate island which is devoid of any human life due to a plane crash, whereas in The Road the Man and Boy live in a bleak, destroyed America in which almost the entire population has been wiped out due to an unnamed natural disaster. Because of the lack of resources and essentials, it is inevitable that the main characters have to find means of surviving – in Lord of the Flies; this is mainly through hunting and building shelter and in The Road, the Man and the Boy trek along the barren landscape in search for any remaining food they can find.
In the novel The Lord of the flies, William Golding illustrates the decline from innocence to savagery through a group of young boys. In the early chapters of The Lord of the Flies, the boys strive to maintain order. Throughout the book however, the organized civilization Ralph, Piggy, and Simon work diligently towards rapidly crumbles into pure, unadulterated, savagery. The book emphasized the idea that all humans have the potential for savagery, even the seemingly pure children of the book. The decline of all civilized behavior in these boys represents how easily all order can dissolve into chaos. The book’s antagonist, Jack, is the epitome of the evil present in us all. Conversely, the book’s protagonist, Ralph, and his only true ally, Piggy, both struggle to stifle their inner
Moore begins the last stanza with an ambiguous “So”. Although one has a heightened awareness of mortality, one “behaves,” one keeps the ego disciplined. This is the same concept as that of the caged bird who, though held captive in a cruelly small space, continues to sing with all his heart. Despite the bird's lack of “satisfaction” because of his loss of flight and freedom, he knows “joy”.
Many of the themes present in Heart of Darkness and also present in Lord of the Flies. Both novels deal with the theme of civilization versus savagery. Also, both novels imply that every man has a heart of darkness or an evil that is usually drowned out by the light of civilization. However, when removed from civilized society, the raw evil of untamed lifestyles within his soul will be unleashed. For example, in the Heart of Darkness the main character Marlow journeys up the Thames river and as he gets further away from civilization, the more he journey's into a heart of darkness. A darkness where societal morals no longer exist and savagery has taken over. In the Lord of the Flies the boys in the novel are stranded on an island and the longer they stay on the island and are absent from civilization the more savage like they become.
Most works of art are centralized around a particular idea or theme the author wants to get across. This is no different in ¨The Writer¨ by Richard Wilbur. ¨The Writer¨ is a poem about a father who is watching his daughter write a story. The father as he is watching his daughter talks about the struggles of being a writer and wishes her luck in her journey. The author, Wilbur uses words that represent a boat and even compares the daughters struggle to a bird to illustrate his message.