Conflicts in Lord of the Flies by William Golding

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“Within the diamond haze of the beach something dark was fumbling along. Ralph saw it first, and watched till the intentness of his gaze drew all eyes that way. Then the creature stepped from mirage on to clear sand, and they saw that the darkness was not all shadow but mostly clothing. The creature was a party of boys, marching approximately in step in two parallel lines and dressed in strangely eccentric clothing.” (24) Ralph at first does not seem to be afraid of them but later on it foreshadows that he should be because the quote refers to the boys as creatures. Creatures that are evil and have no pity or feelings towards the good people that is view to not commit malicious acts like killing or stealing. Creatures that turn into beasts overnight. However, in the Lord of the Flies, the conflict seems to be the fear of the scary beast. The littleluns forget to fulfill their main responsibility and let their fear take over them. Their main responsibility was to build the signal fire thus enhancing their chances of getting rescued. Before all that happened the plane gets shot down but the boys survive. Ralph finds a conch and signals every survivors attention. They all meet and praise for someone to rescue them so Ralph gets an idea of building a fire to get them saved. The beast occurs throughout the night and supposedly scares the littleluns and it symbolizes evil and darkness. The evil that it brings to the table is the intimidation and the darkness is the timing that the beast appears in like in the night. This evil and darkness also causes tension between the littleluns and the leader Ralph. The sole ruler was running things smoothly and everyone followed Ralph’s order. It was not until during the meeting that Ralph held tha... ... middle of paper ... ...ithout even showing any remorse causing Ralph to go against Jack and his tribe. The beast was misinterpreted a lot throughout the Lord of the Flies. For example one little lun thought the beast was a snake and later on the other one thought the ghost would be the beast and then Simon realizing that the beast is within us. Misinterpretations could lead to miscommunication which would then turn into a problem within the group and cause a divided group instead of staying together as one group. The nuisance of it was if the beastie thing should be labeled as “reality” or a “belief”. Jack did not believe it was real and Piggy said that the beast did not exist. There was no good grasp of which to label the beast as the group struggled to maintain just one answer. The lack of parents and manifestations of the beast causes people to bring out their true side.

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