Essay On Individuality And Conformity

The price of being lonely and frightened is nothing compared to the reward of of not being controlled by anybody but yourself. The book ‘Lord of the flies’ by William Golding explores the themes of loneliness and fright and reflects on Nietzsche’s quote and individuality and conformity. ‘Yassmin’s story’ by Yassmin Abdel-Magied, explores Yassmin’s insecurities and differences. They both texts that reflect on Friedrich Nietzsche’s quote and the idea of individuality and conformity and the struggle of being an individual. The two texts are about individuality and conformity and how these two things come to play in different circumstances. Individuality is when a person does not rely on a group of other people and control themselves and have their

In both texts the characters must decide in certain situations if they want to be an individual or a conformist and it shows their struggles in trying to step away from the ‘tribe’. I will be discussing the extent these decisions are reflected in Friedrich Nietzsche’s quote and exploring the themes of loneliness, fright, insecurity and difference in the two texts.

Individuality and conformity is reflected in the novel ‘Lord of the flies’ through the themes of loneliness and fright. The book is set in the time of world war II and they are on a plane flying to a safer place away from the war when it crashes on a remote island. The pilot of the plane disappears and the boys are all stranded on the island and have to learn to work together to survive. But when there are all 5-12 year old boys and no adults on an island things go very wrong. The novel shows individuality and conformity because they are all part of one tribe and are not able to be individuals but must conform to what the chief, which at the start is ralph but then becomes jack, says, and they must follow what the rest of the tribe is doing. "We've got to have rules and obey them. After

Yassmins story is about the life of Yassmin Abdel-Magied, she was born in sudan but moved to australia when she was very young and ever since she has had to fight to be an individual. Being an individual can be hard in society and Yassmin knew that conforming would be the easy thing to do but she pushed through and broke all of society's stereotypes about sudanese, muslim women. “Don’t worry about what the other people do; we’re not like everyone else’, and by introducing that concept early they inculcated a belief that social norms shouldn’t have power over your individual choices.” This shows that at a young age she was taught that she did not have to be like everybody else and that it was fine for her to be her own individual self. Yassmin’s uses the technique of first person writing to push the meaning of her book because it connects the reader with the novel as if the reader was just listening to a person speaking. This technique is used in the book to make what she says seem more meaningful and interesting to the reader. And even though Yassmin was taught that she should not conform to what other people think is normal her insecurities in her differences from everyone else made it hard for her to be herself. Such as when she was in school she could not perform the muslim ritual of wudu which is the ritual of washing your hands and feet before