More handpicked essays just for you.
Significance of symbolism in literature
Violence symbolism in literature
Significance of symbolism in literature
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
Evil and Fear Corrupt Society Adolf Hitler was a brilliant leader with horrid morals. Throughout history many leaders have ruled over people using fear and evil to gain more power. Although very wrong, many of these leaders have been successful and gained their people’s trust. According to Rousseau people were all pure at once, but all of the evil and negativity take their toll eventually. Evil corrupts society. It affects even the purist of living beings. This is especially shown in The Lord of the Flies, a book about a group of young boys who crash onto an island and have to fend for themselves, and potentially their group. Throughout William Golding’s novel, The Lord of the Flies, symbols show how evil and fear corrupt society. In the beginning of the novel the boys establish law and order. Ralph finds a conch shell, and Piggy says they can use the shell as a horn to call anyone on the island together(16). They call all of the boys together across the island, and decide they need a chief. “‘Shut up,’ said Ralph absently. He lifted the conch. ‘Seems to me we ought to have to have chief to decide things(22).’” So all of the boys voted for chief and Ralph was elected(22). They even took on jobs, Jack and his choir were the hunters(23). Ralph and Simon were the builders of the huts. In the beginning …show more content…
there was a society there. By the end, they were far from civilized. From the start, Jack presented as a strong leader.
In school he was put in charge of his choir boys, and throughout the novel, those boys listened to him through it all. If he told them to stand still, they did so(20). He was power hungry. He was even confident enough to say “I ought to be chief(22).” before they had even voted. Jack soon evolved into a savage, evil overtaking him. He became obsessed with hunting. Like a wild animal he would sniff across the ground to find a pig(48). Jack later breaks off from the main group, and forms and savage, homicidal group. Jack is willing to kill other human beings to gain power, and that shows how evil has overtaken
him. Throughout the novel there are several symbols of evil and fear. First being the Lord of the Flies himself. The pig symbolizes the evil around the island. Simon hallucinates about the pig, realizes the evil all around them(143). The head represents the start of evil, because it was their first kill offered up to the Lord of the Flies. Second is the face paint. Jack’s tribe wears face paint when they go hunting to change who are(63). When they wear the paint they become someone else and don't take the responsibility for their actions(63). And lastly a symbol of both fear and evil is Roger. Roger rules with fear, much like Jack, but Roger does the dirty work. He tortures people. Samneric say “You don’t know Roger. He’s a terror(189).” All of these symbols played a strong role in how the boys develop over time. In William Golding’s novel, The Lord of the Flies, many symbols show evil, fear, and how they corrupt civilization. Ruling over people using evil and their own fear against them shift their personalities. These civilizations become unscrupulous, raging with fear and no hope. Although Adolf hitler got many people on his side, despite his wrongdoing, he failed. He did things that put people in danger, when they had done nothing wrong. He has now lost all of the respect he once had. Evil gets a person nowhere. Hitler ordered the death of approximately 11 million people.
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.
One of the things that changes Jack was his hatred and drives him to the point where he was willing to kill. In the beginning he was a choir boy who knew nothing much, but his hatred grew when he was not elected leader. In the book it quote “And you shut up! Who are you anyway? Sitting here telling people what to do. You can’t hunt, you can’t sing-” (91). This quote shows that Jack had
Ralph shows that he has a better understanding of the boys than Jack. He knows that the boys need some sort of order on the island in order for them to survive. He starts a simple form of government and sets a few rules for them. Even though they don’t last very long, the fact that he tried to help the group is what makes him a better leader. Ralph’s wisdom and ability to look toward the future also has an advantage over Jack. He has a sense to keep his focus on getting off the island. When the fire goes out, Ralph gets upset because the chance to be rescued was gone as well. Ralph enforces his role of leadership as he gives the boys a sense of stability of an authority figure. He keeps the boys in pretty good order at the meeting by making a rule that they can only speak if they have the conch. Ralph knows that the littleuns are afraid and they need shelter to feel more secure. They work together for a while, but as the time goes on the smaller boys want to go play. They slowly lose all their help until Simon and Ralph are the only ones left to work on them. Ralph knows that this is a necessity and keeps bringing it up at the meetings. Jack, on the other hand, is doing nothing but causing chaos.
Inherent Evil of Man Exposed in Lord of the Flies & nbsp; 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 of mankind. Lord of the Flies dealt with the changes the boys underwent as they gradually adapted to the freedom of 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. & nbsp; Through the story, Simon acted as the Christ Figure. The death of Simon symbolized the loss of religious reasoning.
Fear is a driving force in The Lord of the Flies. How does fear in all of its forms influence the boy's attitudes and behaviours?
Even though they are the most vicious boys in the book they are also very well liked and are in sort of a higher class/ ranking than the other boys. When talking about how to reenact the hunting scene of the pig Jack says something deep down disgusting “Or someone to pretend- Use a littlun said Jack, and everybody laughed.” (Golding 115). Jack always disliked the little’uns and in the book it seems as if the reason was because they just simply didn’t do enough. He and his choir boys/ hunters always think that since they complete the task of providing lots of meat they are higher up than the other boys. They do help with feeding the group but also show disrespect and disregard for the little’uns. Many people who may be more respected and even higher up in the working class look down upon others and act as if they are better than them because they are more privileged or successful. When deciding basic jobs ralph suggests "Jack's in charge of the choir. They can be—what do you want them be?" "Hunters."(Golding 23). Jack has the ambition and drive for what he wants as a leader but lacks the selfless aspect and a regard for others. In the book he is always shown as the leader of the hunters, the chief or the head choir boy. The hunters and he even specifically turn into their own separate group when Jack starts his own dictatorship. Public in real life demonstrate similar behaviors
In conclusion, Jack was overall an unique leader and person, he went from killing pigs to killing humans, and being the nicest person, to not so nice. With great power comes great responsibility; having determination, being intelligent, and possessing great outdoors skills, is what Jack had to be, to be a great
While his situation allowed his personality to blossom into something horrible, the desire for blood and power already flowed through his veins. An example from the beginning, before the corruption of the boys, was when Jack first arrived at the meeting with his choir following behind. They were wearing their cloaks in the heat and Jack only let them rest after Simon had fainted. Jack’s controlling nature can be observed from the very beginning of the book. At this time, decorum still covered his bloodlust, but it was quickly triggered after he hadn’t been able to kill a pig. The text reads that “Next time there would be no mercy”(p.31) He was not only embarrassed of his weakness and wanted to uphold his status, but he was also losing the civility that an organized society ensured. The island was the key that unlocked Jack’s hidden, savage
The issue on whether man is good or evil has been debated over several generations. In William Golding’s Lord of the Flies, a group of young boys are stranded on an uninhabited island. In the beginning, the boys have fun and are carefree while adventuring on the island. With no adults around to tell them how to behave, the boys declare war on one another and face several conflicts. These conflicts provide Golding with the opportunity to explore the idea that society restrains the evil intentions of human nature.
In William Golding's Lord of the Flies, the boys who are stranded on the island come in contact with many unique elements that symbolize ideas or concepts. Through the use of symbols such as the beast, the pig's head, and even Piggy's specs, Golding demonstrates that humans, when liberated from society's rules and taboos, allow their natural capacity for evil to dominate their existence.
Lord of the Flies provides one with a clear understanding of Golding's view of human nature. Whether this view is right or wrong is a point to be debated. This image Golding paints for the reader, that of humans being inherently bad, is a perspective not all people share. Lord of the Flies is but an abstract tool of Golding's to construct the idea of the inherent evil of human nature in the minds of his readers. To construct this idea of the inherent evil, Golding employs the symbolism of Simon, Ralph, the hunt and the island.
In the book Lord of the Flies by William Golding, a group of young boys from England are evacuated out of their country due to a war. The plane is then shot down and results into a plane crash on a deserted island. The boys are left all alone with no adults, no supplies, and no one to come and rescue them. They are all on their own and have to establish a new “society”. The boys have to choose someone to govern them and that person ends up being Ralph, who had an internal struggle between what is right and wrong closer to the end of the novel. The boys turn into savages, killing each other, and showing their evil inside each of them. According to, William Golding man is inherently evil, evil is in all of us, but it is oppressed by society, and comes out when there is not anything to hold us back, civilization is what holds back evil from coming out, or it is what triggers evil inside of man.
The fact that Jack acts like this is very important to the story. Jack’s lust for power and blood sped the story up a lot faster. It’s possible that without Jack the boys wouldn’t even become savage. Jack is also a bully, and forces the boys out of fear into what he wants them to do. In, “The Lord of the Flies”, by William Golding, Jack is pretty much equivalent to a middle school bully, but the circumstances he is in, turns him into something even worse.
Look at the basis of civilization, what is the one terminal thing every society possesses? Malliciousness, since the beginning of time there has been one constant attribute of all humans, the ability to be destructive. Human beings are innately evil, the environment they are put in determines if the act on the evil inside of them. In the novel Lord of The Flies the atrocious behavior of the boys on the island exemplifies the concept of humans and heinous behavior. The stanford prison experiment conducted in August of 1971, recognizes the possessiveness of power in the absence of society, identifying the underlying autogenous behavior of humans. Religion is domesticated in both of these instances which dictates why there is as an absence of classic integrity. Ethology is displayed abundantly within the lord of the flies novel and the society it constitutes. Societies are created by
In the Lord of the Flies, William Golding uses a variety of symbols to represent ideas, or abstract notions or conceptions about people, places, and things. A symbol, according to the Webster's Dictionary, is an object that stands for something in addition to its literal meaning. In the book, there is a continual breakdown of society and civilization on the island. During this breakdown, Golding uses symbolism to further explain the process. Some of the things he symbolizes in the novel are the island itself, the conch, the boys clothing, and the violence.