As the common adage states, “people change”. This maxim, however, does not explain the cause of this change or the reason why people lose their identities. In the book Lord of the Flies by William Golding, loss of identity and the cause of this loss is a common theme throughout the novel. In the book, little boys turn from innocent children to bloodthirsty savages as a result of them being stranded on an island without any adults. This theme, loss of identity, and its cause are not just apparent in Lord of the Flies, but also in many other mediums, including movies, music, books, and news articles. These sources show that identities are not lost when all is well, but only when life becomes a living hell.
Both Lord of the Flies and the movie
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Mulan, directed by Tony Bancroft and Barry Cook exhibit characters who lose their identities due to great dangers in their lives.
In Lord of the Flies, the boys believe that there is a beast on the island. In order to camouflage themselves, they paint their faces. The face paint allows the boys to free themselves from their old life and identity. This is the outlet Jack has been looking for to lose the old world. The paint also allows the boys to identify with each other. This is particularly important to Jack. He was already a sociopath before the novel started. As he smears the paint on, he begins to snarl and dance around. “Jack planned his new face. He made one cheek and one eye and one eye socket white, then he rubbed red over the other half of his face and slashed a black bar of charcoal across from right ear to left jaw. He looked in the pool for his reflection, but his breathing troubled the mirror” (Golding 62). When all the boys start painting their faces, it makes them feel less guilty and shameful over the brutal killing of the pig. The boys use the face paint to disguise themselves. This can be compared to the character Mulan in Mulan when she has to change her entire appearance to look like a man because if she appears to be a woman she can not fight in China’s war. At the beginning …show more content…
of the movie, Mulan is told by the matchmaker that she will never bring honor to her family. A sense of identity loss is then shown when she sings, "Why is my reflection someone I don't know" (Matthew Wilder; David Zippel, “Reflection”). In this society, Mulan there is war in China and most think that only men are strong enough to win. Mulan’s disguise is her only way to help her people because she is brave and selfless. In Lord of the Flies, the boys use disguises as a way to hide from their shameful identities. While in Mulan, the main character uses it as a way to fight for what is right. Not only is loss of identity shown in animated children’s movies, but also in films showcasing more modern-day problems. Loss of identity in times of struggle is a common theme in both Lord of the Flies and the movie Identity Thief, directed by Seth Gordon.
In Lord of the Flies, the boys are trying to leave behind who they were in the past and make new identities. The boys are giving nicknames for each other (changing their identities). Piggy is asked what he wants to be called. “I don’t care what they call me”, he said confidentially, “so long as they don’t call me what they used to call me at school” (Gordon 9). This displays how Piggy was not able to free himself from the identity that he despises even though he has the opportunity. This can be compared the plot in Identity Thief when the main character loses his identity to a woman he does not know. He does not lose himself emotionally like the characters in Lord of the Flies. However, the woman in the movie steals other people’s identities because she does not know her own. The man loses his identity to a woman who does not really know who she is herself. They go on a long road trip so he can turn her in for stealing his identity. The story ends with her finding her true identity (her birth name, birthday, place of birth, etc.). Thus, Identity Thief, the main character loses his actual identity, while a character in Lord of the Flies earns a disparaging nickname that causes the characters to emotionally lose themselves. The characters are always doing things to hide themselves. In Identity Thief, one of the main characters takes
people’s information to mask the fact that she does not know her own. Movies and books are not the only media that shows loss of identity as music does, too.
Lord of the Flies was written by a British author in 1954. The book is about a group of British school boys that crash on an island and have to survive. During their time on the island they turn their backs on being civil and become savages. Ralph is the elected leader and always thinks civil. Jack leaves the group and starts a tribe with the boys and is a savage. Piggy is a boy who is knowable. Simon is compared to Jesus through the book and is the only naturally “good” character. The littleuns are the littler kids on the island. Roger is a cruel older boy who is Jack’s lieutenant. Samneric are twins who are close to Ralph but, are manipulated by Jack later on. In the book Lord of the Flies by William Golding some of the characters represent id, ego, and superego. Id, ego, and super ego are the three parts of the psychic apparatus expressed by Sigmund Freud’s structural model of the psyche. Golding expresses his message of evil and how it is natural in every person, and how we must recognize and control it through id, ego, and superego.
This causes them to change completely and wear masks. Similarly, I made a mask that shows a personality, but hide another. Masks conceal traits by making something look completely different and also changing the characteristics. One of the characters named Ralph, wears a mask and is very relatable to me because of how we both try to hide our fears with positive characteristics. It’s not just the boys that wear a mask, but a lot of people wear masks because they don’t get judged. Some people know that they are wearing a mask, and others don’t. It’s easier to either conceal or to show a personality, depending on which group a person is in. But either way, we are exactly like the boys in “Lord Of The Flies” because everyone is wearing
The book Lord of the Flies by William Golding is an exhilarating novel that is full of courage, bravery, and manhood. It is a book that constantly displays the clash between two platoons of savage juveniles mostly between Jack and Ralph who are the main characters of the book. The Kids become stranded on an island with no adults for miles. The youngsters bring their past knowledge from the civilized world to the Island and create a set of rules along with assigned jobs like building shelters or gathering more wood for the fire. As time went on and days past some of the kids including Jack started to veer off the rules path and begin doing there own thing. The transformation of Jack from temperately rebellious to exceptionally
Throughout the novel, The Lord of the Flies by William Golding, the character Jack finds his true identity through a clay mask of his own making. At the beginning of the novel, Jack is unable to kill a pig for food, however, he later puts on a mask in order to blend in with nature and not drive the pigs away. To the contrary, by putting on this mask Jack gains a newfound confidence that was nonexistent in his own skin. For example when Jack first put on the mask he “looked in astonishment, no longer at himself but at an awesome stranger” (63). By putting on a mask Jack is able to lose his identity a little bit and act and feel like a whole new person. This idea of taking on a whole new role when putting on a mask can be seen in many modern tv shows and movies.
In some situations, people become violent because of their emotions. In The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, Junior leaves his school on the reservation to go to an all white high school. His Indian friends feel betrayed. He joins the basketball team at his new school and the first game is against the reservation team. The Indian crowd throws things at him and he needs stitches on his forehead. During the game, as Junior jumped into the air, he “heard the curses of 200 Spokanes, and saw only a bright light as Rowdy smashed his elbow into my head and knocked me unconscious”. (pg 146) After Junior left the Reservation, Rowdy felt betrayed, and became violently angry. His emotion of betrayal caused him to turn on Junior and act more evil. This is especially hard on him because Junior was his best friend.
A plane abruptly crashes into an abandoned island, risking the passengers in the plane. Luckily, the boys in the plane survive this devastating event. These boys, isolated from the supervision of adults, cooperate for rescue. A particular boy, encouraged that he can lead the boys successfully, instructs the others. Unfortunately, this responsible boy disguises himself with a mask, which brings a major transformation. For this boy, Jack, a major character in William Golding’s novel Lord of the Flies, his desire for power is greater than his hope for rescue. By Jack putting on the mask, Golding displays a responsible British boy, who focuses on survival, transform to an irresponsible, aggressive human being who is consumed by violence.
Jack begins to paint his face to hide from the pigs in the bushes. The paint does more than camouflage himself in the forest, it protects him from shame and self-consciousness.
Imagine living for months with a group of immature, smelly, and hormonal 12 year old boys… William Golding’s take on that scenario is probably much different than what you’re imagining in your head right now. In the renowned novel, Lord of the Flies by the brilliant William Golding, the novel follows the development of a group of schoolboys abandoned on an island during an attempt to escape the nightmare casted by World War II. Upon crashing, the charismatic Ralph is elected as leader with Piggy, a level headed intellect, acting as his voice of reason. As the audience witnesses the band of boys fight towards survival, the raw form of each character is unmasked allowing readers to watch their actions and morals revert back to savagery without
The Lord of the Flies by William Golding is a peculiar story about boys stranded on an island, and the plot and characters relate to many prevailing events and problems. A specific problem that is currently occurring is the mutual hatred and enmity between North Korea and South Korea. This is a current event, but the North and South’s hostility has been ongoing since 1945, when Korea was split into North and South, Communist and Capitalist. When the 38th parallel(Border between North and South Korea) was created, Kim Il-Sung ruled the North, and Syngman Rhee ruled the South. As of now, a power hungry dictator, Kim Jong-un rules the north, and an optimistic president who wants to see change was recently elected in the South, named Moon Jae-in. In Golding’s book, Ralph is a character who aimed to keep everyone alive and to stay together. Jack on the other hand, wanted to have fun and hunt, and although he also wanted to be rescued, he made no effort to help. In this sense, North Korea is a clear representation of the character Jack and his quest for power, and opposingly, South Korea is a representation of Ralph and his strive for order, democracy, and civilization.
We can see other evidence of this conflict within ourselves, with the masks that Jack and his hunters put on. We are informed that Jack “ rubbed the charcoal stick between the patches of red and white on his face” The mask represents the dark line (charcoal) between good (white) and evil (red) within ourselves. These masks also let the boys hide from their conscience; we can see this when we are informed, “The mask was a thing on it’s own, behind which Jack hid, liberated from shame and self-consciousness.” We can see that the mask releases Jack from rational behaviour, which helps him, assert power.... ...
In Lord of the Flies, by William Golding, we find a group of British boys stranded on a tropical island while the rest of the world is at war. Their plane has been shot down and they find themselves without adults to tell them how to act. As they struggle to survive, they encounter conflicts that mirror the decayed society from which they have come. We see Golding's theme come about as we watch the boys begin to lose their innocence and let their natural evil overwhelm their otherwise civilized manner. While formulating the theme of the story, Golding utilizes much symbolism, one of these symbols being the masks, or painted faces, that the boys wear. The masks, and painted faces, became a producer of evil circumstances, give a sense of anonymity, and represented the defiance of social structure.
William Golding’s novel ‘The Lord of The Flies’ tells the story of a group of English boys isolated on a desert island, left to attempt to retain civilisation. In the novel, Golding shows one of the boys, Jack, to change significantly. At the beginning of the book, Jack’s character desires power and although he does not immediately get it, he retains the values of civilized behaviour. However, as the story proceeds, his character becomes more savage, leaving behind the values of society. Jack uses fear of the beast to control the other boys and he changes to become the book’s representation of savagery, violence and domination. He is first taken over with an obsession to hunt, which leads to a change in his physical appearance This change of character is significant as he leads the other boys into savagery, representing Golding’s views of there being a bad and unforgiving nature to every human.
“I cannot believe there is caste system in society; I cannot believe people are judged on the basis of their prosperity.” No matter how much you’ve got to bring to the table, society will always find a way to put you down and aim for something else whether that something is worst or better than what you have to offer. In the novel Lord of the Flies, William Golding has shown this external conflict several times throughout the story with characters such as Ralph and piggy. The conflict of character vs. society is present in these characters: Ralph, the elected chief of the group of British schoolboys is constantly having to remind the group of the bigger picture; Piggy, ultimately the brain of the
“Life is nothing without a little chaos to make it interesting” (Amelia Atwater-Rhodes). In William Golding’s novel, Lord of the Flies, a plane full of boys get stranded on an island. The character Ralph, who is only twelve and a few months, takes the position of chief who tries to establish order on the island. However, most of the boys do not obey the rules Ralph has created. Immaturity within a community creates chaos.
Throughout Lord of the Flies is a display of humankind’s thirst for power. Most of the boys, for example, transition to savagery and animalistic behaviors to free themselves from powerless lives. Jack, the leader of the hunters, becomes the first of the boys to paint a mask on his face. “Jack planned his new face. He made one cheek and one eye-socket white, then he rubbed over the other half of his face and slashed a black bar of charcoal across from right ear to left jaw…Beside the pool his sinewy body held up a mask that drew their eyes and appalled them. He began to dance and his laughter became a bloodthirsty snarling, behind which Jack hid, liberated from shame and self-consciousness,” (63-64). Under his mask, Jack feels no shame, and therefore is free to indulge in power as he desires. In fact, later in the book, Jack and a few other boys commit one of the ultimate crimes of violence and power—rape (although only metaphorically.) Jack...