Patriotism is defined as: “devoted love, support, and defense of one's country; national loyalty.” Supporting your country in times of war is not the best way to define patriotism because patriotism should be shown at all times. This statement seems to give the idea that no matter the reason, if any reason you should support your government during times of war. Seeing that the government tends to get involved in wars that could have had good impact I agree with this statement. Yes, you should indeed support your government even if they are in the wrong that is a because in the end they are doing things to better our nation for future generations. In Lord Of The Flies the boy’s are stranded on an island as a result of their plane being hit as their country is in the midst of a war. They have no adult supervision or guidance so survival is essentially left up to a group of young boys. Patriotism can be debated in this book because the boys are seen as …show more content…
imitating warlike things such as when Ralph pretends to be a "fighter-plane, with wings swept back, and machine-gunned Piggy" (11). This shows that the boys do not realize the severity of their current situation, but it looks as if they support the war their country is going through which in the quote means they are patriots. Essentially the boys acting as if they are planes and machine guns shows support for the war. They could in fact be defined as patriots according to the statement. The kids have no government so they look to the older boys such as Jack who seems to want to push for war. He begins by hunting for pigs, but develops a thirst for blood of any kind when he urges the boys to kill the “beast”, which was actually an idea that had not yet been expressed. I also chose the statement “For an idea to exist, we must have words to express it.” This was something that I found to be very debated among in the classroom because some students stood their ground at “An idea without words can not be expressed”. Then on the other end of the spectrum students said “Art, Music, or even sign language are ideas that do not include words” and brought up a widely known quote “A picture is worth a thousand words” which really kept me on the fence but in the end I chose to be for this statement. This is because an idea that can't be portrayed in words is merely a thought. Anybody can interpret a picture, or music differently so your idea may not be what other people capture if there is no words to support it. Lord of The Flies has many examples of ideas being expressed with words such as the idea of the “beast”.
At first, it is just a product of the boys’ imagination and they fear the dark in the wild, so they give the fear a name and shape. Although there is no actual “beast” the boys express their ideas of the beast Piggy says, “I know there isn't no beast—not with claws and all that, I mean—but I know there isn't no fear, either" (104). This shows that he believes the beast is just the fear of what they do not know. Simon also has a great quote which was ““There isn’t anyone to help you. Only me. And I’m the Beast. . . . Fancy thinking the beast was something you could hunt and kill!” This gives us insight that there is actually no beast but the savagery that lies within man. Both of these are expressions of ideas through words. If no words were spoken then there would be no actual meaning or symbolism behind the beast it would have just been a thought therefore i do believe that words are required to express an
idea.
The first representation of the beast that the author portrays is fear. In document A, “... Begin to people the darkness of night and forest with spirits and demons which had previously appeared only in their dreams or fairy tales”. To clarify, the children’s imagination runs rampant without their parents to banish their fears, so their imagination creates something of a beastie-thing. In document
The fictional novel Lord of the Flies by William Golding is one of the first popular endurance novels of it’s time. The Lord of the Flies takes place during World War 2 and during this time, children were being brought out of war zones via plane. A group of boys were being evacuated from their homes to escape the war, when their plane crashed on a remote island, the only survivors a group of young boys. The island that they landed on would become the center for their savageous “game”, until they get rescued at the end of the novel. Once arriving on the island, Ralph, the book’s hero, is voted leader by the boys and he sets out to create a functioning and reasonable civilization amongst the boys. Conflict is present right away when Jack, the
William Golding, the author of the novel The Lord of the Flies, lived through the global conflicts of both world wars. World War II shifted his point of view on humanity, making him realize its inclination toward evilness. His response to the ongoing struggle between faith and denial became Lord of the Flies, in which English schoolboys are left to survive on their own on an uninhabited island after a plane crash. Just like Golding, these boys underwent the trauma of war on a psychological level. Ralph, one of the older boys, stands out as the “chief,” leading the other victims of war in a new world. Without the constraints of government and society, the boys created a culture of their own influenced by their previous background of England.
The boys’ fear of the beast causes them to pay no attention to their morals and act savagely to defeat it. However, Simon is ultimately able to understand the beast and avoid savagery because his embrace of nature allows him to avoid any fears of the island. Simon demonstrates this lack of fear when he climbs the mountain by himself in order to find the beast, despite the dangers that might await him. The hunters and even Piggy and Ralph want to avoid the mountain because that is the last place where the beast was seen, but Simon seems to Once he reaches the top, he finds a physical beast, but not the kind the boys were expecting: a dead parachutist. The parachutist serves as an ironic symbol of Simon’s understanding; the monster the boys were afraid was a human. In contrast, Piggy displays immense fear throughout the novel, especially about Jack. For most of the story, his appreciation of logic and order help him remain civilized, but eventually his fears overcome him and he acts savagely the night of Simon’s murder. As Golding states, “[Piggy and Ralph] found themselves eager to take place in this demented but partly secure society….[the crowd] leapt on the beast, screamed, struck, bit, tore” (136). After this occurrence and the theft of his glasses, Piggy decides to
Lord of the Flies, a book written by William Golding, published by Faber and Faber and winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature is a story that talks about a group of school age boys who have landed on an unknown / uninhabited island during the second world war. Throughout their stay on the island they find ways to survive, such as finding and hunting for food as well as building basic needs like shelters and a fire. At a certain moment in the book two of the main characters, Ralph and Jack declare a war between each other because Jack refuses to have Ralph as the group’s leader for another second. This then leads to the division of the group as well as many scenes in which one sabotages the other. An example of this is when Jack’s tribe steals
The novel Lord of the Flies by William Golding is about a group of boys that were on a plane crash in the 1940’s in a nuclear War. The plane is shot down and lands on a tropical island. Some boys try to function as a whole group but see obstacles as time goes on. The novel is about civilization and social order. There are three older boys, Ralph, Jack, and Piggy, that have an effect on the group of younger boys. The Main character Ralph, changes throughout the novel because of his role of leadership and responsibility, which shapes him into a more strict but caring character as the group becomes more uncivilized and savage
The Lord of the Flies knows Simon and only Simon, has the power to dispel the boy’s fear of the beast because only he understands. Without their fear, the beast would
Lord of the Flies by William Golding is about a group of British boys who get plane-wrecked on a deserted island. The boys cooperate, gather fruit, make shelters, and maintain a signal fire. When they get there they are civil schoolboys but soon show that being away from society and the real world it brings out their true nature and they break apart and turn into savages.
In Beast From Air, the boys have the false idea of the beast being the dead parachutist that falls on the island: the fear the boys have of the beast leads to the death of Simon in chapter 9, A View to a Death. A factual interpretation of the beast would be that it represents danger and a direct threat to the boys; it can be a symbol of chaos and death within the island. An extended interpretation of the beast is that it represents the innate evil in humans, the primal, bestial feelings within us all: one of the novel’s main themes. Although the beast is metaphorical, the boys' behavior is what brings the beast into existence, so the more savagely the boys act, the more real the beast seems to become. This is realized by Simon and is proposed in Beast From Water after a littlun suggests the possibility of the beast on the island: “What I mean is . . . maybe it’s only us”. Simon explains that perhaps the beast is only the boys themselves. The boys ignore Simon’s realization, yet Simon’s words are central to Golding’s point that inborn human evil exists. Simon is the first character in the novel to see the beast not as an outer force, but as a constituent element of human nature.
In the dark grim night, the sounds of a Bald Eagle restrained inside of a metallic cage crying for help was heard, but the only noise discerned was the blowing sounds from the vigorous gusts of wind. As time passed, the Bald Eagle’s mind soon became corrupted with thoughts of death, wishing the suffering would end. One day a chance for freedom was given to the ill-fated bird when its captor had unintentionally left the cage door open. Unfortunately, the Bald Eagle, weak and misused, had already given up fighting it’s inner battle to survive and succumbed to it’s greatest wish, death. A similar situation takes place in the novel Lord of the Flies, written by William Golding, which involves a group of boys shipwrecked on an island. The secluded
There is fear that all is not known concerning the Beast. “The beast had teeth… and big black eyes.” The boys did not actually see the Beast and are making this up. This only causes their fear to escalate except for Piggy’s. He is by far the most intellectual and skeptical of the boys. He knows that the adult world and books would not abide by the legend of the ‘beastie’.
Beforehand, everything was all fun and games on the island, and Piggy was the only one that actually worried about anything. However, the idea of the beast brought fear to them again and again. Whether it was when it was first mentioned as a snake, or when it was thought to come from the sea, or when it was guessed to be ghosts, the idea of something being there at the island made the boys afraid even though there was no actual evidence of the beast. Golding wrote, “‘He says in the morning it turned into them things like ropes in the trees and hung in the branches. He say will it come back tonight?’ ‘But there isn’t a beastie!’ There was no laughter at all now and more grave watching.’” At the idea there there was some sort of mysterious fearsome monster that might come after the boys, the previously joyous atmosphere quickly bursted as fear settles on them. Though the beast only symbolized fear in the beginning, by the latter parts of the novel, it had become a representation of the savagery within a human. Simon was the first one to notice, at how he pointed out how maybe the beast lived within themselves. Also, Jack’s bloody offering to the beast, the sow’s head, represented how the darkness has taken over the hunters. Their belief in the beast strength as their savagery increased, it was almost as if they worshipped it, leaving offerings and such. Also, the Lord
William Golding's first book, Lord of the Flies, is the story of a group of boys of different backgrounds who are marooned on an unknown island when their plane crashes. As the boys try to organize and formulate a plan to get rescued, they begin to separate and as a result of the dissension a band of savage tribal hunters is formed. Eventually the "stranded boys in Lord of the Flies almost entirely shake off civilized behavior: (Riley 1: 119). When the confusion finally leads to a manhunt [for Ralph], the reader realizes that despite the strong sense of British character and civility that has been instilled in the youth throughout their lives, the boys have backpedaled and shown the underlying savage side existent in all humans. "Golding senses that institutions and order imposed from without are temporary, but man's irrationality and urge for destruction are enduring" (Riley 1: 119). The novel shows the reader how easy it is to revert back to the evil nature inherent in man. If a group of well-conditioned school boys can ultimately wind up committing various extreme travesties, one can imagine what adults, leaders of society, are capable of doing under the pressures of trying to maintain world relations.
One way to define patriotism is to look at an example of my enlistment in the Army and the training that I received in Basic. I decided to join the Army in 1996 after an unsuccessful attempt at college. I decided I wanted to serve my country by defending our freedom in the event that a war should happen and help other countries abroad defend their freedom also. It was in Basic Training that I was taught hand-to-hand combat, how to accurately fire a M16 machine gun, ground tactics and camouflage. The training I received prepared me to be ready to defend America. I was committed to serve and protect the country where I lived. I was displaying my patriotism for America by defending the freedoms that I and other Americans have in this country.
The Lord of the Flies is an ultimately pessimistic novel. In the midst of the cold war and communism scares, this disquieting aura acts as a backdrop to the island. The Lord of the Flies addresses questions like how do dictators come to power, do democracies always work, and what is the natural state and fate of humanity and society, getting at the heart of human nature in a very male-dominated, conflict-driven way. The war, the plane shot down, and the boys' concern that the "Reds" will find them before the British, shows Golding's intention of treating the boys' isolated existence as a microcosm of the adult military world.