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Analysis of Lord of the flies
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Most children are obedient and well-behaved when they are supervised by adults, but how would they be if they are left to themselves? In the novel, Lord of the Flies, written by William Golding, a group of boys, all under the age of thirteen, are stranded on an island and left unsupervised. At first, the boys are innocent and civilized, but as time goes by, they turn into savages. The children in this novel turned into savages because of peer pressure, their desire have fun, and the fear and chaos that evokes from children when they are left unsupervised. One reason why the boys on the island turned into savages was because of peer pressure. Peer pressure is a common thing that happens among children and it causes them to behave the way their …show more content…
peers want them to behave and do things their peers want them to do, whether it is right or wrong. “Jack glanced back at Ralph and then at the twins. ‘Grab them!’ No one moved. Jack shouted angrily ‘I said ‘grab them’!’ The painted group moved round Samneric nervously and unhandily,” (Golding 178). Jack yelling at the hunters to grab and take Samneric hostage is an example of peer pressure because the hunters hesitate the first time Jack yells at them. Then the second time Jack yells at them, the hunters finally do what Jack says. Jack gets the hunters to do what he wants by pressuring them, even though the hunters don’t think it’s right. The pressure that is being put on the boys throughout the novel causes them to turn into savages. Peer pressure wasn't the only main factor that contributed to the boy’s violent behavior-- their desire to have fun also led to their violent behavior. Another reason why the boys turned into savages was because of their desire to have fun.
Children are known for wanting to have fun all the time and never wanting responsibilities, which is why the majority of children enjoy going to playgrounds, amusement parks, etc. Children are also known for not wanting any responsibilities because when they are given responsibilities, they usually complain. “ ‘Aren’t there any grownups at all?’ ‘I don’t think so.’ The fair boy said this solemnly; but then the delight of a realized ambition overcame him. In the middle of the scar he stood on his head and grinned at the reversed fat boy. ‘No grownups!’ “ (Golding 8). At first Ralph seems to be worried about the fact that there are no grownups on the island. Then after a while, Ralph is excited that there are on grown-ups on the island because since there are on grown-ups on the island, it means no responsibilities for Ralph to take care of and more freedom for him to do whatever he wants. “Ralph waved the conch. ‘This is our island. It's a good island. Until the grownups come to fetch us we'll have fun,’ “ (Golding 35). Ralph tells the rest of the boys on the island that they are going to have fun instead of worrying about ways to survive because since they are children, all they care about is fun. They don’t worry about their survival because survival means responsibilities, and that don’t care about responsibilities. Throughout the novel, the fun that the boys were having gradually …show more content…
turns into violence and savagery since they have no laws, responsibilities, and priorities. The boys’ fun wasn’t the only thing that turned the boys into savages, but also the fear and chaos that evoked from them since there are no adults on the island they can depend on for rational reasoning and reassurance. The last reason why the boys turned into savages was because of the fear and chaos that evokes from children when they are left unsupervised.
Most children, especially infants, do not know what is real and what is not real due to all the scary movies they watch, the scary stories they are told, and the nightmares they have. Therefore, they need an adult to remind them of what is real and what is imaginary. But since there are no adults no the island to remind the boys of these things, they are scared. All the fear that evokes from the boys causes chaos. " ’He still says he saw the beastie. It came and went away again an' came back and wanted to eat him--’ ‘He was dreaming.’ Laughing, Ralph looked for confirmation round the ring of faces. The older boys agreed; but here and there among the little ones was the doubt that required more than rational assurance,” (Golding 36). The little boy who said he saw a beast spreads fear among the crowd of boys, especially the little ones. Ralph tries to remind them that the beast is not real, but the boys don’t believe him since Ralph is not an adult. The fear that is still among the boys causes them to believe that there really is a beast and causes growing chaos throughout the novel. The growing chaos transforms the boys into savages and causes violent behavior. This factor and the other two factors, peer pressure and the boys’ desire to have fun, caused them to transform into
savages. The behavior of most children can be different when they are left unsupervised and the change of the boys’ behavior in Lord of the Flies reflects this. There are no adults on the island to supervise the big group of young boys and therefore, their behavior transforms from civilized to savagery. The three factors that led to the boys’ savage behavior is peer pressure, their desire to have fun, and the fear and chaos that evokes from them when there is no adult supervision. Even though there are many more factors that contribute to the boys’ savagery and violence, these three factors were the essential factors that led to their behavior.
The goal of any person stranded in an island is surviving. These boys are well aware of this goal and know they must stick with the leader that will help them survive the longest. The options these boys have for possible leaders are Ralph and Jack. On one hand, Ralph is focused on building a signal fire to be rescued. On the other hand, Jack focuses on settling on the island by providing food and protection.QUOTE OF BOYS NOT CARING FOR BEING RESCUED The biological factor that encourages these boys to follow the orders of Jack is the fact that the majority of the boys have little to no hope of being rescued. They probably believe that Jack can keep them alive for a long time on the island by providing protection against the beast everyone talks
When the boys first arrived on the island, their behaviour was civilized and they attempted to convince themselves that they would soon be rescued by their parents. As the days passed, the boys began to open their eyes and realized that sitting around was not going to benefit them in any way, and most importantly it would not help them survive. Because of their new unrestricted life on the island, the boys become ruthless and replaced their previous identity.
The Lord of the Flies by William Golding is a novel about human nature and the functions of society. One of the main characters in this novel is Ralph, who is chosen to be the leader of a group of boys. He assigns tasks to the boys and tries to keep them accountable for it. However, the boys begin to slack because they can no longer see the point of these tasks and rules. As a result of the constant slacking the boys soon turned into savages. Ralph’s struggle to maintain order amongst the boys shows how without rules it is human nature to descend into savagery due to the avoidance of authority.
“The thing is – fear can’t hurt you any more than a dream” (“William Golding quotes.”). Fear lives to haunt and torment the person to a point of destruction and can be within everyone. Although a person is able to overcome fear, it is still very dangerous because it affects the person as well as everyone and everything around. In the book Lord of the Flies by William Golding, the boys are all so overwhelmed by fear that the island starts to recede into a state damaged beyond repair. In this case, Jack’s fear of not being leader originally starts to affect him, but it gradually starts to affect Ralph, and the rest of the boys. Ralph’s fear of survival brings out his inner savageness and an innocent life is taken away. Lastly, the boys’ fear of the beast causes them to feel so unsafe and uncertain that they are willing to do anything. As a result of the boys being consumed by these fears, it becomes the most destructive force on the island.
When the teachers leaves the classroom and it’s just left with a room full of students, rules are broken, pencils fly, kids begin to run around, and in the matter of seconds the room is filled loud voices beaming from the children. Whenever there is a time when it is just kids in a room and no adults, it gets hectic very fast and most of the time turns into utter chaos. What do people do in a time of chaos? Some people become leaders and others become followers. In the book the Lord of the Flies the kids are faced with struggling to survive, and what roles they will be playing as they are on the island. The kids desire for popularity and power gets a little out of hand and the kids feel peer pressure to submit to these power crazed children
While the boys stranded on the island begin with the basis of a plan to keep order, as time progresses, they are faced with conflicts that ultimately brings an end to their civilized ways. Initially, Ralph, the assumed leader, ran a democratic-like process on the island; however, later in the story, Jack, one of the boys, realizes that there are no longer any consequences to their wrongdoings for the reason that there was no control. This ties in with the ideal that moral behavior is forced upon individuals by civilization and when they are left on their own, they return to their fundamental instinct of savagery. Furthermore, there is a differentiation in beliefs that result in chaos due to the fact that some favored an uncultivated manner of life over an ordered structure. Opposing ideas are commonly known t...
' I believe that man suffers from an appalling ignorance of his own nature '.
As Ralph is trying to hide from them overnight, he wonders, “Might it not be possible to walk boldly into the fort… pretend they were still boys, schoolboys who had said, ‘Sir, yes, sir’- and worn caps? Daylight might have answered yes; but darkness and the horrors of death said no” (186). No matter how hard Ralph tries, he cannot discard his new knowledge of Jack and his tribe’s potential for evil and corruption. For a long time Ralph seems to be in denial; like many others, he seems to want to stay true to his belief in the overall goodness of the human heart. Ralph’s expectations for human kindness are finally challenged to the point of irreversibility when Jack attacks him and tries to pursue him on a vicious manhunt. When Ralph collapses on the beach and a naval officer arrives, “With filthy body, matted hair, and unwiped nose, Ralph wept for the end of innocence, [and] the darkness of man’s heart...” (202). One might think it strange that rather than rejoicing over rescue, Ralph and the rest of the boys cry out in grief. The young schoolboys come to understand the enormity of human greed and evil, and unfortunately it is a lesson that they will not be able to ignore or forget. They witness and play a role in their own loss of innocence, and the time they spend on the island teaches them what
A friendship can be considered to be one of the most complex and ever changing concepts that the human race tries to comprehend. In ';Lord of the Flies';: by William Golding, Piggy and Ralph, both as different in looks as they are in personality, are forced together by fate and to allie with one another for survival .Through the harsh experiences, that they battle through, an indestructible bond is formed. The friendship continuously develops from the reliance of Piggy upon Ralph at the beginning of the story, then to the alliance of both Piggy and Ralph as more tragedy struck, to their unbreakable bond which is formed, after the whole group falls apart.
Circumstance and time can alter or determine the different paths a group of young boys will take. These paths can have the power to strip children of their own innocence. Such a statement can be explored in William Golding’s “Lord of the Flies” as it ventures into the pros and cons of human nature. William Golding’s tale begins with a group of English school boys who crash land on a deserted tropical island during World War II. In Lord of the Flies, the island that the boys crash on is beautiful, glamorous, and magnificent; yet, it proves to become a dystopia by the horror of the cruelty, violence, and inhumanity.
When the boys are on the island there is no one to look after them and they have to do everything themselves. They make their own decisions and rules. As the boys’ little society begins to crack, so do their rules. They boys do cruel things that they normally wouldn’t do:
The idea of a ‘beast’ roaming on the island causes a deep fear in all the boys, a fear many boys pretend to be non-existent. At first the fear is caused by the idea of not being rescued, but in little time that fear transcends into something the boys have a better understanding of how to deal with, a tangible beast to fear. We first see that fear arise when the the little children begin to mention a snake like thing that one boy claims to have seen, the others littles respond by saying things like “‘He saw a the beastie, the snake-thing, and will it come back tonight?’”(36) or “‘He says in the morning it turned into them things like ropes in the trees and hung in the branches…’”(36). The fear consumes the
... people are out in the wild, and also have no civilization or government to keep their evil suppressed. At the very end of the book when the boys are rescued Golding writes, “ His voice rose under the black smoke before the burning wreckage of the island; and infected by that emotion, the other little boys began to shake and sob too. And in the middle of them, with filthy body, matted hair, and unwiped nose, Ralph wept for the end of innocence, the darkness of man's heart, and the fall through the air of the true, wise friend called Piggy” (202). In this quote Ralph is crying because he has now lost all of his innocence that he once had before he got on that horrible island, due to everything that has happened on the island. He is also crying because he had just lost his friend Piggy because of the savagery acts of the boys and now he realizes how evil everyone is.
True Portrayal of Children in Lord of the Flies & nbsp; In the novel The Lord of the Flies, by. William Golding, one can see how children react to certain situations. Children, when given the opportunity, would choose to play and have fun. rather than to do boring, hard work. Also, when children have no other adults to look up to, they turn to other children for leadership. Finally, children stray towards savagery when they are without adult authority. Therefore, Golding succeeds in effectively portraying the interests and attitudes of young children in this novel.
In most societies, adults play a lead role in maintaining civilization. In William Golding’s novel, Lord of the Flies, there is no adult guidance which drives the children to spiral out of control. No authority means there are no consequences for bad behavior; therefore the children were not afraid of getting in trouble for the things that they were doing. When fear of “The Beast” takes over the island, it begins to possess the boys and motivates them to do whatever they need to feel empowered and accepted. The boys’ fear of a higher power and lack of adult supervision urges them to kill two of the smartest and most innocent children on the island in search of respect from the other boys. In order to remain alive on the island the boys must compete for their lives. The innocent are bullied, and do not survive. The savagery that Golding presents his readers with in Lord of the Flies is still present in modern day society. Children lacking parental guidance tend to act out of their normal human nature as seen in Golding’s Lord of the Flies and, the Columbine Shootings.