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Lord of the flies book review essay
Themes of fear in Lord of the Flies
Lord of the flies book review essay
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Anthony Borrero
Feminella
Language Arts I
30 January 2017
Fear of the Unknown What would happen if boys from a civilized society were suddenly thrown together on an island with no adults? The novel "Lord of the Flies" is written by William Golding shortly after the end of World War II. The novel is about a group of English boys who are stranded on an island during the period of war. They discover that no one is on the island but themselves and therefore, they attempt to create their own society in order to sort things out while waiting for rescue. The theme in Lord of the Flies' fear of the unknown is a powerful force is evident in Golding's use of the beast, the pig hunts, and the darkness. In Lord of the Flies Golding shows many internal
The pig hunts were controlled by Jack and very dangerous for others that were innocent like Ralph, Piggy, and Simon. There was a lot of people in Jack's group doing everything he commanded them to do, even if it was something horrible like to go find Ralph and kill him. “They were all running, all crying out madly. He could hear them crashing in the undergrowth and on the left was the hot, bright thunder of the fire. He forgot his wounds, his hunger and thirst, and became fear; hopeless fear on flying feet, rushing through the forest toward the open beach. Spots jumped before his eyes and turned into red circles that expanded quickly till they passed out of sight. Below him someone's legs were getting tired and the desperate ululation advanced like a jagged fringe of menace and was almost overhead.” Pg. 329. This shows that Jack and his group were chasing Ralph and trying to kill
The beast is the savage monster buried in everyone. It destroyed society and turned everyone into lunatics. The pig hunts were controlled by Jack and very dangerous for others that were innocent like Ralph, Piggy, and Simon. There was a lot of people in Jack's group doing everything he commanded them to do, even if it was something horrible like to kill someone. The beast is alive in this darkness just like the littluns feared the beast in the darkness of night. Fear of the unknown is one of mankind's deepest and most common
Ralph joins Jack and the hunters in the hunt for the pig and gets caught up in the excitement of the kill. Prior to this, Ralph has been the voice of reason and common sense on the island. Now, he has let his urge to kill take over, and he is obviously excited and enjoying it.
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.
Jack’s negative effects on others are shown when “Maurice pretended to be the pig and ran squealing into the center, and the hunters, circling still, pretended to beat him” (75). This quote displays Jack’s evil influence because he has made perfectly normal British boys act like mindless savages and participate in this sadistic ritual. The hunters seem to regress to more prehistoric times as they enjoy performing this act. Jack also changes the boys’ behavior when, “The beast struggled forward, broke the ring and fell over the steep edge of the rock to the sand by the water. At once the crowd surged after it, poured down the rock, leapt on to the beast, screamed, struck, bit, tore. There were no words, and no movements but the tearing of teeth and claws” (153). This quote is essential because it conveys that Jack has altered the boys’ minds to such a degree, that they are blinded by their bloodlust and can’t even tell that the “beast” that they are mutilating is really Simon. It also shows how delirious Jack has made these once civilized children. As you can see, Jack is not a necessarily evil person, but he creates evil
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
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
...so much that anything that they see in the dark, they imagine it as the beast. Therefore, the fear of the beast is the most dangerous and destructive force on the island.
The beast in the story symbolizes the gradation of the morality among the boys. The compete each other becoming in the last survivor and the commander of group. The beast is not a real object which they believe if exists. They don’t realize the internal beast inside of them. Only Simon understands what the real beast is, but is killed when he tries to tell them about that. The beast mind and soul of the boys lead them to the collapse of the society. They begin killing each other and the trustworthy has lost.
forgets about the beast and ignores it. After a while, though, some of the boys are in Jack's tribe because of their fear, but not their fear. of the beast of the sea. They stay in Jack's group because they are afraid of Jack and, eventually, Roger. Jack controls them all by showing he is merciless.
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.
The fear of the beast, was an essential one to the story of The Lord of the Flies, as it manifests into different characters.
Whether as a child or as a grown adult, we’ve all been afraid of something. A huge focal point in the book Lord of the Flies is what the beast is, a unexplainable monster conjured up by the fear of a group of marooned British boys on an island in the Pacific Ocean. The beast is an amalgam of subjects throughout Lord of the Flies, symbolizing fear, then war, and towards the end of the book, the savage nature of the human heart.
Jack corrodes the group using the beast as during the meal Jack screams “Kill the beast! Cut his throat! Spill his blood!” Jack didn’t care to first scout out or pursue who the beast was and ended up killing Simon, who just came to explain his discovery of the beast. In this incident Jack caused the group to cross the boundary line to savages who lack rational thinking because of they had murdered Simon.
In chapter five, the beast was made-up and did not exist. Many of the boys were afraid of it. Ralph called a meeting because he saw the boys were having problems with their fear of the beast. It is Jack who states, “If there were a beast I’d have seen it. Be frightened because you’re like that- but there is no beast in the forest (Goldberg, p. 83). Symbolism for the beast changes in the novel from a real beast that they think exists to realizing that the beast exists within them. It is Simon in chapter five who states that perhaps the beast exist within them. He states, “What I mean is … maybe it’s only us (Goldberg, p. 89). Simon felt that the beast does not really exist but evil exists among them.
William Goldning’s Lord of the Flies is an allegorical novel where literary techniques are utilized to convey the main ideas and themes of the novel. Two important central themes of the novel includes loss of civilization and innocense which tie into the concept of innate human evil. Loss of civilization is simply the transition from civilization to savagery; order to chaos. The concept of loss of innocense is a key concept to innate human evil because childhood innocense is disrupted as the group hunted animals and even their own. Through the use of literary techniques these ideas are seen in the passage where Simon confronts the “Lord of the Flies.”