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Sociological idea of the lord of the flies
What effect did war world 2 have on american literature
Sociological idea of the lord of the flies
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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.
After the boys crash on the island, their immediate reaction to the island is its beauty. The weather on the island was hot and humid, without a breeze. The look of the “dazzling beach and the water” (Golding) is unlike anything they have ever seen. The island was superior in their eyes as “The boys find themselves in a tropical paradise: bananas, coconuts, and other fruits are profusely available.” (Slayton) There was no fear and an instant commodore due to the circumstance. However, after becoming comfortable, a natural fear of the unknown begins to settle “as if it wasn’t a good island” (Golding) and they find themselves faced with an entity named, The Beast. This dark fear comes back to haunt them later.
As they begin to become established in their new living quarters, the young boys realize a need for authority in order to properly delegate among their new tribe. They create a concrete form of authority named The Conch Shell, an empty conch shell that can be blown into to create a sound. The Conch shell stands for a society of laws in which people take their turn speaking.” (Telgen) However, an incid...
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...hey were on the island. “The officer, surrounded by these noises, was moved and a little embarrassed. He turned away to give them time to pull themselves together; and waiting, allowing his eyes to rest on the trim cruiser in the distance.” (Golding) With this image of the island, and the boys returning to society nothing will ever be the same because of the makeshift world beyond the island.
The Lord of the Flies is a representation of what is still alive and well in today’s society throughout the world. While the obvious solution to avoiding a dystopian nature would be to coexist in a proper and civil society, there are too many variables in human nature to achieve such a utopia. They “wept for the end of innocence, the darkness of man’s heart, and the fall through the air.” (Golding) One can only hope that a perfect society can be reached in their lifetime.
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.
...tence to live freely. Pi and the boys are constantly forced in problematic situations. Pi begins in a dark state but comes out and conquers his mind into a state of peace. The boys where the complete opposite. The boys begin in a modest mind set, but quickly spiraling downwards. The dysfunctional society is a message that young boys cannot survive on their own. Both novels are very intriguing. In its time it brought out many. “At one point in the novel, Ralph thinks of the world beyond the island and considers the possibility that “we might get taken by the Reds.” After World War II, a great rivalry sprang up between the countries of the West, most notably the United States and Great Britain, and the satellite nations of the Soviet Union, which was newly empowered by annexation of several countries that had previously been occupied by Germany” (Constantakis 187).
When we hear the word “beast,” most of us will immediately think of some enormous hairy creature with razor sharp fangs and massive claws coming to kill and eat us. Although these types of beasts do exist, the boys in William Golding’s Lord of the Flies, show that a different, much more sinister beast is present in all of our everyday lives, and, like the boys in the book, most of us don’t even know about it. Throughout the book, the existence and meaning of the beast go through significant changes. In the beginning, the boys believe the beast to be a substantive being. At first no one believes it, but later they begin to believe its existence. Later though, the beast reveals itself as an internal flaw within everyone on the island, and slowly begins to take over the children’s free will. As the belief in the beast goes up, its manifestation as the “typical beast” that we all think of goes down, which is ironic because they are creating the beast in their minds, while also living it out in their actions.
William Golding, author of Lord of the Flies, creates a dystopian society which displays civilized English schoolboys transform into human natures barbaric state. It starts after the crash of their school’s plane onto an uninhabited island where Golding demonstrates how humans have an innate compulsion to be corrupt and chaotic. The boys first want to mimic their British civilization, but later on their mindset starts to change when they lose hope on being rescued. In the beginning, they make a miniature democratic society which had the flaw of higher power. After hope of rescue starts to dwindle and the fear of the “beast” dawns on the boys, their sense of civilization begins to diminish, and the democratic society starts to crumble. The conditions that the boys went through shows how civilized citizens can turn into barbaric savages.
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 boys find their id being challenged by their ego. Ego is described as the “part of the id which has been modified by the direct influence of the external world,” meaning it is the part of the psyche which suppresses basic impulses according to the norms or “rules” of a person’s situation (Freud 1923). In the initial days on the island, the boys actions are greatly affected by the rules of their previous society or their “ego.” When Roger was throwing rocks at the young boys, there was still “a space round Henry...into which [Roger] dare not throw.” Here, Roger is still affected by “the taboo of the old life” and still concerned with social norms as he hasn’t been on the island long enough to revert to his inner primitive nature (Golding 83). The boys are also being held back by something else- their desire for order and leadership. When Ralph and Piggy happen upon the conch, it isn’t ever seen as just a shell. They almost immediately see the conch as a way to gather the boys and a way to provide structured speaking. Ralph’s first thought is that they “ought to have a chief to decide things," because it’s what he and the other boys are used to (Golding 27). The positive reaction to the idea of having a chief shows their trust in leadership and societal structure. Once Ralph’s leadership is challenged, and the structure is lost, the barbaric behavior begins, and the boys become more susceptible to groupthink and
the story of a group of boys stranded on a deserted island to examine a multitude of
William Golding’s novel ‘The Lord of The flies’ presents us with a group of English boys who are isolated on a desert island, left to try and retain a civilised society. In this novel Golding manages to display the boys slow descent into savagery as democracy on the island diminishes.
This conch is the only connection to the order and rules of the boys’ past lives, as there is no other influence on them in the isolated natural state of the island. Golding’s readers are able to see the boys’ return to their innate savagery as they increasingly reject all that the conch represents. When the shell finally ceases to exist, cruel savagery and terrorizing fear take over the island. Their inherently savage selves are finally
Imagine being a child stranded on an island. There are no adults around to give rules or tell you what to do. You could play all day, sleep all night and do whatever you want. In the novel.“Lord of the Flies”, by William Golding, a group of young boys become stranded on an island after a plane crash. They must face problems that exist in the wilderness. The boys must find water, food, and shelter to survive. They also face different weather conditions.
Similarily, there is a disillusionment with humanity in spite of rescue. There's still a war going on off the island, and it's decidedly not a happy ending. This song can also relate to Simon, who asks the question that defines the story. “Maybe there is a beast… maybe it's only us.?”(80). The other children laugh at him. He is a loner by nature. Ultimately, the savagery of the other boys make them turn on Simon as if he were a pig and he gets killed. Also in the song, these lyrics define the boy's’ dream to get off the island. “ And I find it kind of funny, I find it kind of sad. “The dreams in which I'm dying are the best I've ever had. I find it hard to tell you, I find it hard to take. When people run in circles it's a very very mad world mad world.” These lyrics show how when in the beginning of the island, all the boys were on a mission to get of the island. Later on, their dreams were crushed when everybody was disagreeing with each other and turning the island into a “Mad World.” As a matter of fact, these lines from the song really depict how many of the boys turned into savages,” I like all the mixed emotion and
The island’s first government is a democratic one, created at the beginning of the novel. When the boys arrive on the island, two characters named Ralph and Piggy meet as they begin to look around the site where their plane has crashed. When they find a conch shell, they decide to use it to make a noise and call the other boys to a meeting. William Golding uses the conch shell throughout the book as a symbol of democratic government. Those assembled—except for Jack’s choir—vote that Ralph should be chief, and he sets up a democratic system where anyone is allowed to talk. This system involves using the shell like a talking stick: anyone who wants to talk holds the shell and everyone else must listen to what they have to say. As a goal for the group, Ralph says they should try to be rescued. Most of the boys respect Ralph and look up to him, so they support this goal. Rescue is a long-term goal, and this shows that Ralph thinks about the future....
Whereas in a healthy mind the Id, Ego, and Superego are interconnected, on the island the three become segregated, with the Id trying to remove the other two from the mind. After the plane crashes on the island, a “scar” is created and soon after the children begin removing their clothes: “[s]ome were naked and carrying their clothes; others half-naked…”(18). The injury to the island caused by the plane crash is followed by the boys “removing” their clothing, directly correlating to the boys' civility being eliminated. The link between the civility of the boys and the condition of the island substantiates the claim that the island is the book’s representation of the boys’ mental soundness. Towards the end of the story, the island is engulfed in flames, and British naval officer finds the boys on the smoldering island. Percival, a little boy attempts to speak with the officer but fails: “One of them came close to the officer and looked up. ‘I'm, I'm--’ But there was no more to come. Percival Wemys Madison sought in his head for an incantation that had faded clean away”( (-- removed HTML --) ). The boy who had once remembered his full name, address, and telephone number, now has no memory of any of those things; similarly, the island is nearly destroyed, portraying the “fading ”of the boys’ minds, resulting in only the Id being left (Jack being the only boy left with any
In William Golding’s novel, Lord of the Flies, a young boy named Ralph loses his innocence once he develops an awareness of the torment, evil, and pain around him.
“I think that’s the real loss of innocence: the first time you glimpse the boundaries that will limit your potential” (Steve Toltz). In the previous quote, Steve Toltz discusses the transition from innocence to corruption. William Golding’s Lord of the Flies illustrates the loss of innocence through various characters: Jack, who struggles with pride and a thirst for power; Roger, who revels in the pain of others and uses fear to control the boys; Simon, who represents the demise of purity when humans are at their most savage; Ralph, who illustrates the struggle people endure when attempting to be civilized near the savage; and Piggy, who suffers because he has the only technology necessary to survive. Golding enforces the theory that true innocence will often pay the price to sustain true evil by arranging the characters' personalities and actions in a way that correlates to the effects of Darwin's evolution theory, "survival of the fittest" (). Jack is a good example of this as he exerts power over the weak and uses his skills in hunting to survive. The thirst to prove his masculinity overrides his innate purity, effectively corrupting him. Jack’s loss of innocence begins a domino effect that begins to influence the others.