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Explain social structure and its influence on everyday living
Explain the dynamics of power in Lord of the Flies
Social structure theory
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The Conch and disorder In our society, law is what keeps our country in wraps. Order is key to running a steady and organized nation. In Lord of the Flies, the children manage to maintain a peaceful civilization with a conch shell. The conch rallies groups and gives people a chance to speak out. The conch represents order, but the beast brings out the fear and dysfunction of the children. The group is torn apart as the beast wreakes paranoia on the members, but it is merely a figment of their imagination. Jack breaking from the group, the stealing of Piggy’s specs, and the breaking of the conch all lead to the demise of society itself on the island. While the conch represents ordinance and harmony, the beast symbolizes fear and disorganization, …show more content…
Then, one night, Jack and a small group raid Ralph's hut and steals piggy's specs (Piggy's glasses is the only tool to start a fire on the island). The is the second step from breaking away from order. "'I thought they wanted the conch'. Ralph trotted down the pale beach and jumped on to the platform. The conch still glimmered by the chief's seat. He gazed for a moment or two, then went back to Piggy. 'They didn't take the conch'" (Golding 168). Since the specs is the only thing thing that makes fire, you could say that they represent fire itself. Fire was vital to our prehistoric ancestors, so you can connect fire to our primal instincts. So when Jack stole the specs instead of the conch, he took a step back from society. After Ralph and Piggy confronts Jack and his group, the conch is smashed into pieces. When this happens, all order is completely lost. Jack and his group are now in complete control, and there is no hope of the children going back into the customs of society. When the conch is destroyed, Piggy is killed. "The rock struck Piggy a glancing blow from the chin to the knee; the conch exploded into a thousand white fragments and ceased to exist. ... the body of Piggy was gone. This time the silence was complete. Ralph's lips formed a word but no sound came. Suddenly Jack bounded out from the tribe and begun to scream wildly. 'See? See? That's what you'll get! I meant that! There isn't a tribe for you anymore! The conch is gone-' He ran forward, stooping. 'I'm chief!'" (Golding 181) When the conch and Piggy disappeared, Jack claimed that he was chief. I think that even though the conch was broken, he still would have "considered" Ralph to be a chief. But now that Piggy was gone, there would be no one on Ralph's side, so Jack takes the title of chief for
The evil in man is seen in many parts of life and it could be only be brought out when they have the power and position to do it. In the novel Lord of the Flies by William Golding symbolism is used to show the theme of the Inherent Evil of Man through the conch, the Lord of the Flies, and the fire. The breaking of the conch shows how the boys forget authority and destroy their only symbol of civilization. The Lord of the Flies shows the violence of the boys, and the temptation of the evil Lord of the Flies. The fire shows how something used for rescue and hope is turned into something violent and evil. The fire burns down trees and parts of the island when the savage boys are trying to kill Ralph.
Authority plays a vital role in the modern world through contrasting forms of government and the struggle for power between leaders. The leader of a society asserts power over its citizens with the aim to create the laws, which hold the society together. Once authority is demolished within a community, the power spreads to its citizens in which total chaos collectively overtakes the society. The process of law-making and a struggle for power takes precedence in William Golding’s allegorical novel, Lord of the Flies, through the conch shell found upon the shore. The conch grants superiority to one member of the group over the others, it is used to call assemblies and assists in choosing the speakers during important meetings. When the conch
In Lord of the Flies, there is a theme that runs throughout the book that relates to a historical instance that changed society. Throughout the book there is a power struggle between Jack and his hunters and Ralph, the Littluns and Piggy. Jack represents a dictatorship and Ralph and the others want a democracy where everyone’s opinion and vote matters. This correlates with the civil war times, when the North wanted freedoms and equality for all people and the south wanted to dictate how others lived. Jack represents the oppressive southern states that wanted to rule over the black Americans. Ralph represents the northern states that wanted a democracy where everyone’s ideas mattered.
What is the function of the conch in the assembly? It serves that people could speak their mind and no one could interrupt while the person with the conch.“And another thing. We can’t have everybody talking at once. We’ll have to have ’Hands up’ like at school.”(pg.44) Ralph proposes this because it gets confusing when people are talking at once and it would work better if there is a panic.“That’s what this shell’s called. I’ll give the conch to the next person to speak. He can hold it when he’s speaking.”(pg.45) “And he won’t be interrupted: Except by me.” Ralph knows that the conch joined all together and he is proving himself to the others that he is a natural leader.
Power as defined by the Oxford Dictionary is “the capacity or ability to direct or influence the behavior of others or the course of events.” In the book Lord of the Flies, written by William Golding, power and in some cases the lack of power play a vital role in explaining the story. The story is about a group of young British boys who are stranded on an island and forced to create a civilization of their own. William Golding chose a conch shell to symbolize power. The conch shell plays a very vital role in representing power and the way that a civilization created by power, can be slowly broken down because of lack of power.
Generally speaking, the conch has represented democracy and collectiveness throughout the novel. Golding uses the conch to highlight many different ideas in the book by setting the story on an island, which is a microcosm of the entire world and the world that the boys lived in before encountering the fateful crash of the plane. The group of boys encounter problems which, even on this island, they are unable to escape from. It is important to remember that at the same time, there is a nuclear war taking place. The ‘long scar’ that ‘smashed into the jungle’ implies that the island has already been ruined permanently. It seems as though the attempt to remove the boys from a war-filled world has failed because the island is already contaminated by the crash of the plane, which was shot down by an enemy plane, this is somewhat related to warfare. The boys now need to survive on the island and this causes problems revolving around social order, as there are no adults present. In that case, some of the problems are attempted to be resolved by using the conch.
They thought their society was stable; they thought it would last. It all started with the conch shell that gathered them. In the book The Lord of the Flies by William Golding, a group of boys became nomads on an island causing them to take on the biggest challenge of their lives, survival. The traits for a successful survivalist would include cooperation, maturity and responsibility. But if they can’t achieve those traits they will crash, causing chaos on the island.
As the boys time on the island goes on the conch slowly becomes of less and less valuable. When the boys first start to make a fire on top of the mountain, Piggy takes the conch and tries to speak, shortly after Jack interrupts him. Jack stops him by saying," The conch doesn’t count on top of the mountain" Said Jack," So you shut up" (Golding42). He starts disrespecting the boys and the conch. Jack sees all the weaknesses in Ralph’s way of order. When the boys no longer respect the conch everything takes a turn "the conch had been two of the few representations of civilization and common sense on the island " (Saidi,Hasan). Without the conch there are no rules and no way of order. “Jack was the first to make himself heard. He had not got the conch and thus spoke against the rules; but nobody minded” (Golding 87). The conch fades and the slowly fading of the conch represents the slowly fading of the peace and agreement of the boys. "[Ralph] took the conch down from the tree and examined the surface. Exposure to the air had bleached the yellow and pink to a near-white transparen...
"A conch he called it. He used to blow it and his mum would come. It's ever so valuable" Piggy, Lord of the Flies. The novel Lord of the Flies, by William Golding, is about an island of stranded young boys and their acts of survival among other events. In the book, there are many objects that symbolize a certain trait or idea. The conch, first written on page fifteen of chapter one, has a much larger symbol then most readers know. In fact, it can symbolize many things, such as power and order among the island of boys. This conch can be classified as a character all its own. As you read Lord of the Flies, the symbol of the conch can be unclear, for it actually has many symbols, as do main characters such as Ralph and Jack. The conch is an important object in the novel Lord of the Flies.
In the beginning of the novel, Ralph and Piggy find a conch shell on the beach. Remembering something from before their plane crashed onto the island, Piggy says to blow into the conch; Ralph does so. Almost instantly, the other boys begin to come to them. Immediately, the conch is seen as a sign of power. The boys impose a "rule of the conch" on themselves, deciding that no boy may speak unless he's holding the conch. This shows that the conch stands for law and order, which is main trait of democracy. It reveals how conditioned we are to society. The boys need to have a syste...
The destruction of the conch and the death of Piggy represents the elimination of order, wisdom, and civilization, and the full influence of savagery and chaos. That is because Piggy represents wisdom and civilization - without him most of the innovations on the island wouldn’t have come true, like the fire. Also, he would always be the first one to point who’s holding the conch, trying to keep order around the island. Moreover, the conch represents order and civilization as well, for reasons I have mentioned before.
In his novel Lord of the Flies, William Golding presents a conch shell representing the order of civilization. He uses this symbol to effectively portray the theme that humans are inherently evil and have savage desires, shown through the decline from discipline and peace among the boys on the deserted island. In the novel, civilization directly correlates to the boys’ past lives in England. Before coming to the island, there were adults present who maintained order by enforcing rules and punishing those who did not follow them. However on the island, the conch, representing this society, is a powerful object that demands the respect of the boys in a similar way that the adults do.
In Lord of the Flies, a group of well brought up English boys are pushed into the task of surviving on an island by themselves. In the beginning, order, leadership, and fire are the only things that help the boys realize that there is hope for being rescued. As the boys’ time on the island continues to increase, they become more tempted to let their inner beast within them take over. As order is lost, the boys try to cope with the fact that they may be on the island for awhile. So, they revert to savage ways in order to cope with it. Their schoolboy behaviors become non-existent and chaos breaks loose. The conch shell, the Beast, leadership, murder, and fire are all five main elements that help lead the boys into their plug to savagery because without rules and discipline their will be chaos.
tool that can call a meeting and wherever the Conch is thats where the meeting
The laws and the government created. Whoever held the conch was allowed to talk and the rest had to listen quietly. The relevance of is the that laws are put in place to day to establish order and right from wrong without this the boys themselves are morally lost. In doing so they become beast. Lord of the flies relates to the biblical story of Sodom and Gomorrah in that both the evil and wicked ness that takes over the boys and like Sodom and Gomorrah leads to their