Lord of the Flies by William Golding and The Crucible by Arthur Miller are both known as works of literature that are not afraid of social criticism. Both books explore faces of society in a way In both novels, the effect that a form of government has on its community is demonstrated through the reaction of the citizens faced with different ideologies and fear through the perspectives of both authors on the subject.
To begin with, one of the main manoeuvres used to lead both societies is to propagate fear in order to successfully control them. In The Crucible, the leaders of the theocracy use witches in order to be able to make the community behave accordingly to their beliefs. The government uses a list in Reverend Hale’s witchcraft books
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In Lord of the Flies, the fear that is first brought up by an innocent little boy quickly becomes the gateway for Jack to bring people into his tribe. He uses the boys’ fear of the beast to successfully lead the kids and make them do anything he wants. Furthermore, in The Crucible, fear caused by the threat of being accused of being a witch leads citizens to a state of hysteria, neighbours blaming each other for acts that in reality, no one fully understands. They go on a complete witch hunt, trying desperately to eliminate the fear so greatly controlled by the government. In doing this they become one with the established government, proving themselves just as cowardly as them, without knowing that what they are eliminating is really an illusion, an abstract fear. In Lord of the Flies, the boys become so obsessed with catching the beast and eliminating their source of fear, that, just like the people of Salem, they go on a hunt for the beast, becoming completely hysterical. They start doing dances and chants and do things that most of them would never normally do. Although …show more content…
The concept of every human being of equal importance is completely ignored and the main effort is made on maintaining a superficially “perfect” society. In The Crucible, one big thing that can be noticed is that the people who think differently, also known as “the rebels” of the story, John Proctor and Rebecca Nurse, both die as a result of the unfair actions of the system of government. They portrayed as the only two sane characters in the play yet most people in Salem see them as the complete opposite. Their death leads the community to believe even more strongly in the ideas “invented” by the government by showing that people who rebel are witches and are not good people. The citizens cannot think for themselves and have their own ideas for they are exposed to the constant exclusion of the different people. So what? When a person cannot think for him or herself and all that’s left is people that agree with the government, a community cannot evolve. The world around them will continue to develop but they will stay at the same place in time. In Lord of The Flies’ case, Ralph, Piggy and Simon end up alone after most of the boys decide to join Jack’s tribe. Because both boys don’t have the same beliefs as the ones in Jack’s group, they are cast away and left with nothing.
In the Lord of the Flies fear takes over the boys and cause things to go downfall. The boys in Lord of the Flies might be afraid of the beast, but that fear turns out to be more dangerous than any beast could possibly be. The Lord of the Flies even says to Simon that “Fancy thinking the Beast was something you could hunt and kill! You knew, didn’t you? I’m part of you?
In the Crucible, people died because they were accused of witchcraft. They were accused because people thought they were bewitches. People thought the girls were bewitched because Rev.Parris saw the girls in the woods dancing around a fire. A chicken head was cut off and Abigail drinks the blood of the chicken. Society in the Crucible was that the Puritans believed everyone should share the same values and beliefs. So, if anyone
Power and control are the central ideas of Ken Kesey’s One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest. There are examples of physical, authoritative and mechanical power in the novel, as well as cases of self-control, and control over others. Nurse Ratched is the ultimate example of authoritative power and control over others but R.P. McMurphy refuses to acknowledge the Nurse’s power, and encourages others to challenge the status quo. The other patients begin powerless, but with McMurphy’s help, learn to control their own lives. Many symbols are also used to represent power and control in the book, such as the ‘Combine’, ‘fog’, and the imagery of machines.
The successful and what could have been successful societies in both Lord of the Flies and The Crucible eventually decayed and fell apart. There were struggles with good and evil in Salem and on the island that were the result of three main elements. Fear, misuse of power and fanatical religious beliefs were the cause of the two societies failure.
In 1860-1960 there was lynching in the United States. When the confederates (south) lost the civil war the slaves got freedom and got rights of human beings. This was just to say because segregation wasn 't over in the South and didn 't go away for over 100 years. Any black person in the South accused but not convicted of any crime of looking at a white woman, whistling at a white woman, touching a white woman, talking back to a white person, refusing to step into the gutter when a white person passed on the sidewalk, or in some way upsetting the local people was liable to be dragged from their house or jail cell by lots of people crowds, mutilated in a terrible
Men and women walk around in the same neutral colored clothing, hand in hand with the lord and their Puritan values. However, these seemingly ordinary Puritans are all similar in one form— sin. In archaic theme-based literature, similarities can be distinguished between two stories and their attributes. Within the works of The Scarlet Letter and The Crucible, a plethora of correlative elements can be identified by the reader.
Together there are many similarities of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and The Crucible both texts are based on an uprise of creativity. They are also both periods that encouraged conformity and were based on historical periods in the past. Together the texts were also based in a similar time and place and the characters in both texts also had a fear of the unknown and the minority. When compared these two texts have many similarities that are relevant in t...
In both storylines, there are characters that parallel each other and allow the viewers to see the overarching themes that permeate both movies. In Good Night and Good Luck, the main antagonist, Joseph McCarthy, is a foil for The Crucible’s Abigail Williams. They play the same role in the plot development of the movies and serve as antagonists who cause nothing but trouble. Although they differ in some aspects of their character, much of their motives and methods are quite similar.
Martin Luther King Jr. once said “The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.” People tend to behave and deal with life differently according to the situation that they are in. In most cases when a person is in a very blissful and comfortable point of his or her life, they tend to act pleasant towards themselves and other people. This is why it is not fair-minded to judge people when they are in a contented part of their lives. It is during times of trial and suffering where the true soul of a person is revealed and judgment can be made. Readers can see the actions that are made by characters through times of hardship that reveal what they truly are in To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee and The Crucible by Arthur Millar.
Hysteria does not just appear out of nowhere, though. There are driving forces such as revenge and abuse of power that bring about the irrational fear that can take over society. These are the issues expressed in Arthur Miller’s The Crucible. & nbsp ; & nbsp ; & nbsp ; & nbsp ; & nbsp ; The Crucible parallels directly to the Salem Witch Trials and indirectly to the McCarthy hearings of the 1950’s. The story of The Crucible takes place against the background of the Salem Witch, but the themes lie much deeper. The main themes expressed in The Crucible relate to the events that occurred at both the Salem Witch Trials and during the McCarthy era.
One of many prominent themes in William Golding's novel, the Lord of the Flies, is Fear. From the very first chapter, until the last, fear plays an important role in this text. It is the only thing, which stops the boys from acting rationally at times, from questioning curious circumstances and it physically hindered so many of the boys, so many times. The active role of fear in Lord of the Flies, was intentionally used by Golding, because he knew what images it would create. Fear is described by Mirriam- Webster's English dictionary, as To be uneasy or apprehensive'. This feeling is mutually experienced by all of the boys on the island in many different ways. Initially the boys have an obvious fear of being alone, which then brings upon the fear of what we know as the beast, or as the littluns refer to is, as the beastie'. While this fear continues for the whole of the novel, we are also exposed to three other incidents of fear. The first of these is the civilised fear of consequences, displayed only when the children are seen as young civilised boys, in the earliest chapters. The final two are of a different nature, with those fears being the loss of power, the fear of rejection and the fear of being in the minority. All of these different fears, then relate back to the character, and as was expertly planned out by William Golding, influences the characters attitudes and behaviours.
In William Golding’s novel, Lord of the Flies, and Kendra Cherry’s article, “The Milgram Obedience Experiment”, the comparable fear factor, and naive mindset of individuals put under dire circumstances leads to the corruption of society and rise of evil in humans. Fear factors are an influential resource, and useful tactic leaders use to instil dominant power in their citizens, if this power is abused, evil and chaos occurs. For example, in Lord of the Flies, when Samneric get captured by Jack, Jack terrorizes them, snapping, “What d’you mean coming here with spears? What d’you mean by not joining my tribe?” the twins try to escape but fear takes over their morals and they, “...lay looking up in quiet terror” (Golding 182). As Jack threatens
Throughout The Crucible, written by Arthur Miller, fear is used as a control tactic. Fear escalates quickly through the responsible parties – Abigail Williams, Reverend John Hale, and Deputy Governor Danforth – and soon the town succumbs to it. Fear is not used by all of the responsible parties for control, as in controlling the people in order to be the “top dog” so to speak, but as a way to prevent their own accusation or conviction of witchcraft. They each used their own methods of creating fear in order to beat the stakes.
The Salem Witch Trials began in 1672 while the Red Scare started in the late 1940s through the early 1950s. The time difference between the two seems so immense, some could say the two events are not comparable. The Crucible was also not relatable to the 1940s in many ways. The way of life was simply different during the Salem Witch Trials, making it difficult to make the event relatable to the modern day, even with the similarities. Some scenes in The Crucible, such as the courthouse or hanging of the accused, seems nonsensical to the McCarthy Era. The different time periods also chose different types of people to accuse. In The Crucible, it shows the outsiders, like the poor and elderly, getting accused. On the contrary, the well-known were questioned about Communism. Between the roughly 2000 something years, very much had changed, making The Crucible inapplicable and the setting a weak
A distressing emotion aroused by impending evil and pain, whether the threat is real or imagined is described as fear. Fear is what William Golding’s novel Lord of the Flies encompasses. By taking three major examples from the novel, fear will be considered on different levels: Simon’s having no instance of fear, Ralph’s fear of isolation on the island, and Jack’s fear of being powerless. Fear can make people behave in ways that are foreign to them, whether their fear is real or imagined. In response to fear, people may act defensively by attacking, fear can either stop one from doing something, or it can make one behave in an irrational erratic manner.