Comparing Power In Lord Of The Flies And The Tempest By William Golding

In ‘Lord of the Flies’ and ‘The Tempest’ William Golding and William Shakespeare both present a strong theme of power throughout both of the literary texts including power represented through fear and through nature.
The novel ‘Lord of the Flies’ written in 1954 tells the story of a group of school boys surviving on an island. Life on the island becomes chaotic and represents a microcosm of the bigger world. On the island Ralph represents the power of a capitalist fighting for democracy and Jack portrays that of a fascist. Ralph also represents a democratic society which is ruled by power for the sake of law and order and in contrast to this Jack represents an autocratic society governed by power just for the sake of having power. In ‘The Tempest’ written in the 1600’s the play reflects the colonisation of countries occurring at that period of time, Shakespeare writes this clearly as most people want to rule the island for example Caliban ‘ As I told thee before, I am subject to a tyrant, a sorcerer, that by his cunning hath cheated me of the island’.
In act 1 scene 2 Prospero explains to Miranda of the power he once had as the prince of Milan before his brother Antonio gradually stole his power while he studied magic ‘The ivy which had hid my princely trunk’ Shakespeare uses the imagery of ivy to

This results in chaos and the eventual loss of Ralph’s authority as chief. The build up to the loss of power in ‘The Tempest’ compared to ‘Lord of the Flies’ has a contrasting approach but is also unexpected as ‘The Tempest’ unlike ‘Lord of the Flies’ lacks the foreshadowing of Jack’s savageness. ‘But I shall! Next time! I‘ve got to get a barb on this