Fear In Lord Of The Flies

In the book Lord of the Flies there are many themes that stood out to me but the theme that stood out the most was the boy's fear of the unknown. The boys are faced with many challenges when they arrive on the uninhabited island. Boys no older than 12 years old are faced with the challenge of building a civilized community. During the process of building a community, the fear of the unknown begins to grow throughout the group of boys. "The beast," the paratrooper, and the reactions from the boys to their situations shows their fear of the unknown. The boys fear causes them to make bad decisions for their chance of being rescued. As their "society" fails to build shelters or to keep the signal fire going, fears emanating from within—for

Most of the boys believed them and the fear of their unknown dreams started to cause the older boys to also fear the unknown.
A nightmare amidst fretful sleep, causing one of the boys to cry out in the night, conjures up fearful "beasties" for the others. Their fears become more real than existence on the tropical paradise itself when the twins, Sam 'n Eric, report their enervating experience with the wind-tossed body of the dead parachutist. Despite Simon's declaration that "there is no beast, it's only us," and Piggy's disavowal of "ghosts and things," the fear of the unknown overcomes their British reserve and under Jack's all-too-willing chieftainship the boys' retreat from civilization begins ("Lord of the

The civilization that was started by the boys was broken because the fear of the unknown. Jack was the first one to rebel against Ralph and his community and he started his own. He was joined by many other people that had fear of the unknown and they started to become paranoid. Jack and his group start to become savages. Their fear of the unknown has changed the way the boys think and act. Simon, who did not believe in the beast, found out that there was no beast and that it was only created in the boy's imagination because of their fear. The beast was harmless and horrible; and the news must reach the others as soon as possible"(Golding).This is said by Simon before he died. He figured out that the beast was nothing less than a parachutist from the war. It is something important to tell the others but cost him his life. The timing is just off for when Simon decides to tell them. It showed that the fear has become so strong in the boys that they are willing to kill things or people if they present any type of threat because they are so