Viewing the Text from a Different Perspective
Many times in novels the elements of setting, mood and tone are used to extend beyond the words in a text and elaborate the reader’s mind into imagining the actual events taking place. In the classic novel, Lord of the Flies, William Golding utilizes the setting, mood and tone in great detail to reflect how the characters think, act and feel.
Upon a desolate tropical island, a group of boys of different characteristics get marooned when their plane crashes. Golding describes the island in a way that appeals to the reader as paradise,
“The palms that stood made a green roof, covered on the underside with a quivering tangle of reflections from the lagoon...It was clear to the bottom and bright with the efflorescence of tropical weed and coral. A school of tiny, glittering fish flicked hither and thither.” (p.12)
The island itself suggests a place of wonder and relaxation. Providing the reader with the impression of an utopia society, an impression that will soon be contradicted as the novel progresses.
After a signal fire is ignited by Ralph’s orders, two young twins, Sam and Eric stand guard in maintaining the fire. While on duty, an eerie figure drifts down from the sky and lands in the forest several yards away from Sam and Eric.
“There was a sudden bright explosion and corkscrew trail across the sky...There was a speck above the island, a figure dropping swiftly beneath a parachute, a figure that hung with dangling limbs. The changing winds of various altitudes took the figure where they would. Then three miles up, the wind steadied and bore it in a descending curve round the sky and swept it in a great slant across the reef and the lagoon toward the mountain.” (p.95)
The dead parachutist, also known as the beast, is used to foreshadow the death of Simon, a small although intellectual boy. The parachutist shows the idea of one man slaughtering another as he dies in war.
As Simon, returns to the other boys to inform them of his encounter with the parachutist (the beast), he is mistaken for the beast and is brutally attacked. The effects of lighting, rain as well as wind aroused the sensation of rage and excitement in the boys in their slaughter.
“The beast struggled forward, broke the ring and fell over the steep edge of rock to the sand by the water.
Our first aspect of Fear in the novel comes into play with the Beast. This fictional character becomes the center of the boys problems on the island and brings a long chaos and death. Simon is murdered due to the befuddlement of Simon being mistaken as the beast when in fact he was the jesus like figure and his death was a representation of sacrifice. The beast was not something tangible it was simply the boys because the beast was themselves. Our biggest demons in life rest within oneself, and on the island the beast was just a justification for the boys to blame their wrong doings on. William Golding refers to this using the role of simon by stating: “Fancy thinking the Beast was something you could hunt and kill! You knew, didn’t you? I’m part of you? Close, close, close! I’m the reason why it’s no go? Why things are what they are" (158)?
... middle of paper ... ... The frenzied state they are in is being caused by the beast, a symbol of fear. The barbaric way the boys attacked Simon without a moment of restraint shows that the beast had summoned their inner evil, primal, and savage minds.
In conclusion, we can assume that Golding was trying to use religious and war motifs as well as the themes of civilization versus savagery to illustrate the decay the island from good to evil, the reader can use Golding’s selection of words and description to deduce the way in which the island was becoming: rotten and vicious. This further on builds on Golding’s idea of mankind’s evil nature – the thematic epicentre of the novel.
The Occam’s razor explanation, meaning the simplest one is the most likely explanation would suggest that Oswald was the perfect assassin and the only assassin. There are red flags in his childhood and early adult life that suggest he could
In viewing the aspects of the island society, the author William Golding's Lord of the Flies as a symbolic microcosm of society. He chooses to set the children alone in an unsupervised world, leaving them to learn ' the ways of the world' in a natural setting first hand. Many different perspectives can also be considered. Golding's island of marooned youngsters becomes a microcosm. The island represents the individual human and the various characters represent the elements of the human psyche.
Many refer to it as the Lord of the Flies, Simon, though, offers a different approach to the matter. Regarding the beast, Simon’s “inward sight the picture of a” man “once heroic and sick”. This gives proof to Simon wisdom, making him stands on a superior level in terms of intelligence and philosophy from the other boys. Simon recognizes the beast’s true identity when he attempts to explain to the boys that there is no real beast, it’s only the fear of themselves. "What I mean is . . . maybe it's only us.” (Golding 89) However, his “effort fell about him in ruins;” as “the laughter beat him cruelly and he shrank away defenseless to his seat.” (Golding 89) The response Simon receives show that the audience is not ready to accept the meaningful truth, that the fear of themselves causes a deception among the boys to create an illusion of a fleshly beast. Simon is willing to persist on a quest of unraveling the false beast, because he wants the boys to face their fear, the beast within themselves. Along the way, he comes face to face with the Lord of the Flies, literally described as a severed pig’s head impaled upon a stake, “a gift for the beast” (Golding 137). The encounter consolidates the idea that the real beast is more about the concept of evil, which is what the figure represents, than a physical creature that can do harm to the community. Fearing that
The Lord of the Flies is an ultimately pessimistic novel. In the midst of the cold war and communism scares, this disquieting aura acts as a backdrop to the island. The Lord of the Flies addresses questions like how do dictators come to power, do democracies always work, and what is the natural state and fate of humanity and society, getting at the heart of human nature in a very male-dominated, conflict-driven way. The war, the plane shot down, and the boys' concern that the "Reds" will find them before the British, shows Golding's intention of treating the boys' isolated existence as a microcosm of the adult military world.
Another of the symbols that was used to present the theme of the novel is the beast. The boys believed that the beast is an external source of evil. Though, in reality, it represents the evil present within them, which is causing life on the island to worsen. Simon begins to realize this even befor...
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.
... athletes feel more secure than their female counterparts. Lopiano and Sommers create realistic, reliable and clear material that uncovers how female athletes struggle to gain media coverage. The article by Lopiano (2008) is broad and simple, while the article by Sommers (2010) is specific and precise. Overall, Lopiano and Sommers prove to be effective, straightforward, and unique sources that challenge the inconsistency of media coverage between female athletes and male athletes.
The National Football League (NFL) has been a staple on Sunday’s in America homes for quiet sometime. It provides excitement and generates billion’s of dollars, but what I told you that this league may lose viewers or even not exist in a few years. The NFL is a great brand, but what is potentially going up against may have you scratching your head as a parent to let your child even take a snap early in his football career if not taken care of.
The boys’ fear of the beast causes them to pay no attention to their morals and act savagely to defeat it. However, Simon is ultimately able to understand the beast and avoid savagery because his embrace of nature allows him to avoid any fears of the island. Simon demonstrates this lack of fear when he climbs the mountain by himself in order to find the beast, despite the dangers that might await him. The hunters and even Piggy and Ralph want to avoid the mountain because that is the last place where the beast was seen, but Simon seems to Once he reaches the top, he finds a physical beast, but not the kind the boys were expecting: a dead parachutist. The parachutist serves as an ironic symbol of Simon’s understanding; the monster the boys were afraid was a human. In contrast, Piggy displays immense fear throughout the novel, especially about Jack. For most of the story, his appreciation of logic and order help him remain civilized, but eventually his fears overcome him and he acts savagely the night of Simon’s murder. As Golding states, “[Piggy and Ralph] found themselves eager to take place in this demented but partly secure society….[the crowd] leapt on the beast, screamed, struck, bit, tore” (136). After this occurrence and the theft of his glasses, Piggy decides to
When the children become stranded on the island, the rules of society no longer apply to them. Without the supervision of their parents or of the law, the primitive nature of the boys surfaces, and their lives begin to fall apart. The downfall starts with their refusal to gather things for survival. The initial reaction of the boys is to swim, run, jump, and play. They do not wish to build shelters, gather food, or keep a signal fire going. Consequently, the boys live without luxury that could have been obtained had they maintained a society on the island. Instead, these young boys take advantage of their freedom and life as they knew it deteriorates.
On contrary from all the other boys on the island Simon, a Christ like figure in the novel, did not fear the ‘beastie’ or the unknown. “Maybe there is a beast....maybe it's only us” Simon explained. (p. 97) The fear of the unknown in the novel contributes to the boys’ terror of the beast, the beast is an imaginary figure which lays in all of the boys’ minds and haunts them. Golding uses the beast as a symbol of the evil that exists in every creature. "You knew, didn't you? I'm part of you? Close, close close! I'm the reason why it's no go? Why things are the way they are?" The sow head announced to Simon to be the “lord of the flies”. The “lord of the flies” is a figure of the devil, and brings out all the evil and fear in people. It wants you to fear it, but if you don’t believe in the “lord of the flies” nothing can happen to you. Therefore Simon didn’t fall into the trap, but the beast killed him, meaning the other boys on the island did. Simon discovered that the beast is in fact just a dead parachute man before he died and ran down to tell the boys about his finding. When Sim...
William Golding’s book, The Lord of the Flies is a wonderful, fictional book about the struggle and survival of a group of boys trapped on an uninhabited island. This book kept me very interested and made me want to keep reading. The characters were very diverse and each had very appealing qualities in themselves. The setting is brilliantly described and the plot is surprisingly very well thought out. Many things like these make this book such a classic.