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Innocence in american literature
Literary symbols of lord of the flies
Literary symbols of lord of the flies
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What I found most interesting about The Lord of the Flies was the William Golding’s decision to use male children as the main characters. He easily could have written the same book with male adults, but he decided to use young children to explore human nature, even what we consider the most innocent human nature, that of a child. It would make far more sense to most authors to use grown men on the island. After all, it would almost be expected in our culture that adults would revert to some sort of primal nature when stranded on an island together. Adults in our society are considered to be world-worn, battle scarred beings. Adults are thought to have lost their innocent, child-like thoughts somewhere along the way when the real world came crashing upon their shoulders. Children, however, are the peak of innocence. …show more content…
Piggy balks at this, denying that it was murder, saying it was only an accident. This is an example of Piggy grasping desperately at innocence. Not only his innocence but also that of the other boys. This loss of innocence reminds me of the song “I Dreamed a Dream” from the musical Les Misérables. While the circumstances of the lost innocence are very different for the group of boys in Lord of the Flies than for Fantine in Les Misérables, there are many parallels. An example of one of these parallels is when Fantine sings “He took my childhood in his stride” (para. 5). The island took the boy’s childhood from them; but they did not become adults either. Rather, their terrible journey made them more “grown up” than many adults could ever be, for many adults would never experience something so horrible. Fantine also
Elie’s loss of innocence and childhood lifestyle is very pronounced within the book, Night. This book, written by the main character, Elie Wiesel, tells the readers about the experiences of Mr. Wiesel during the Holocaust. The book starts off by describing Elie’s life in his hometown, Sighet, with his family and friends. As fascism takes over Hungary, Elie and his family are sent north, to Auschwitz concentration camp. Elie stays with his father and speaks of his life during this time. Later, after many stories of the horrors and dehumanizing acts of the camp, Elie and his father make the treacherous march towards Gliewitz. Then they are hauled to Buchenwald by way of cattle cars in extremely deplorable conditions, even by Holocaust standards. The book ends as Elie’s father is now dead and the American army has liberated them. As Elie is recovering in the hospital he gazes at himself in a mirror, he subtly notes he much he has changed. In Night by Elie Wiesel, Elie loses his innocence and demeanour because he was traumatized by what he saw in the camps, his loss of faith in a God who stood idly by while his people suffered, and becoming selfish as he is forced to become selfish in the death camps to survive.
Golding's motives for choosing the island setting for the novel, Lord of the Flies was to have the characters isolated, where the laws of their governments could not reach them. The boys on the island represented a microcosm of world society. Golding chose children because they have not yet been fully conditioned by society to understand right from wrong, and thus are guided by their instinct and what is inherent within them. Golding uses a great deal of symbolism throughout the novel. Different characters provide different symbols. Jack is a symbol of savagery and anarchy. Golding relates the inherent evil with Jack to the evil and cruelty of the larger world, which we all share.
Harper Lee decided to tell How to kill a Mockingbird from the eyes of Scout, because Scout's young age and innocence makes her have a clean way of thinking when an event comes up. In general, Scout observes, but has no opinion of the scenes that develop. The story is also being seen through Scout’s eyes because as a kid, she can see the smallest bit of goodness in someone. For a kid, it is easier to see the dark side of somebodies character. Innocence is an important asset in life. Innocence also shows how sometimes not knowing can be better for people at some points.
In the book To Kill A Mockingbird, Harper Lee tells the story of coming-of-age and the loss of innocence through the character Jem. Through recurring events, Jem is faced with the realization of society’s injustice, and is left questioning the world he lives in. During a time of rampant racial discrimination and prejudice in the south, Jem transforms from naivety to maturity.
As much as everyone would like to believe that all people are inherently good, the illusion of innocence that is often presumed throughout childhood makes the revelation of human nature especially hard to bear. Arthur Koestler said, “Nothing is more sad than the death of an illusion”, and this one is certainly a very hard reality to cope with. In the novel Lord of the Flies, the author William Golding tells the story of a group of British schoolboys who crash land on an uninhabited island in the midst of a world war, and how they regress from civilization to savagery. By conveying Ralph’s reactions to the deaths of Simon and Piggy, providing detailed, symbolic imagery of the cliffs and the lagoon, and showing Ralph’s despair at his new understanding
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.
Through using different sources, the fact that the novel is more developed than the film is strongly reinforced. The novel provides descriptions of the symbols, characters, and the setting. The symbols are clear in the novel. On the other hand, symbols are not present on the film. Characterization is well developed in the novel, but there is little characterization in the film. According to Bosley Crowther, author of an article titled, “Screen: Agitating Fable of Wild Boys: Savagery Is Depicted in Lord of the Flies”, the kids were not apt to make the film. The kids did not follow the characterization that the novel developed. Crowther states in his publishing, “The acting is woefully uneven, and, except for two or three fair performances, gives unmistakable evidence of having been done by spirited amateurs.” This passage describes the overall lack of characterization in the film for the actors do not seem to have the same qualities or characteristics that the kids in the island have. In addition, Crowther agrees that the film does not do justice to the novel, for it lacks the depth and description that Golding provides in his novel. Lastly, the setting contributes to the plot of the novel by correlating the decay of the island with the decay of morality, while the film does not show anything. The setting also serves as a microcosm view of society. E.C. Bufkin, author of Lord of the Flies: An Analysis, agrees that the novel is not only well developed, but that the island where the novel takes place serves as a microcosm of what society really is. Overall, the novel portrays Golding’s message through the use of symbolization, characterization, and description of the setting whereas the film does not make the message as clear as the novel does. Certainly, the film, compared to the novel, lacks crucial depth with its symbolism, characterization, and
“Life is nothing without a little chaos to make it interesting” (Amelia Atwater-Rhodes). In William Golding’s novel, Lord of the Flies, a plane full of boys get stranded on an island. The character Ralph, who is only twelve and a few months, takes the position of chief who tries to establish order on the island. However, most of the boys do not obey the rules Ralph has created. Immaturity within a community creates chaos.
Heart of Darkness is Joseph Conrad's tale of one man's journey, both mental and physical, into the depths of the wild African jungle and the human soul. The seaman, Marlow, tells his crew a startling tale of a man named Kurtz and his expedition that culminates in his encounter with the "voice" of Kurtz and ultimately, Kurtz's demise. The passage from Part I of the novel consists of Marlow's initial encounter with the natives of this place of immense darkness, directly relating to Conrad's use of imagery and metaphor to illustrate to the reader the contrast between light and dark. The passage, although occurring earlier on in the novel, is interspersed with Marlow's two opposing points of view: one of naïveté, which comes before Marlow's eventual epiphany after having met Kurtz, and the matured perspective he takes on after all of the events leading up to his and Kurtz's encounter.
Recently, I have read both a Raisin in the Sun and To Kill a Mockingbird, both considered literary classics. They share a number of similar themes and character that face similar situations. Ultimately, they have extremely different plots, but address the same issues; some that were common around the time they were published, and some that carry relevance into current times. What I wish to bring to light in this essay is that in both novels, there are many characters that lives’ hit a shatter-point in the course of the story. This shatter-point is where the characters’ lives are irrevocably changed, sometimes for the better, sometimes for the worse. What I’m going to explore is how these characters cope with the emotional fallout of what the aforementioned shatter-point left in its wake.
Loss of Innocence in Killing a Mockingbird Maycomb was an old town, but it was a tired old town when I first knew it. In rainy weather, the streets turned red slop; grass grew on the sidewalks, the courthouse sagged in the square. " (Lee 9). This environment, as Scout Finch accurately describes, is not conducive to young children, loud noises, and games. But, the Finch children and Dill must occupy themselves in order to avoid boredom.
In conclusion, there were obviously many problems on the island in William Golding’s story, Lord of the Flies. The first thing that went wrong on the island was that there were no adults on the island. Without adults on the island, the kids have no one to give advice, and no one to keep them in check. The second thing that went wrong on the island was that there was no good form of government on the island. Without a good form of government, the boys all turned to different dictatorships, and everyone knows that those almost always end in multiple deaths, and this story is not an exception. The last thing that went wrong on the island was that there were only boys, and of course they did what boys do, and that is fight, just like any other boy in the world. In the end, there were a few boys that didn’t live to see a military man come and save them.
It’s one of the most famous stories to ever exist, the story of how two people changed what defines us as humans. It’s the story of Adam, Eve, a serpent, and the unbecoming of mankind, the Fall of Man. This iconic account has been the premise for many works over the centuries. Today, Lord of the Flies by William Golding is considered one of the most influential novels of our time, not only for its adventurous story of stranded boys on a lost island, but also because of its allegorical tale of the true fault in man’s soul. William Golding leans heavily upon the Biblical account of the Fall of Man to highlight man’s depravity in his novel, Lord of the Flies.
William Golding’s Lord of the Flies shows man’s inhumanity to man. This novel shows readers good vs. evil through children. It uses their way of coping with being stranded on an island to show us how corrupt humans really are.
“I think that’s the real loss of innocence: the first time you glimpse the boundaries that will limit your potential” (Steve Toltz). In the previous quote, Steve Toltz discusses the transition from innocence to corruption. William Golding’s Lord of the Flies illustrates the loss of innocence through various characters: Jack, who struggles with pride and a thirst for power; Roger, who revels in the pain of others and uses fear to control the boys; Simon, who represents the demise of purity when humans are at their most savage; Ralph, who illustrates the struggle people endure when attempting to be civilized near the savage; and Piggy, who suffers because he has the only technology necessary to survive. Golding enforces the theory that true innocence will often pay the price to sustain true evil by arranging the characters' personalities and actions in a way that correlates to the effects of Darwin's evolution theory, "survival of the fittest" (). Jack is a good example of this as he exerts power over the weak and uses his skills in hunting to survive. The thirst to prove his masculinity overrides his innate purity, effectively corrupting him. Jack’s loss of innocence begins a domino effect that begins to influence the others.