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Archetypes In Lord Of The Flies

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“Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you”. Friedrich Nietzsche’s message is strongly conveyed in the novel Lord of the Flies by William Golding in the novel Golding has many different types of “beasts” in different forms appear throughout the novel. In Lord of the Flies, English boys: Ralph, Simon, Piggy, Jack and many others face these literal and fabricated “beasts”. Their plane has crashed and has left no adult survivors. They must find a way to survive together in harmony; however in this novel they live in anything but harmony. In William Golding’s Lord of the Flies young boys instincts take over progressively through the symbolism of the beast; showing them losing their minds to a beast inside of their heads in different forms: fear, a need for protection, and a need to kill.

Ralph’s description of the choir in the beginning of the book shows the way the beast in their mind twists things that aren’t a threat into a threat through fear; this foreshadows that a beast or beasts may show up or be created later in the book through imagery. Fear is a …show more content…

The instincts of young boys takes over the boys minds through the symbolism of the beast. Their minds have been completely taken over by fear, a need for protection and the need to kill. The boys have become almost pure animal. The boys succumbed to their instincts when they killed simon, chanting a death song. While the boys give into their instincts and believe that they are fighting a monster and are doing what is good. They are not. The book Lord of the Flies teaches us that while fighting a monster you may become

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