Darkness In Lord Of The Flies

Finally, right after Jack kills Simon in a frenzy, he says, “He came – disguised. He may come again even though we gave him the head of our kill to eat.” (Golding 160). Clearly, Jack and his mask

Franklin D. Roosevelt once said, “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” In William Golding’s Lord of the Flies, a group of boys crash landed on a deserted island with no adults. They must face conflicts with each other, the island, and themselves to survive. In chapter 9, Jack and his tribe had a feast, and invited all the other boys. During the feast, a storm rolled in, and they became animalistic while eating, chanting, and dancing around the fire.

They were savages it was true; but they were human, and the ambushing fears of the deep night were coming on” (Golding 191). The conch is gone, and evil has taken over the island and over the boys in Jack’s tribe, who have become murderous toward Ralph, who is the good that contradicts their evil. This demonstrates Golding’s theme of good versus evil in the novel and how it relates to the presence of the conch, or lack

Simon eventually found out that a human could be capable of behaving like a terrifying creature. In “the Beast is Human”, Simon, the same boy who understood how cruel humans could be, “sets off, weak and staggering, to tell the other boys that the beast is human. ”(Doc E). The boy found the body of the man terrorizing the children on the island and realized how being cruel mankind could be. People are capable of something so harsh and tormenting that they could be considered monsters.

When morals no longer apply, the savage heart appears. When the boys are in their enraged frenzy they chant ‘Kill the beast, slice his throat, spill his blood’. When they hear a rustling in the woods they quickly attack the being by tearing it apart with their bear hands and biting at it with their mouths. They did not realize that this was actually Simon and during the comotion Simon accidentally trips and falls over a cliff to his death. This leads to anarchy and can relate to our society as war, greed and fear.

Using the poem as a field guide for finding the signs of evil influence, and assuming the beast is something inside the boys that is awakened by the island (seen by how bad the kids already are and stuff- pg 28), we can break this down following the poem. Tis not the violent hands alone that bring The curse, the ravage, and the downward doom, Although to these full oft the yawning tomb Owes deadly surfeit; So

He goes to share his hunting story to Ralph and a boy named Piggy. On page 69, the narrator shares, “I cut the pig’s throat,’ said Jack, proudly, and yet twitched as he said it.” This quotation shows us that civilization is lost when the urge to kill takes over because it shows the stage where Jack is proudly killing animals, but still feeling a little bit uncomfortable with it. In this example, Jack proudly shares that he has killed, but still twitches after saying he did. Jack is still hanging onto the little bit of civilization that is left on their island.

Jack is the best example of falling into savagery, which can be capitalized and displayed with his “bloodthirsty laugh” (Golding ). His bloodlust causes incredible sin, from the self gratification of hunting and eventually the murder of Simon and Piggy. Society is needed to keep people from their natural

“His mind was crowded with memories; memories of the knowledge that had come to them when they closed in on the struggling pig, knowledge that they had outwitted a living thing, imposed their will upon it, taken away its life like a long satisfying drink.” This quotation, also from Chapter 4, explores Jack’s mental state in the aftermath of killing his first pig, another milestone in the boys’ decline into savage behavior. Jack exults in the kill and is unable to think about anything else because his mind is “crowded with memories” of the hunt. Golding explicitly connects Jack’s exhilaration with the feelings of power and superiority he experienced in killing the pig. Jack’s excitement stems not from pride at having

It is dark, the boys see Simon and place him as the beast. “The beast struggled forward, broke the ring, and fell over the steep edge of the rock to the sand by the water. At once the crowd surged after it, poured down the rock, leapt on to the beast, screamed, struck, bit, tore. There were no words, and no movements but the tearing of teeth and claws” (153). Piggy is also killed, out of hatred from Jack’s group.