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Fear In Lord Of The Flies Essay

727 Words3 Pages

In Lord of the Flies, the boys act out of fear and cruelty instead of showing heroism and nobility, thus displaying the weakness of the human heart when faced with extreme circumstances. All the fear the boys have is because they are alone on an island without any civilization. Along with the loneliness, the speculation of a terrifying beast leads to Jack – the oldest choir boy – becoming a savage. He does what he wants despite establishing rules and a leader at the start and turning the rest of the boys savage as well. His true savagery comes out when they kill Simon – a younger choir boy. They are all caught up in the dancing and the meat and when Simon comes with news about the beast, they do not even realize it is him. The fear of the …show more content…

A psychologist named Stanley Milgram carried out an experiment focusing on the conflict between obedience and personal conscience. Three people were involved in this experiment: a teacher, a learner and an experimenter. The learner and experimenter were actors so that it was rigged for the participant to be the teacher. In this experiment, the learner has a list of paired words where the teacher names a word, awaiting the answer to be the paired word. If incorrect, a shock is to be administered, increasing with every wrong answer to a potential of 450 volts, which could kill a human. The experimenter is there to encourage the teacher to continue. The learner gave wrong answers purposely to see how far an ordinary American citizen would go just because a legitimate authority figure told them to. The experimenter had four prods to make the teacher continue. Despite hearing the screams of the learner, the teacher or participants would continue because they were given orders by an authority figure. The experiment resulted in 65% of the participants going to the maximum voltage of 450 volts, which would kill the learner. All participants went to at least 300 volts, which is still extremely dangerous for a human to endure. The result of this experiment shows how the fear of not listening to a legitimate authority figure can push people to do

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