William Golding’s Lord of the Flies, is a classic novel about a group of schoolboys stuck on an island where fear and savagery consumes them. From the beginning of the book to the last page fear has a prominent role in the novel. Fear in the book manifests itself with many thoughts including what the littluns refer to as the beast, and the fear of not getting home. Fear leads some of the boys to make regrettable decision and it also leads Jack to a position of power. In Lord of the Flies by William Golding fear dominates the island that the boys are stranded on and this fear leads the boys to positions of power and influences some of the boys to make regrettable decisions.
To begin with, in the beginning, the “beast” resembled fear. According to (document a) the author wrote, “Now there are no comforting mothers to dispel the terrors of the unknown. They externalize these fears into the figure of a “beast.” Also, in (document b), it states, “He was dreaming…. He must have had a nightmare. Stumbling about among all those creepers. More grave nodding; they knew about nightmares.” Little children were frightened because they had no mothers to comfort them and protect them from the “beast” because they were stranded on an island in the middle of
Humans are though to be the most developed living species on the planet Earth. However, throughout life, one can also see humans can be so evil and illogical during moments of desperation that the ability of reason is cannot be found. In the book Lord of the Flies, by William Golding, Golding depicts many examples of human nature with the use of characters he placed in the story. One of these characters is a boy named Simon. Golding uses Simon to describe compassion, wisdom and insight, and a Christ-like figure.
Simon was the first to realize there was no actual beast on the island, and that it was only a dead man with a parachute. He believed there was no such thing as a beast on the island, and he helped the littluns believe it too by saying: "What I mean is... Maybe it 's only us." (89). Simon was trying to suggest the idea that the beast was only an illusion to the boys’, as it had been created only within their imaginations. This shows that the boys are only afraid of themselves, because they are their own worst enemy. He is the first to figure out that the beast is not an actual beast, and how it is only the boys becoming savage, and starting to be afraid of one another. As Simon began to explain this to the doubtful boys, he was the only one who died knowing the
Being on the island everyone is contsantly faced with the fear of the unknown the younger boys need someone to protect them from the fears on the island. Although nothing manages to scare the boys as much as the beastie does. When a little boy with a mullberry birthmark informs everyone that he has seen a beastie. The older boys emitiatly belive its his imagination but even later in the novel the boys start to question the exsitance of the beast. After the killing of simion, jack is belives ut was simon disguised as the beast, and that the beast is not dead. Jack brings up the topic about the beast at an assembly, and makes the little’uns fear the beastie even more. "Bollocks to the rules! We 're strong - we hunt! If there 's a beast, we 'll hunt it down! We 'll close in and beat and beat and beat-" (p.114) once again jack is sepaking of thr beast again, he is convincing the boys that there absolutely is a beast and that he can protect them by hunting it. Meanwhile piggy dose not belive there is a beast, jack continues to shove the fear of the beast down everyones throats and manipulating the boys so he can gain more power and control over the
In William Golding's Lord of the Flies, there are many symbolic concepts within the novel such as the beast, and the pigs head. Golding uses these concepts to portray to the reader his idea that when humans are left without rules or organisation they will break from a civilised manner and become savages allowing evil to over take them.
At first, the beast is nothing more than a product of the boys ' imaginations. The smaller boys are afraid of things they see at night; rather than be blindly afraid of The Great Unknown, they give their fear a name and a shape in their minds.The boys fear the beast not even realizing that the are committing the evil actions of the beast. Only Simon reaches the final realization of what the beast for what it truly is, their own evil existing inside of them when he says “Maybe there is a beast… maybe it 's only us.”. Paradoxically, immediately following Simon’s awareness of the beast he is murdered **quote** ; signifying the destruction of natural human instinct and civilized instinct. As the boys grow more savage, their belief in the beast grows stronger. By the end of the novel, the boys are leaving it sacrifices and treating it as a totemic god. The boys’ behavior is what brings the beast into existence, so the more savagely the boys act, the more real the beast seems to become. says the beast is just fear of the unknown: "I know there isn 't no beast—not with claws and all that, I mean—but I know there isn 't no fear, either" (5.99). Simon, on the other hand, insists that the beast is "only us" (5.195). Well, it is: it 's a person that fell from the sky. Ralph and Jack see it as a giant ape. So the "beast" is a man-who-isn 't, the animal side in
This fear leads to the death of Simon, when he comes down the mountain to tell the other boys that their is no beast he finds them reenacting an hunt. The boys at this point having lost all order and have fear controlling their thoughts mistake him for the beast and beat him to death. Though Simon tells them he is not the beast and the boys can see him up close the fear in their minds has changed the way they think to the point they lose control of themselves and continue to beat him thinking they finally have the
Lastly the beast becomes savagery. In document E, Golding writes “maybe there is a beast… What I mean is… maybe it's only us.” Simon says this towards the beginning of Lord of the Flies when they first talk about what the beast is. Simon says that there isn't really a beast but only it is themselves. Once they kill Simon it explains deeply about how they kill him and how cruel and brutal it was. They kill him by biting and clawing and acting like savages. Simon says that it's themselves that is the beast and it shows in the part of the story how they act savage and
Fear is intangible yet has perceptible effects. It plays a significant role in human behaviour. Each individual reacts to fear differently, some overcome it, while others give in to it. In William Golding’s “Lord of the Flies” the theme of fear is discussed and it becomes clear that fear has the power to take over not only one’s mind but also control one’s actions.
The beast is first introduced to the boys early on in their time on the island when the crash acts as a scar to the boys and there is still a state of innocence in everyone. Piggy illustrates the boy with the mulberry-colored birthmark fears to the others (as he is too shy to speak on his own) his discovery of something else existing on the island to the entire assembly, “Tell us about the snake-thing...Now he says it was a beastie...Beastie?...A snake-thing. Ever so big. He saw it ... In the woods … He says the beastie came in the dark ... He still says he saw the beastie. It came to him and went away again an’ came back and wanted to eat him-- ...He must have had a nightmare” (35-36). Considering how innocent and civilized the boys are at
Everyone will face evil at some point in their lives, but the way the evil is embraced or deflected will differ among every man. In William Golding’s Lord of the Flies, symbolism is used to communicate the theme of Understanding the Inhumanity/Inherent Evil of Man as represented through the double ended spear, the fire, and the Lord of the Flies. The spear represents the evil inside of humankind and the perception that killing and hurting each other out of anger is acceptable. Fire symbolizes the evil act of stealing to achieve a human wants. Lastly, the Lord of the Flies symbolizes the Inherent Evil of Man through demonstrating that a boy understood that the evil is within them instead of around them, and is not something that could be killed
When the boys get stranded on this island they must take care of themselves and try to get rescued. As the boys climb this mountain to get home they face new challenges which resulted them to descend into savagery. With these new challenges of killing the pig for the first time, them breaking the conch, and deaths of Simon and Piggy they to descend into savagery causing them to lose their innocence. After the boys crash landed on the island it was only a matter of time before the boys descend into savagery because lack of leadership, need for survival and loss of innocence. Their first goal on the island was to have fun and get rescued but throughout their stay, they get further away from that.
As it is known, a beast is frequently associated with fear. As the English boys are on the island that they have run away to, it is shown that they encounter things that petrify them. Found in Document A is that the boys externalize their fears into the figure of a beast. Also stated in Document A, is that a mother’s job is to “dispel the terrors of the unknown”. In other words,
Throughout the novel of Lord of the Flies, William Golding provides a profound insight into human nature. Golding builds on a message that all human beings have natural evil inside them. To emphasize, the innate evil is revealed when there’s lack of civilization. The boys are constantly faced with numerous fears and eventually break up into two different groups. Although the boys believe the beast lives in the jungle, Golding makes it clear that it lurks in their hearts. The message of inner evil is portrayed throughout the book by the destruction of the conch, terrifying beast, and character developments to establish the hidden message throughout the novel.