Arya Dhungana
Blosser
Language Arts Period 3
9 December 2015
Lord of the Flies Analysis Essay
William Golding’s book, Lord of the Flies, is about a group of boys that are stuck on an island after their plane crashes. They must be able to create a fair civilization and all agree on it. One of the many themes of this book is that man is intrinsically evil at the core. The body paint, the beast, and the pig hunts all symbolize and support this theme.
To begin with, the body paint shows how everybody wears a mask to hide their true self. “Beside the pool, his sinewy body held up a mask that drew their eyes and appalled them.” (William Golding 63). It is ironic because when Jack put on the body paint, it was like a mask, only it was like he was taking off the mask he wore around everybody else. When he took off his mask, his evil shone through and they boys
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“The beast is the hunter.” (126) Jack said this when they were wondering what the beast was. In reality, the hunter was the beast. The hunters, aka the boys, were taking off their masks when they hunted, thus releasing their inner beast. Jack knew this, but he didn’t want the others to realize it either. When Simon was dehydrated and walking through the island after the pig hunt, he saw and heard the Lord of the Flies in the sow’s head. It is not certain if he is hallucinating or not. The Lord of the Flies represents the Devil. The Lord of the Flies says, “ ‘Fancy thinking the beast is something you can hunt and kill.’ ” (143) This supports the statement where the hunter is actually the Beast, and not the other way around. It can never be killed because it is inside of the boys. The Lord of the Flies also says, “ ‘You knew didn’t you? I’m a part of you?... I’m the reason why… things are what they are.’ ” Beelzebub is implying that there is an inner beast inside of everybody, and the beast controls many things they
As said in Document A, “they externalize these fears into the figure of the beast”. The school boys were scared of what this animal could do to them. In Document D it says, “He was dreaming… He must have had a nightmare”. They boy was petrified, so he put all his fears into an image of this petrifying perspective of a demon.
This quote shows Jack reassuring the boys that there is no beast and that they’re being consumed by the fear of something that doesn't even exist. This is an example of the boys' society being civilized at the start of the story by Jack having the common rationality to explain this to the others. Although Jack thinks this now, as he and many others descend into savagery their fear of the beast converts into the belief in its existence, “Kill the beast! Cut his throat! Spill his blood!
As Jack becomes more restless on the island, it is evident that savagery becomes satisfying for him. Almost like he needs to kill to breathe, like this was the missing piece of his life that he can now satisfyingly appeal to. “His mind was covered with memories…knowledge that they had outwitted a living thing, imposed their will upon it, taken away its life like a long satisfying drink.” (Golding, 74). Jack denies the ideas of the beast similarly to Piggy.
According to Golding the evil, or beast in his case, has been inside the boys from the moment of birth, but because
After a while these flies found Simon. Gorged, they alighted by his runnels of sweat and drank. They ticked under his nostrils and played leapfrog on his thighs. They were black and iridescent green and without number; and in front of Simon, the Lord of the Flies hung on his stick and grinned." (138) Lord of the Flies Lord of the Flies represents evil.
The boys start to take things out of hand and kill each other thinking that it is the right thing to do. One of the boys named Simon is a character from this novel that tries to stand up and tell everyone not to be afraid, much like FDR. Simon wants to relieve them of their fears of the “beastie”, which happens to be just one of the boys’ fears along with being scared of the dark or the unknown. William Golding’s Lord of the Flies can be analyzed using characters and symbolism in order to defend the theme of fear being a figment of one’s imagination when in times of trouble. There are many symbols in William Golding’s Lord of the Flies.
“‘There isn’t anyone to help you. Only me. And I’m the Beast’” (Golding 143). Despite being one of the few boys who did not believe in the beast, the stress and fear still got to Simon as he began to see decapitated sow’s head as the Lord of the Flies.
In the chapter titled “Gift for the Darkness” Simon hears the sound of the flies buzzing around the Lord of the Flies. The buzzing sound is what causes Simon to have hallucinations. These hallucinations leads to Simon hearing the Lord of the Flies talking to him. The Lord of the Flies tells Simon that evil is within all the boys.
Fulfilling this role is Jack, whose villainous role was not filled until the novel progressed. At the start of the novel, Jack and Ralph seem to get along quite well; agreeing on the first orders given such as building shelters and collecting water. It is not until Ralph is voted as the preferred leader when jealousy begins to drive Jack into insanity; desiring complete dominance over the group. In the first chapter Golding describes Jack and his choir; “Their bodies, from throat to neck, were hidden by black cloaks”. Black; a colour that most villains wear a majority of the time.
In this instance Jack tells the boys that he somehow has control over the beast. This shows how Jack uses the beast to draw the children towards him as the leader of the group. He always desires to rule over the boys and the beast is his scapegoat to do
Power and manipulation takes over people’s minds and turns us into egotistical people without even knowing and the sense of having control or authority can brainwash us into the people who we despise. William Golding fabricates his ideas around the time period 1933 after he received his English degree where he mostly wrote poems. Golding’s world consists of writing novels, pulling ideas from the real world into his own creative words on paper, this is where he developed his most famous book, Lord of the Flies, throughout 1954. The perspective of Lord of the Flies is through the eyes of the Second World War and since he was in this war, his point of view on violence changed and gave him a different outlook on society. In the Lord of the Flies
Jack most resemble the beast so far. He always seems angry and hungry for blood on page 120 it says, “Jack was on top of the sow, stabbing downwards with his knife.” This shows how much of a savage Jack has become. The boys
In William Golding’s novel, Lord of the Flies, he created this book about a group of proper british boys to show that even the most civilize of all can turn inhuman and go savage. Also being in the war helped Golding to see what people were capable of even if they were good at heart. The themes in Golding’s novel, Lord of the Flies, were influenced by his childhood, his experiences in the war, and his view of human nature. Golding’s early life influenced the theme in Lord of the Flies.
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.
Jack began to stutter, “We thought he was the beastie”. The judge asked, “What's this thing you call a beastie?” Ralph answers, “A monster, and we all murdered him by beating him and stabbing him because we thought he was the beastie”. We always “saw something big and horrid moving in the trees”(Golding 85).The judge was enranged. Simons mother had begun to sob even harder, saying to herself, “I can't believe this”.