Arguable Themes In Lord Of The Flies

Theme is the hidden morals within a piece of literature that the author is trying to get readers to understand. In both Angela's Ashes and The Street, we can distinguish a similar theme. One similar theme in both stories is struggling to get through life’s complications. After reading the two different excerpts, we can use character, events, and the setting to further our understanding.

A theme is a unifying or dominant idea in a literary work. Steinbeck described the competition of good versus evil as the story of mankind itself. He believes that every generation to come since Adam and Eve will now be immersed with the struggle of good and evil due to Eve’s curiosity that led to sin, eventually banning both her and Adam from the Garden of Eden. In East of Eden, Steinbeck makes the contest of good versus evil apparent through his contrasting description of the setting, the characters’ opposing personalities, and society’s changing morals.

In our society, people are often cruel to one another in the want for personal gain, but this is restrained to mere social interactions and online in our industrial world. However, when we are separated from civilized society and the pressures that it places upon us, we are quick to turn to savage, cruel behavior to survive. Golding understood this idea, that we are only civilized when others are watching, and showed the possibility for even the purest to become affected by societal pressures in his novel, the Lord of the Flies. In order to show the role of cruelty in shaping the novel Lord of the Flies, Golding uses character archetypes, the idea of cosmic irony, and extended symbolism to highlight the inherent flaws of human nature and the potential for even the purest individuals to turn to cruel ways due to societal pressures.

“The theme is an attempt to trace the defects of society back to the defects of human nature. The moral is that the shape of a society must depend on the ethical nature of the individual and not any political system however apparently logical or respectable.” This quote from the author, William Golding, summarizes the themes and morals presented in his novel Lord of the Flies. Despite society’s progression towards civilization and acceptance of the idea that human tendencies towards goodness, each individual is susceptible to their natural darker instincts. In the novel, Lord of the Flies, William Golding's characters begin as seemingly innocent school boys who deteriorate into savages. The author uses the characters of Piggy, Ralph and Jack

Lord of the Flies is a marvelous non-fiction paradigm of the contrast of civility and savagery in human nature. In the novel, the author, William Golding, masterfully tells of how one characteristic taints the other, and eventually takes possession of its host. Throughout the novel, multiple results of these two attributes, along with many other situations, are portrayed using objects and characters, conveying the overall message

Lord of the Flies by William Golding is a classic novel that is known as one of the greatest pieces of literature and has been for decades, because of how it relates to people and events that have happened. As the island is a microcosm of the world, the book mirrors what’s going on in the real world. The main themes of the book are Good Vs. Evil, Civilization Vs. Savagery, Power and Survival, which can easily be related to by most people - both now, when the book was written and probably also in the future.

In the book Lord of the Flies by William Golding,there are many themes in the novel. First of all,a loss of rules and rule enforcement can often lead to crime. Second, natural evil can lead to civil unrest. Third, a society that degrades into ruthlessness and savagery is not usually marked as anarchy but rather as a totalitarian system of exploration and abusive domination. All of these themes are present in the book and can also be represented in real life.

In viewing the aspects of the island society, the author William Golding's Lord of the Flies as a symbolic microcosm of society. He chooses to set the children alone in an unsupervised world, leaving them to learn ‘ the ways of the world’ in a natural setting first hand. Many different perspectives can also be considered. Golding's island of marooned youngsters becomes a microcosm. The island represents the individual human and the various characters represent the elements of the human psyche.

William Goldning’s Lord of the Flies is an allegorical novel where literary techniques are utilized to convey the main ideas and themes of the novel. Two important central themes of the novel includes loss of civilization and innocense which tie into the concept of innate human evil. Loss of civilization is simply the transition from civilization to savagery; order to chaos. The concept of loss of innocense is a key concept to innate human evil because childhood innocense is disrupted as the group hunted animals and even their own. Through the use of literary techniques these ideas are seen in the passage where Simon confronts the “Lord of the Flies.”

When a group of preteen school boys are stranded on a jungle island, they have to find a way to form a working society, and survive in it until they can get rescued. Piggy, one of the main characters, is described as a fat glasses-wearing wiseman, which gains him little respect in their society. He, throughout the entire book, insists on keeping as much peace as possible, staying together as a single group. However, in a state of nature, man’s natural instinct is to fight for himself, while a civil participant in society’s perspective would tell them otherwise, and that they would be better off in a group. In his novel Lord of the Flies, William Golding demonstrates through Piggy’s glasses how fragile and sensitive societal perspective is, as the boys’ perspective becomes more and more damaged.

A theme is the meaning behind a story, occasionally defined as the moral of the story. Themes can differ from one end of the world to the other, as it does in many books. The Droughtlanders by Carrie Mac is a futuristic version of the world which has been divided into two parts. The rich and the poor, the healthy and the sick, otherwise known as Keyland and Droughtland. Keyland is where all the rich people with extravagant lands and lives live. Droughtland is a disease-ridden land where all poor people are being forced to live. Society treats Droughtland poorly and they decide to take action. Thus starting the revolution. Carrie Mac portrays many themes in different ways throughout the book. However the major theme the book revolves around is that; No matter how rich or poor a person is, or what gender, race, or sexuality they are, in the end, they are all the same and deserve to be treated equally. In addition, the book shows that when everyone is treated equally there is so much more that everyone can accomplish. The theme is being portrayed through the narrative point of view, setting and atmosphere, and character development.

Theme is the subject of talk, a topic, or morals that the author is trying to get across to the readers. When reading an excerpt, the theme is not directly stated in the text, so you must dig deeper into the context to understand the morals the author is trying to portray. In both Angela's Ashes and The Street, we can detect a similar theme of struggling to get through life’s obstacles. When reading the two different stories, we can further pick out the theme by using character, events, and the setting.

Themes tend to be presented in a work of fiction, rather than in nonfiction and are much more obscure. For example, a drama or tragedy such as Oedipus Rex has the theme of not being able to escape fate, rather than having a brusquely stated thesis statement. The theme must be deduced by the reader/watcher after finishing and reflecting upon the play. Themes also tend to be an idea or message that is given to the reader.

In every literary work, there are themes. A theme is a broad idea, moral or message of a book or story. One individual may construe the themes of a book or story differently than another, but that is the pure beauty of themes. One great literary work is The Crucible, a play written by Arthur Miller. Succinctly, the play is about the Salem witch trials that took place in Massachusetts in 1692. Throughout the story, the townspeople indict their neighbors of being a witch and practicing witchcraft. On the surface, this historical drama has a few universal and enduring themes. Themes are universal because regardless of where in the world, the ideas still relates to everyone and is understood. Themes are enduring because the ideas are found

One of the devices Golding uses to express the human behavior without laws is symbolism. For instance, during an assembly we see Jack breaking the rules by speaking when Piggy was holding the conch and Ralph shouts, “[P]iggy’s got the conch…. the rules! You’re breaking the rules!....... Because the rules are the only thing we’ve got!” (91). In the beginning of the novel, Ralph and Piggy use the conch to bring the boys together and established order on the island. In result, the conch grew to possess strong values and became the most vital item to the boys. In a political view, the conch symbolizes freedom of speech because it allows everyone to have the equal right to voice an opinion. However, the conch also symbolizes power because it grants authority to the one who possesses it and civilization because it essentially keeps peace and order on the island. Goldings uses the conch to show how uncivilized behavior in humans can stimulate when rules are not in place because when the conch was destroyed in Piggy’s death so was the order. No conch ultimately meant no power allowing Jack to claim the role of chief. Thereby, we see evil stimulating through Jack when he tortured SamnEric and forcefully made them join his tribe.