Fear In Lord Of The Flies By William Golding

During the meeting where the boys are questioning the reality of the beast, Simon says this,”What I mean is...maybe it’s only us”(Golding 89). While everyone else is debating on whether or not the beast is real, Simon is trying to propose that the actual beast is the boys themselves in the form of their savage impulses. Simon is the first character in the novel to see the beast as the evil nature of humans instead of a physical being. The Lord of the Flies confirms Simon’s thought, saying,”Fancy thinking the Beast was something you could hunt and kill!...You knew, didn’t you? I’m part of you? Close, close, close!”(Golding 143). This establishes that the only thing to fear on the island is the evil human instinct inside of

the novel the Lord of the Flies, fear is the root of the trouble that

      The boys in the book, The Lord of the Flies, are controlled by their fear of the beast.  This fear is not of the beast itself, but of the unknown. It comes from not knowing whether or not a beast exists.

Fear can take control of humans and manipulate them for evil. In William Golding’s novel, Lord of the Flies, fear is shown to change the boys into savages from their fears on the island. This fear starts with the younger children and their fears of the dark and unknown. The fear changes throughout the novel and manipulates the boys which Jack uses fear to gain power over the innocent boys.

“The thing is - fear can’t hurt you anymore than a dream.” (Golding, 116). Jack’s completely false point of view of the hazardous emotion is declared within the quote. Jack is one of the antagonists derived from William Golding’s esteemed bestseller, Lord of the Flies. In the renowned novel written by Golding, young boys in a plane have crashed and descended upon an uninhabited island with more than sufficient vegetation. At first, order and tranquility were established by the children and there was more civilization on the island compared to savagery. However, as the novel advanced, the readers could identify the kids were suffering from the persistent terror on the island because of isolation. Gradually disorder possessed most of the boys’ minds and therefore had inaugurated

Fear can control a lot of things, and can make people do some things they wouldn’t normally think about. It can pull people together, or push them apart. In Lord of the Flies it pushes the boys apart. But in The Village it pulls them together. In both cases, the fear wasn’t real. The beast from LOTF and “those they don’t speak of” in The Village. Fear plays a big role in both of these. I believe fear is an easy thing to overuse and control people with, in LOTF and The Village they use fear as a way of power and controlment.

In 1950, the British mathematician and philosopher Bertrand Russell once stated, “To conquer fear is the beginning of wisdom.”. During the same time, the world was gripped by the fear of communism and the possibility of nuclear attacks during the Cold War. Published in 1954, the novel Lord of the Flies, by William Golding, expresses the ramifications of fear in a group of young English boys that have been stranded on an island. Golding explores both the physical and chemical reactions of fear, as well as the connection to communism and how it relates to the dynamic on the island.

Fear is defined as an “unpleasant emotion caused by the belief that someone or something is dangerous, likely to cause pain, or a threat”. The effects of fear can cause us to become a totally different person. In the book, The Lord of the Flies, many of the characters went from innocent young child to a brutal savage. “This was a savage whose image refused to blend with the innocent pictures of a boy in shorts and shirt” (Golding 183). The boys arrived on the island looking like proper British boys from a civilized place, and left the island

It’s the years following World War II, and tension is high. A group a British school boys needed to crash their plane in the ocean and swim to the shore of an uninhabited island. The island have pigs, water, and other valuable resources they need in order to survive. Once they appear on the island, they decided to set up rules and laws to govern their miniature society. A twelve year old boy disagrees with the laws they had originally set up and a rebellion starts to brew within the group. Now the trouble begins. This is the plot line of the book The Lord of the Flies by William Golding. Golding claims that fear brings out the worst in people. These rules, originally made for their own comfort, can be compromised by fear. In the case of the The Lord of the Flies, the children fear a creature called beastie. Fear can cause chaos and make people doing things they don’t normally do. The fear brings out the worst in people and it starts with beastie and leads to a the rebellion of Jack, and the demise of Simon and Piggy.

Sometimes fear can be shown through external things, or sometimes, fear can lie internally. The Lord of the Flies was a twisted situation that shows what can happen to a group of unattended boys that are left to fend for themselves on a stranded island. They begin to develop a fear of the “beast”, which is what they think is the monster of the island. From an outsiders perspective, “the beast” could be perceived as the fear of an actual “monster-like” beast, the hypocrisy of war, or the evil that lies within us.

Franklin D. Roosevelt changed American history when he stated that “the only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” While this statement was meant to boost morale within the country, it also expressed the idea that people should be afraid of what happens when they cannot deal with their fear. Why, one might ask, should people be afraid of the feeling of fear, as opposed to just being afraid of the physical thing which they fear? William Golding's Lord of the Flies seeks to explain just that. The deterioration of the situation on the island is truly due to Jack’s tribe descent into savagery. A real turning point for Jack’s tribe is when they choose to make sacrifices to the beast, whom they fear, instead of attempting to hunt it. This seems very counterintuitive, as these animalistic boys should want to hunt and kill the beast, instead of revering

In The Lord of the Flies by William Golding there are many symbols and themes present that influence the boy’s actions on the island. Fear and the fragility of civilization are two motifs that coerced the boy’s actions and behaviors, while also leading them into the destruction of themselves and their environment.

The first fear to arise in Lord of the Flies is a fear of abandonment, for a group of young English school boys that were in a plane crash while in the process of fleeing the war. The boys may feel like the have no home or place they belong. When they are on an uninhabited island and stuck with no one older then thirteen to lead them. When Piggy and Ralph meet, Piggy shows his sense of abandonment when he says “They’re all dead,’ said piggy an this is an island. Nobody don’t know we’re here.” (Goulding 9) This feeling of being abandoned ignites the fear in the young boys, and paves the path for the fear grow like fire. As if abandonment is not enough piggy shortly after brings up an even scarier topic, “We may stay here till we die.” (10). Being abandoned is a harsh feeling, but an even scarier feeling is dying, dying

Simon does not let fear come alive in his imagination until he actually encounters it in person. Furthermore, Simon attempts to convince the boys that the beast does not exist. Simon says hesitantly at the meeting, “maybe there is a beast... maybe it's only us...we could be sort of…”(Golding 95-96). Simon does not fear the beast as well as the rumors made and attempts to tell the boys that there could be a possibility of a misunderstanding.

Like many people in the world, the young men’s ideas in Lord of the Flies are challenged by the events that lie ahead of them. Life in England during the 1940s was primarily dominated by the wartime status of World War II. Citizens lived in fear of attacks from the German troops and other enemies. Life was very difficult due to the fact that food and other resources had to be rationed or substituted for lesser quality items. In addition to all of these problems, the government leaders and other main branches were also constantly changing, which in turn caused turmoil among the citizens of England.