Importance of Fear in The Lord of the Flies Essay

In the novel of the lord of the flies, written by William Golding, fear is the cause of all the problems faced by the boys on the island. The boys fear increases as long they stayed on the island. Soon the boys became afraid of each other and after that they break up and do fights because of fear. The original fear of the boys was a beast then people started getting afraid. Boys are afraid of beast but they are even more afraid of jack and roger. Fear is what brought boys together in Jack’s tribe, but fear is also what broke them up in Ralph’s tribe.

Beast? “Kill it! Cut his throat! Spill his blood!” WIlliam Golding’s Lord of the FLies is one ofthe most powerful and popular novels of the 20th century, but no one truly knows what the “beast” is, except for Golding himself. The novel begins just after a plane evacuating a group of English schoolboys has been shot down over an unnamed deserted island in the Pacific Ocean.When the boys first land, there is an air of adventure and even celebration at their newfound freedom from grownups, but what the children don’t know is that there is something there with them. As the book goes on, there are many different thought of what this thing is, or some would say what the “beast” is.

To begin with, in the book The Lord of the Flies the two groups of boys are drawn by their own imagination and create the beast within themselves.The boys imagine that the beast is actually in one of the caves on the island.They are so scared of this beast that they start thinking their own friends are the beast,and get to the point of killing many boys.By the time they realize they are their own beast it is too late and many kids have been lost.The younger boys have no choice but to go with who is superior and who they see as a leader although he might be cruel.

The first fear the boys face is knowing what the Beast actually is . The Beast becomes the sum of all the things that frighten them about the island, the unknown, the dark, snakes, the woods, shadows and scary noises. In chapter two, the boys of the island are having one of their first assemblies. A child, which is referred as the boy with the mulberry colored birthmark has a question. He is given the conch to speak, but speaks with a soft voice. Piggy leans near him and

The littluns believe in the beast, and slowly, everyone including Ralph who strongly believes there should be order believes in the beast. "' says the beastie came in the dark'...'...it came and went away again and came and wanted to eat him"' (Golding 36). This is the first encounter with a beast, and the littluns think it is a snake monster that wants to eat them. The snake monster is actually the creepers or vines in the forest, but this is just the beginning of encounters with a beast as well as the first group of people to believe there is a beast. The last person to believe in the beast is Ralph. "Desperately Ralph prayed that the beast would prefer the littluns." (Golding 166). When Jack, and his tribe come to steal Piggy's glasses at night, the boys think that the beast is attacking them, and this is when Ralph finally gives into the idea of the beast. This is a point in the book that shows the beast is so powerful that the person who wants order the most even believes in the

All of the boys’ fears on the island are projected onto the beast which worsens the situation for Samneric and other easily influenced boys. While the littluns play a relatively small role in deciding which group has the power, the biguns who do not lead the groups play an important role. The shift in power begins to happen when Samneric tell

The commotion in,“Lord of the Flies,” is a result from symbolism. William Goulding uses descriptive images and symbols to paint a picture for the reader. In the beginning of the book, the beast is this unknown creature that strikes fear into the boys. Many of the littluns believed in the beast, and this spreader throughout them. A boy, with a mark, out of fear talks about the beast. This sparks a chain of events that knocks the boys out of their Garden of Eden.

To begin with, Simon speculates that the beast is only the boys themselves. There is an idea of evil being on the island, however, it is only their fear taking over. Simon states, “There isn’t anyone to help you. Only me. And I’m the Beast. . . . Fancy thinking the Beast was something you could hunt and kill! . . . You knew, didn’t you? I’m part of you? Close, close, close! I’m the reason why it’s no go? Why things are the way they are?” (Salinger 143). In other words, Simon believes that the beast is inside the and he has to go tell everyone what he knows. Simon was on his own and was facing the fear of the beast all by himself. The others did not help him, he goes alone. The Lord of the Flies identified itself as the beast; the thing everyone on the island was frightened of. The littluns were horrified of the beast, Simon tried to convey to the rest that that the evil and savagery is inside them. However, the boys were guided by the fear of the beast. They mistake Simon for the beast and kill him. The boys were not thinking clearly before they murdered Simon. The boys were guided by the fear inside of them; they did not think before they killed one of their own. Therefore, humans are guided by

Ralph prioritizes opinions, specifically, he looks down on the younger beliefs. By pushing it off as “littluns’ talk” and how “we’ll get it straight” (82), he is disregarding their concerns of the beastie as nothing more than gossip. On the other hand, Jack uses this fear to his advantage, claiming that “if there was a beast I’d have seen it” (83). In like manner to Ralph, Jack tries to extinguish rumors of a beast, but he does so by reason rather than silencing. Jack’s tactics present his ease of controlling a crowd and shows Ralph’s limitations of persuasion. Ralph, in response to Piggy’s determination “to find the others... to do something” (14), daydreams, saying nothing further until prompted with a question. Ralph soon loses the little interest he has and shifts it to the newly-found conch, telling Piggy to “shut up” (15) when he warns Ralph not to break it. Oppressive phrases like this are used at length from Ralph, leaving him to listen and follow to nearly no one but himself. His viewpoint is therefore narrow, ironically, his perspective is blinder than Piggy, the voice of

In the Lord of the Flies, fear corrupted the boys’ mind causing them to forget about the signal fire that they were trying to keep and, instead, they got worried about the “beast” they thought they

In his novel Lord of the Flies, William Golding writes a haunting story about the power of fear over humans. In the story, a group of young boys are stranded on an island in the midst of World War III. Over the course of the novel, the fragile civilization the boys establish unravels and soon turns into a chaotic frenzy driven by fear and primal instincts. One of the overarching questions Golding attempts to answer in this novel is the part fear plays in our lives and the impact it has on us. According to Golding, fear has the ability to indescribably take control over humans, but there is no right or wrong way

Man often resorts to destruction through war in response to fear. In December of 1941 the United States of America entered World War II in response to the bombing of Pearl Harbor. On August 6, 1945 the United States bombed Hiroshima as a product of fear. The consequence of the United Sates’ action was 90,000 innocent people killed and those who survived were exposed to radiation. The stress placed on the United States government caused it to attack in response, which killed thousands of innocent people. The United States employed a method of destruction to control the fear of its citizens. Just as the United States turned to destruction, in Lord of the Flies the boys also were prepared to destroy everything to soothe

From the early start of the book, the boys begin to fear an unknown “beast” that takes on numerous forms and shapes; and it becomes one of the main forces for causing the boys to fall into violence and chaos. When the boys were discussing the existence of the beast in a meeting, Simon takes the chance to offer his own opinion of what he believes the beast is, “maybe there is a beast… What I mean is… maybe it’s only us” (Golding 89). The boys do not understand the concept he introduces, and thus react rashly, denouncing Simon as crazy. Although the boys in the book can not comprehend what Simon refers to, Golding uses this quote to imply to readers that the “beast” is not an actual monster, but a product of human fear. It is a feeling that everyone can relate to, the irrational fear of the unknown. While the boys can clearly see the creeping vines and moving objects in broad daylight, during the night, shadows and anxiety begin to alter the lines between reality and imagination. The more rational boys, such as Ralph, Piggy, and Simon, have a slightly tighter grasp on the distinguishment of the two, but the others, specifically the young and unknowing littluns, have nightmares and are struck with bouts of terror out of fear of the beast. Later on, after the time on the island had taken its toll and split the boys into two groups, the tribe led by Jack, in a vital scene of the plot, kill a sow and spear its head on a wooden stake in the ground. Jack

Ralph, being voted the chief, is responsible for taking care of everyone’s problems and fears on the island. The talk of a beast was just another thing that he had to set straight in a meeting. Or was it? The idea of a beast was first brought up by a little boy named Percival. Being shy and scared, Piggy has to explain for him to the other boys that what Percival saw is the forest “‘was a beastie’” (Golding 35). However, the childish fear of a beast turned into a very real fear to all of the boys. Like most of the older boys, Ralph is skeptical with this idea of a beast lurking in the island’s shadows. He doesn’t want the boys to talk of such nonsense because they already have enough problems to worry about, being stranded on an island. This is explained when Ralph says: “‘I say this. We aren’t going to bother about the beast’”

During the time that the boys lived on the secluded section of land, they fell victim to their imagination; creating something so horrid just because a little boy with a birth mark got lost. The imaginations determined their fate, “I saw something big and horrid in the trees” (91). This first statement drives the downfall that is The Beast. The boys become wild with thoughts of where The Beast