Lord Of The Flies: Fear And The Fragility Of Civilization

The beast is a main source of fear in the beginning of the story. On page thirty six, it says, “He says the beastie came in the dark”(Golding 36). This shows that the litt’luns are already scared and they haven’t been on the island for a long time. I know this because the text explains that the litt’luns are having a difficult time sleeping and are having nightmares. On page fifty two, the text states, “‘As if,’ said Simon, ‘the beastie, the beastie or snake-like thing, was real. Remember?’”(Golding 52). This shows that Simon realizes that fear is something that needs to

Fear is unique, and can manifest itself in many different ways, like nightmares, or uncertainty before doing an activity that is risky. For many, when the word “fear” is said to them, they think of their worst fears, such as clowns, ghosts, heights, and what not. Yet, on an island on which a plane full of boys crash lands, some uncommon fears lead to total destruction of civilization. In the novel, Lord of the Flies, by William Golding, it it evident that fear can and will eventually tear down the walls of civilization. It all starts when a plane crash lands into the trees of a lost island. The survivors soon meet up one by one along the shore of the island, and it is noteworthy that they are all boys, from the age range of six to twelve years. At once each boy develops their own characteristics with Ralph as their leader, Piggy being the brainiac, Jack the hunter, and many other “littluns” and “bigguns”. However, all is not well for too long, as their stay on the island continues, the boys become more savage-like, due to their fears. The different terrors these boys encounter lead to despicable actions, including two brutal murders. William Golding shows that fear, of all kinds, can lead to the destruction of civilization.

The Lord of the Flies by William Golding is an allegory that explores the instinctual evil humans possess and how this evil manifests into our societies. The book demonstrates this through young boys who are stranded on an island due to a plane crash. Despite their best efforts, the lack of adult guidance inhibits the boys from maintaining an orderly society. The boys turn to their survival instincts, many of which are evil. The lack of order exposes the internal savagery within the boys, resulting in an understanding of the flaws within all humanity. The Lord of the Flies uses the innocence of young boys to show the societal impact of human errors through their lack of adult supervision, the desire to inflict violence, and the need for authority over others.

The excessive hunting showed how the boys just killed for no apparent reason; this is not a normal thing for an innocent boy to do. It seemed as if all jack wanted to do is hunt instead of caring about protection and shelter. Humans were killed because the boys began to unravel the true nature of humans. Simon died when Jack said "Kill the beast! Cut his throat! Spill His Blood!" Simon is eventually stabbed with a spear and that causes his death. The boys devour what they believe is the beast (Simon) and even if it was the beast, eating a beast doesn’t sound like what ‘innocent boys’ would do. Piggy’s death of course was most certainly not an accident. Rodger clearly knew what he was doing and he was throwing rocks just aiming to cause harm to someone, the rock hit Piggy and he fell off Castle Rock and died.

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.

“The thing is - fear can’t hurt you anymore than a dream.”(Golding, 116). Ralph’s opinion on fear is stated on this quote. Ralph is a character from William Golding’s esteemed book, Lord of the Flies.

Firstly, the beast represents the irrational fear that exists within humans. People have irrational fears toward multiple things, such as the Loch Ness Monster or the Boogey Man. In Lord of the Flies, the boys developed a fear of the unknown. “The circle became a horseshoe. A thing was crawling out of the forest. It came darkly, uncertainly … ‘Kill the beast! Cut his throat! Spill his blood! Do him in’” (Golding 168). As time passed and the concept of the beast grew and the boys lost more and more of their will and hope. As a result, they turned to

Initially, the “beast” is a manifestation of fear. According to the text, “ the darkness of night and forest with spirits and demons… previously only appeared in their dreams…” ( Document A: The Terrors of the Unknown). To clarify, these young boys, with no adults to comfort them, are afraid of the darkness and projecting their fears

Ralph, the leader of the boys on the island, has a natural fear. He doesn’t fear the beast as much as his fear of not being rescued and being isolated on the island for the rest of his life. When the boys first arrived on the island Ralph immediately stepped up as leader and set up a few things they had to do. "There’s another thing. We can help them to find us. If a ship comes near the island they may not notice us. So we must make smoke on top of the mountain. We must make a fire."(P. ) This quote shows that Ralph’s instinct is to become civilized not act like an animal or hunt. Ralph and his ‘lieutenant’ Piggy are like partners, they make some decisions together and stick up for each other. Piggy is very intelligent and he states that “Life ... is scientific.... I know there isn't no beast ... but I know there isn't no fear, either.... Unless we get frightened of people.”(p. ) Ralph and Piggy do not believe in the beast so much, because they are both focused on other more important things. What they both do fear is losing memory of what their objective is: to be rescued. The fear as each perceived it over came each boy one by one. In some circumstances even Ralph becomes deranged by his inner evil from the beast. "Ralph...was fighting to get near....The desire to squeeze and hurt was

The Lord of the Flies by William Golding is tale of a group of young boys who become stranded on a deserted island after their plane crashes. Intertwined in this classic novel are many themes, most that relate to the inherent evil that exists in all human beings and the malicious nature of mankind. In The Lord of the Flies, Golding shows the boys' gradual transformation from being civilized, well-mannered people to savage, ritualistic beasts.

Throughout the entire novel, the boys try to determine and figure out who they believe is the beast that has worried them so much. The more time the boys are there, they progressively believe more and more in the beast. In the beginning of the novel, they do not even think of the beast at all but towards the end they start to get very scared and even kill someone because the boy tries to tell them all that there is no beast. The ‘little uns’ start to think of the beast in a weird way like, they think that the beast could arise from the sea and fall asleep on the platform from the effort of this revelation.

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

The first real signs of fear are the boys being alone on the island, of them not being rescued and the fear of the beast. “ ‘We may stay here until we die’ With that word the heat began to increase till it became a threatening weight and the lagoon attacked them with a blinding effulgence.” (Pg.9) At this point in the novel, Piggy and Ralph have established that they are alone on an island, Piggy overheard the pilot say that an atomic bomb went off and that everyone was dead. Piggy saying this outlines the reality of the situation that they are in;

Fear can control, can warp the mind and cloud judgement as Jack shows us in William Golding's Lord of the Flies. The emotion’s vulnerability to be abused for evil purpose is much greatly overpowering any positive influence it can have over people. Fear is an underlying theme throughout the novel, and shown as a negative force over the boys. The fear of the beast in particular begins to eat away at them, the littleluns unable to cope with the threatening ambiguity of the unknown. In Ralph's attempts to comfort them, he tells them that fear "can't hurt you any more than a dream" (Golding, 88). Ralph tries to discredit the existence of a true beast made of blood and bone. In an ideal world, this would work. Ralph and Piggy would debunk the beast

Every day, all around the world every human being is forced to deal with their own personal terrors in their day to day life. In William Golding’s Lord of The Flies the boys are constantly surrounded by all their fears. Fear is a powerful emotion because it is capable of making us willing to resort to any means necessary to escape possible danger. This is shown when Jack uses fear to manipulate other children to gain power, the boys’ drift further away from their civilized nature to battle their fears and the boys’ actions are controlled by by their fears which causes their view of reality to become distorted .