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Lord Of The Flies Film Analysis

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Many students across the United States read the classic novel Lord of the Flies written by William Golding. The story traces a group of lost boys who find themselves alone on an island after opposing forces shoot down their escape plane during a futuristic version of World War III. Because of the novel’s uncanny resemblance to other classics, like Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson or Peter Pan by J. M. Barrie, Lord of the Flies quickly caught fire, eventually leading to two film adaptations. Tony and Emmy Award winning Peter Brook released the first film adaptation 1963. Brook’s adaptation consists of a randomly selected group of British schoolboys with no real scripts on a tiny island off the coast of Puerto Rico. Brook takes advantage of the dialogue, visuals, and character foils in order to effectively portray the theme: darkness in man’s heart. While Brook had a small amount of funding and the boys simply improvised most of the lines, the 1963 film adaptation of Lord of the Flies portrays the theme better than the original novel. Being able to hear the dialogue between the boys on the island already gives the film an advantage. In the movie, Ralph’s kind actions and his sincere tone when he talks to Piggy is much more obvious than in the same dialogue in the novel. For example, in both the movie and the novel, Jack breaks Piggy’s glasses. In the novel, the narrator observes that “Unwillingly Ralph felt his lip twitch; he was angry with himself for giving way”

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