Lord Of The Flies - Role Of Gender Essay

A boy longs for connection at the same time he feels the need to pull away, and this opens up an emotional divide. This struggle between his need for connection and his desire for autonomy finds different expression as a boy grows. But, regardless of their age, most boys are ill-prepared for the challenges along the road to becoming an emotionally healthy adult. Whatever role biology plays (and that role is by no means clear) in the ways boys are characteristically different from girls in their emotional expression, those differences are amplified by a culture that supports emotional development of girls and discourages it for boys. Stereotypical notions of masculine toughness deny a boy his emotional resources. We call this process,

While boys focus more on status in conversation, girls tend to concentrate on emotional connection and sympathetic sameness. Early on, boys tend to realize that there is always going to be a dominant position and a subordinate position in communication. Because of this, boys will aim to be the dominating person, or at least not the subordinate. This can be seen in competitive games where little boys try to outdo each other by saying that they have or that they are the best. When these same boys grow up, this importance of status becomes embedded into their heads so that

In Lord of the Flies if women would be the main characters other than just men it would be very different in many different ways. Women would not become that insane, women would escape and survive quicker. Finally, women would use their supplies more efficiently.

As a whole, humans have an innate sense to dominate other beings, whether they be animals or the fellow man. Men, in particular, have a natural masculine urge to control woman, and this instinctive force is the downfall of the human experience. Conflict and animosity are the only products of a male-driven society, which is easily seen in the poem Beowulf and the novel Lord of the Flies by William Golding. Both works of literature offer insight as to why femininity is essential for a prosperous society, why a community full of testosterone is merely a disaster waiting to happen, and why loyalty is necessary in humankind. Feminine energy is an important presence in Lord of the Flies.

In the play “Much Ado About Nothing,” written by William Shakespeare, there are several examples of gender roles and expectations. A gender role is when a role or behavior is learned by a person that is appropriate as of their gender, which is determined by the prevalent cultural norms. There are several examples of gender roles in “Much Ado About Nothing” such as Beatrice and Hero, Beatrice and Benedick, and how this play contradicts the norms of this time period. First, a good example of gender roles is Beatrice and Hero. During this time most women did the housework cleaning up the house, making meals for their spouse.

People see young boys as an energetic ball of light, but when something drastic happens, it can show their inner aggression, and savagery. In William Golding’s novel Lord of the Flies, a group of young boys are trapped on an island, resulting from a plane crash. They slowly start to try and govern each other, and through that time their personalities start to change. William Golding represents male aggression as a detrimental characteristic in Lord of the Flies by showing events, which affects the boy’s on the island. The aggression and anger that the boys’ uphold, sometimes worked out for them, but untimely got outweighed by the negativity of their actions.

The boys start out on the island as ordinary, civilized, young men, and transform into accidental killers. In William Golding’s Lord of the Flies, a group of twelve year old boys, marooned on a desert island, slowly deteriorate into what can be classified as savages. Power is abused, starting from the way only the older boys have it to the way Jack uses his power for his personal ambitions. Their fragile society does not stay a society for long, and it soon descends into chaos , with everyone fighting each other. The regress from a group of boys with some sort of society to total anarchy is caused by the fight over control, loss of identity, and the lack of rules.

Who runs the world? Why, girls, of course. Boys are stupid and immature, and they simply would not survive without the presence of girls. In the book, Lord of the Flies by William Golding, there is a group of boys that are stranded on an island. This group suffers through savagery, power struggles, the destruction of pride, murder, and fear. The girls are the guiding light in a storm in difficult situations, and they would have stopped all the madness if they were on the island. Girls would have made the civilization in Lord of the Flies better as a whole.

Through comedy, Shakespeare bends the rules for the gender in the play Twelfth Night. Viola and Olivia are two women who complicate the relationships they have. Viola dresses as a man who she calls Cesario, while her double life has her learning the roles of both male and female. She meets Olivia, who struggles with her own relationships and looks to Viola as Cesario for help. Both these women go through the same struggles of the gender roles, but because Shakespeare created by Viola to play both male and female her roles allow her to push the role of the female gender in society. These roles that they face are heteronormative verse binary gender, use of male and female communication, male power verse female power, relationships and identity.

Viola’s choice to disguise herself as a man creates the largest gender imbalance throughout the play. Although there is not a major imbalance between the genders throughout the whole play, there are a times where the gender imbalance of the time period does stand out. The inequality between men and women is first explored when Viola decides to disguise herself as a man. The impetus for her decision was that as a man she could make it further than as a woman. She knew that as a woman she would stay a maid and would not advance in social class, whereas disguised as a man she could move up in social status more easily. The idea that men can move up in social class more easily than women plays into gender roles then and now. This idea proves that genders were not completely equal, though there are many ways throughout the play where they do seem to balance each other. One of the areas in the play where the gender roles are relatively steady is the love between characters.

Crying, getting emotional, expressing hurt – these displays are forbidden for boys. Boys must be the strong ones, and girls must be the weak ones. If traditional gender roles are to be believed, girls can display these emotions because they simply do not possess the self-control that is required to hold them back. Children learn to exhibit the emotions that are acceptable for their gender from the beginning of childhood; it is made clear to them the role that men and women play in society, and the role that they each must fill. However, the repression of certain emotions in children based on gender can be detrimental to a child’s emotional health and development, because doing so does not allow

The way we are raised also adds to this for both boys and girls. Genetics is what we are made of but how we are raised makes a huge impact on the long run of our lives. Boys are taught to be more aggressive, to be the man of the family, to be independent, and sadly enough not to show emotion (“Boys Versus Girls: A Race to Delinquency”, 2009). Girls then are raised to be the ‘girl’, emotional, the relationship oriented one, the dependent one. This combine with environment, genetics, and the world we are in, can make us or break us, male or female, we all must make the choice to

Gender socialisation commences at birth, parental conditioning and expectations are confirmed with the introduction and expectations that girls play with dolls and boys play with trucks and cars. Girls are seen as the homemakers whilst boys are guided more towards building, climbing and rough and tumble play. This continues at primary school where girls are encouraged to wear dresses for their uniforms and boys shorts or long pants. Boys are chastised if they cry and therefore learn to hold back their emotions. This could result in excess anger and frustration manifesting into aggression and possible labelling of the child (UNICEF, 2015).

The society in which we reside has an immense power to model our thoughts, actions, attitude and conduct. It plays a huge role in shaping us. The construction of gender is one instance of outcome of societal influence. The society has imprinted an image in the minds of people about how certain limited perspectives should be looked upon while considering the topic of gender. Gender is often associated with the biological sex. It is believed that sex and gender shares an intrinsic connection. It is thought that since biologically there are two sexes, there must be two genders. But gender and sex are two different notions. Sex is determined by physical anatomy of a person and affected by a combination of genetic and hormonal influences. In contrast, gender is shaped by culture, social expectations and behaviors assigned by our social associations to being man or woman (Giddens and Griffiths 461). In other words, gender is an outcome of series of acts that one performs and is not mandatorily linked to one’s sex. The disregard of separateness between gender and sex and how the society plays role in labelling an individual composes the social construction of gender.

As soon as the film “Lord of the Flies” begins the audience is presented with visuals of a plane that seems to be emergency landing in the ocean and a large group of adolescent boy scouts swimming safely a shore following the crash. After realizing the trauma these young boys have overcome, you are immediately given insight to the minds of these originally civilized children. Since survival is the main concern for every child on the island the film does a great job of displaying a commonly challenged theory of Nurture vs. Nature. It shows just how embedded our animalistic tendencies are in our DNA as well as how quickly they can reemerge once faced with a situation as dire as these boys have been through. It also explores the concept of the need of “Leadership”, “Structure” and “Rules” in times of crisis. It is commonly observed that individuals that are lost tend to cling to a person that portrays a level of understanding, maturity, and confidence. People that showcase leadership qualities are also looked to for guidance, structure, and establishment of a sense of security for everyone. Many different psychological theories are present in “Lord of the Flies”, however the focus of this paper will examine the impact of Nurture vs. Nature, Conflict of Aggression, and the heightened influence of Personality on Adolescence.