preview

The Fear Factor In Lord Of The Flies By William Golding

Decent Essays

The Fear Factor Fear changes the way people act. In the novel Lord of the Flies by William Golding, a plane crash in World War Two leaves about fifty boys ages six to twelve, stranded on an island in the middle of the ocean with no one adult to help them. The boys are forced to start a civilization and elect a leader. Because they are just young boys, everything on the island seems to scare them. Even trees rustling or a strange shadow seems to get them on edge. Because they are constantly scared it causes them to do things that they normally wouldn't do. Fear changes the way the boys think, act, and perceive their surroundings. The first way that fear affects the boys is it changes the way they think. An example of the boy's ability to think straight being altered is when SamnEric were watching the fire overnight. While they are watching the fire, a dead trooper whose plane was shot down, falls from the skies and his parachute gets stuck in a tree. When SamnEric notice the strange figure, they freak out. They start running towards the camp full of the boys. When they reach the camp, they start to tell the boys about the beast they saw: “I saw it slinking behind the trees. It nearly touched me!”(Golding 77). Because the beast is a corpse dangling from a parachute it is not possible that it would touch SamnEric. Instead, this is just there imaginations running wild, fueled by the fear that is brought on by the island’s unfamiliar life. The fear affects their ability to think

Get Access