The Responses Of Fear In Lord Of The Flies By William Golding

Fear and intimidation play a significant role in the novel Lord of the Flies by William Golding, just as a coercion and fear played a large role in the lives of the people ruled by the Axis powers in WWII.

the novel the Lord of the Flies, fear is the root of the trouble that

      Ralph's concern for the littluns leads him to call an assembly to "decide on fear" (82).  This assembly on fear is an essential part of the story.  Ralph wants to discuss the fear of the beastie, and whether there is reason to be afraid of a beast that may not exist.  He then proceeds to make this speech:

The fear begins internally with a few younger boys who are simply scared of the unknown and dark throughout the novel, and this simple childish fear was like a seed planted within them that slowly grew. The fear first grew into a beast that scared them at night. Golding first introduces the fear through the boy with the mulberry-colored birthmark who asks Piggy “What you’re going to do about the snake-thing”(35). All the boys soon become fearful of this unknown and unseen beast. This fear starts to take control of the boys, from this Jack arises and claims he would kill the beast if it was real. The fear in the children transforms into a new protected trust in Jack.

“The thing is - fear can’t hurt you anymore than a dream.” (Golding, 116). Jack’s completely false point of view of the hazardous emotion is declared within the quote. Jack is one of the antagonists derived from William Golding’s esteemed bestseller, Lord of the Flies. In the renowned novel written by Golding, young boys in a plane have crashed and descended upon an uninhabited island with more than sufficient vegetation. At first, order and tranquility were established by the children and there was more civilization on the island compared to savagery. However, as the novel advanced, the readers could identify the kids were suffering from the persistent terror on the island because of isolation. Gradually disorder possessed most of the boys’ minds and therefore had inaugurated

In Lord of the Flies by Golding, fear is a prevalent theme that recurs a number of times. Fear is most recurring with the character Jack and the way he uses fear to manipulate the group into staying together and doing things they wouldn't normally do.

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.

In 1971, a psychologist Philip Zimbardo conducted an experiment to see the impact of fear. What did fear do to man? He was able to simulate an experiment with prisoners and guards and found out at the end of his experiment that the prisoner had severe stress and anxiety. The experiment demonstrated “the powerful role that the situation can play in human behavior”. This experiment showed what a particular situation can influence human behavior. In the book, The Lord of the Flies, the characters are on a stranded island where the environment is governing their human behavior and how they react to one another. The character are influenced by fear and behave in ways that they normally would not act in their everyday lives. Man is controlled by fear and it can cause him to do things that he would never imagine doing. Fear results in letting go of your natural instincts and goes to your survival instincts, and makes you become an animal.

It’s the years following World War II, and tension is high. A group a British school boys needed to crash their plane in the ocean and swim to the shore of an uninhabited island. The island have pigs, water, and other valuable resources they need in order to survive. Once they appear on the island, they decided to set up rules and laws to govern their miniature society. A twelve year old boy disagrees with the laws they had originally set up and a rebellion starts to brew within the group. Now the trouble begins. This is the plot line of the book The Lord of the Flies by William Golding. Golding claims that fear brings out the worst in people. These rules, originally made for their own comfort, can be compromised by fear. In the case of the The Lord of the Flies, the children fear a creature called beastie. Fear can cause chaos and make people doing things they don’t normally do. The fear brings out the worst in people and it starts with beastie and leads to a the rebellion of Jack, and the demise of Simon and Piggy.

Fear is a destructive emotion because it can lead to all kinds of evil. The morning after Simon's death Piggy and Ralph are talking,”we was scared!!..anything might of happened”(Golding 156). Piggy is trying to find an explanation on why he was part of Simon's murder and tries to play it off as an accident. He was saying that because he is scared it doesn't matter that he killed someone, that fear took control of him and it was out of his hands, thus leading to evil. Jack at this point in the story and has given up all hope of being rescued and is now hunting Ralph. “ He forgot his wounds, his hunger and thirst, and became fear; hopeless fear on flying feet, rushing through the forest towards the open beach”(Golding 200). Fear is leading to all kinds of evil in this piece of text because Jack has given up on being saved so he is facing the fact that he needs all the power to survive. After Jack realizes this and is fearful he turns to evil and tries to kill Ralph while Ralph is trying to get away.

Fear impacts everyone. For some individuals, fear comes in a good form; it pushes one to achieve success. But for others, it can be dangerous and a continuous burden. In William Golding’s novel, “Lord of the Flies”, the boys’ suspicion of the island and those that roam it, is the downfall in to savagery. The boys first decide to paint their faces, followed by trying to show their aggression to the beast, breaking rules, openly admitting to carelessness, metaphorically raping a mother pig, and remaining naked although they had clothes. Over the course of a few weeks, the boys slowly demonstrated fear and evolved in to uncultured beasts.

"The only thing we have to fear is fear itself." Franklin D. Roosevelt conveyed human nature in these words, which painted the picture of fear’s grip on our thoughts and actions. In Lord of the Flies by William Golding, a stranded group of boys transformed to savages as they attempted to extinguish the source of their uneasiness, only they were too late to learn that fright was not something driven away by “a stick sharpened at both ends” (Golding 267). Trepidation was proven to be all controlling throughout Golding's writing as it prompted the juveniles to kill under night’s shadows while pressuring them to act rashly to keep from being hunted by an imaginary monster.

In the novel Lord of The Flies, the author William Golding explains to the reader how fear, can change the human mind, as well as make someone do certain actions that may be harmful to others. Golding shows the main protagonists

One could say fear is the most powerful feeling, the fight or flight mechanism. Putting a handful of boys on a desert island would not seem frightening but William Golding’s Lord of the Flies might beg to differ. In the story, Golding sets his story on a deserted island when a plane full of British schoolboys crash and are stranded without any adults. The boys soon realize their predicament and are overcome with fear when the theory of a beast comes into their thoughts. The effect this fear leads them to is terrifying; one could say it was true human nature that came into play. The only boy who seems to know exactly what is going on is Piggy while the other boys seem almost oblivious

In the Novel lord of the flies, it is evident that the stranded school boys attempt to build a civilization. Throughout the building of this new civilization the most challenging factor is leading the school boys and keeping the young boys on track, which is hard enough let alone being on an island with no adults. This making their civilization fragile. A constant fear is looming around the boys, which in the end is what breaks this fragile society. A fear of many factors including; Being stranded forever possibly, A beast and starvation. These fears divide the group of school boys and blinds the boys from the most important goal, surviving till their rescue.