Lord ofThe Flies Essay QuestionsEssay Question TwoLord of the Flies opens with the introductionof a small group of English boys that are marooned on an island. The planewas evacuating them from atomic war-ridden England. This is a suiting timefor this novel to be written- it shows how savage even little boys canbe, and that adults are no different, with their wars and cruelties. Asmall society is set up, but Jack starts his own rule, contrary to Ralph’sleadership. The boys turn on each other, eventually killing Simon in themiddle of a hunting dance, and smashing a boulder on Piggy.
The choiceof “young English lads” is perfect- if, perhaps, “foreign ruffians” werechosen, a stereotypical person might expect cruel and savage behavior. On the contrary, these boys were the “cream of the crop”, and all it tookwas a little trouble on an island to turn them into killing machines. Thetime is one that the world is turning on each other, and the boys followsuit and turn on each other. Their society is an ironic model of the realworld around them.
Many countries today are turning on each other, withviolent wars and cruelties. Lord of the Flies shows one that mankind mustchoose to stop cruelty or face destruction. Many people do not believein violence or cruelty, unless they are in power. When humans strive forpower, they get so power hungry that the power backfires. When one is intotal control power, one often turns into a more savage person than thatsame person that is under a rule or with the absence of a ruler does.
Humanswere not meant to be ruled or to rule. To coexist is mankind’s purpose,yet with no rule, there is often an absence of order, but with a humanrule, there is always conflict in society. Society today has order, butviolence is also prevalent. Near the end of the novel, many of theboys start a fire to smoke out Ralph, and that same fire gets bigger andbigger and eventually is what a ship sees and saves Ralph’s life and rescuesthe boys.
What at first was made to bring the death of Ralph later savedhim. In human society, and even in the animal kingdom, violent acts mayturn into a salvation. Many animals must kill one another to eat. Duringwars, the United States is brought together and the economy booms.
At whatfirst appears to be a bad factor for the United States, later becomes agood thing, in different ways. It is ironic that a bad deed can turn intoa good deed. This kind of ironic situation can also be applied to reversepsychology. If one tells another he or she if bad, often he or she willrespond saying that he or she is not bad. A hurtful insult may turn upsome self-esteem.
It is similar to throwing old vegetables at a bad comic-the bad comic is probably homeless and will take the food and eat it. Havelemons? Make lemonade. The final scene is possibly the most powerfuland terrifying of all the scenes in the book. It features a dignified navalofficer in all the trappings of his station, much like the paint and weaponryof the boys. This man rescues Ralph from almost certain death.
However,in doing so, he brings the boys into another society which, in principle,is exactly like the one they just lived. This man is a boy, a fly, anotherperson warring the battle for power between the evil in his mind and therationality of it, another person swarming to the feast. He is anotherJack, warring against people who do not agree with his ideals, his religionsin order to strengthen his own standards. Golding’s ingenious use of a truly entertainingstory to convey the scary reality of the human spirit is accomplished throughthe use of symbolism. The boys symbolize the various aspects of the mind,and their ensuing actions symbolize the respective struggles of the mind.
Their entire struggle to survive on the island is a representation of civilization’sstruggle to survive. This was Golding’s purpose and he accomplishes itsuccessfully. Essay Question ThreeNo government, no rules, no problems?Of course, there are problems. From the calling of the first meeting andall along up to the final hunt for Ralph, the sense of order and respectis gradually declining among the boys. In the beginning, everybody listensto what everybody has to say, and they try to build a civilized societyon the island.
The boys had obviously gotten a pretty strict upbringingboth at home and at school. All of them have a definite view of what isright and what is wrong. At first, they are able to use this sense, andkeep their traditional standards on the island. They elect a leader democratically,and by popular vote, they start deciding what has to be done. They haverules for the meetings and they make laws for what is allowed and whatis not.
The problem comes when the boys start realizing that there is noone there to control them. There are no adults there to make them toiland sweat if they do not want to. The boys realize that swimming and eatingfruit all day is more fun, than laying the foundation for a fair and safesociety where everybody works for the benefit of the whole group. The mainsymbol that represents the law and order on the island is the conch shell. It is with this Ralph calls all the meetings and all of the other boysseem to respect this.
Anyone who holds it has the right to be heard. Withoutthis, nobody would probably ever have listened to any of Piggies intelligentsuggestions. There would have been no fire, no shelters and no assignedplace for lavatory use. As the respect for the conch disappears, so doesthe law and order on the island.
This hits rock bottom as Piggy is killedand the conch is crushed with him. There is no longer any respect for OldWorld rules left on the island. With Piggies death, social anarchy wasat its fullest. Actually, there really is no anarchy. Thereis always a leader and there are always rules. Was there not an establishment?Of course there was.
Jack was the leader of the savages, even though theybasically did what they wanted to, he had his establishment and peoplelooked toward Jack as their leader. He overthrew power with violence ashis tool; he spoke of doing things his way and with no real authority. However, nothing changed for all the death that his ideas created, it’sjust the same fascistic games, but his rules weren’t clearly stated. Nothingwas really different, because all forms of government is basically thesame. Jack could have called it anarchy but slavery was the game.
Jackhad everyone under his control, and if someone didn’t want his new restrictionsor disagreed with him and had their own convictions. He would run themthrough. That’s what he did with Piggy, the symbol of authority, and thatis what he was going to do with Ralph. Essay Question SevenSimon is the most powerful character inthe book. Of all the boys, only he can see beyond the surface of things. His intransigence in climbing the mountain, his insistence on understanding,is a metaphor for what the book itself does.
The book dares to name thebeast, the evil in man’s heart, as the beast. He is the one who pipes upduring a meeting, that maybe the beast is real, but that it is only ourown creation, much like the monster typically lurking underneath children’sbeds. Simon is the one who confronts the monster fearlessly and finds outthe truth in the dramatic scene with the pig’s head. Simon is the embodimentof man’s intuition and feeling. When Simon confronts the beast, he realizesthat it is inside of him, that it can not be fought with spears and rocks.
It cannot be satiated with sacrifice and dance. It is a part of everyone,a part of human nature. Simon tries to tell his companions of his tremendousdiscovery, but his words are drowned out by the praising of the beast andhe is slaughtered in the ensuing frenzy. With Simon’s death, truth is lost. The identity of the beast is lost. The Beast takes many forms in the boys’imaginations; once, they saw a strange shape moving at the top of a mountain,and they were afraid that it was the Beast.
No one dared to go near itsave Simon, who went alone to the mountaintop during one of his sojourns;he discovered that the Beast was only a dead parachuter whose gear shiftedin the wind. Ironically, the dead man was a soldier, a symbol of the savagerythat was the true Beast. However, Simon’s compassion showed again as hebraved the stench to cut the parachute from the corpse; he laid the Beastto rest. Essay Question TwelveThe most obvious of the themes is man’sneed for civilization. Contrary to the belief that man is innocent andsociety evil, the story shows that laws and rules, policemen and schoolsare necessary to keep the darker side of human nature in line. When theseinstitutions and concepts slip away or are ignored, human beings revertto a more primitive part of their nature.
Which is revealed in the novel,when authority starts to slip Jack breaks away from Ralph and starts hisown savage cult. Another theme of William Golding’s novelis the fact that evil is innate in all people. That it is not somethingthat exists around us, but rather something that exists in us and it isthis evil inside man that dictates how he grows as a civilization. Allof the children in the book represent the flies that swarm around the pig’shead, which is its self, the lord, the need for evil. The children swarmaround the lord, they follow Jack in droves in order to feast on the pleasureof their own gluttonous actions. Finally, the existence of civilizationallows man to remain innocent or ignorant about his true nature.
Althoughman needs civilization, it is important that he also be aware of his moreprimitive instincts. Only in this way can he reach true maturity. Goldingimplies that the loss of innocence has little to do with age but is relatedto a person’s understanding of human nature. It can happen at any age ornot at all. Painful though it may be, this loss of innocence by comingto terms with reality is necessary if humanity is to survive.
Jack is agood example, he would rather hunt and get more in touch with of his primitiveside rather having a modern civilization, which Ralph tries to exceed.
