In Lord of the Flies, William Golding expresses mankind’s essential illness as the takeover of fear over a person’s personality and decision making. The boys in the novel let their fear of a fictitious “beast” figure dominate their lives on the island in which they inhabit, leading to their eventual demise into savagery. One of the boys, Simon, states “...maybe there is a beast...What I mean is...maybe it’s only us.” He then “became inarticulate in his effort to express mankind's essential illness” (Golding 89). Before Simon speaks about the beast in this way, the boys are having a meeting to discuss the beast itself. One of the younger boys, Percival, hypothesizes that the beast could come from out of the water during the night. After he speaks his mind, the boys erupt into argument.
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Fear, beasts, no general agreement that the fire [on of their main concerns right off the bat on the island] was all important: and when one tried to get the thing straight the argument sheered off, bringing up fresh, unpleasant matter” (88). The whole reason the boys organized the meeting was to talk about the beast in an orderly fashion, but the conversation “sheered off” into “unpleasant matter.” The boys’ “sanity” in the scene was “breaking up” as they let their fear of the beast make them forget about the “all important” issues on the island, such as the signal fire, one of their prime methods of being rescued. As the boys’ sanity devolves, so does order among among the boys. Jack no longer respects the conch, one of the first rules made on the island, and snatches from the hands of Ralph while Ralph was trying to calm the boys down from the chaotic argument caused by their fear of the
Fear, beasts, no general agreement that the fire [on of their main concerns right off the bat on the island] was all important: and when one tried to get the thing straight the argument sheered off, bringing up fresh, unpleasant matter” (88). The whole reason the boys organized the meeting was to talk about the beast in an orderly fashion, but the conversation “sheered off” into “unpleasant matter.” The boys’ “sanity” in the scene was “breaking up” as they let their fear of the beast make them forget about the “all important” issues on the island, such as the signal fire, one of their prime methods of being rescued. As the boys’ sanity devolves, so does order among among the boys. Jack no longer respects the conch, one of the first rules made on the island, and snatches from the hands of Ralph while Ralph was trying to calm the boys down from the chaotic argument caused by their fear of the