The Significance of Fear in Lord of the Flies Many of life’s decisions are dictated by emotions. The expansive range of emotions humans feel are an evolutionary tool to help humans make decisions that will help them survive and live a comfortable life. Out of all of the emotions, only one is powerful and compelling enough to cause the “flight or fight” reaction. Because of this, fear is one of the strongest emotions, and is the one responsible for steering primitive humans away from danger. For instance, in the novel Lord of the Flies by William Golding fear is a driving force for many of the characters’ decisions and actions. In the novel, a group of young boys are thrown into the wilderness of an uncharted island, and have to rely on themselves
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The beast that Ralph sees on the mountain is not a monster, but the corpse of a man on a parachute that got caught to the mountain. Ralph only saw him for a brief moment, and does not recognize the body as human because he is blinded by fear. In fact, a chapter later, Ralph describes the ‘beast’: “[It] had teeth...and big black eyes” (136), despite barely seeing it. His fear has changed the way he interpreted the body, so he saw a beast instead of a man. This false reality is also what causes Simon’s death awhile later. Simon is the only one to figure out that the beast is no such thing, but when he comes back in the dark the others begin to believe that he is the beast: “A thing was crawling out of the forest...The beast stumbled into the horseshoe” (168). The ‘thing’ is Simon, and after being mistaken for the beast he is blindly stabbed and beaten by the others until he dies. Without fear, the boys would never gotten this far. Perhaps the hatred would have persisted between Jack and Ralph, but had they not believed there was a beast on the mountain than Simon would not have had to go look and end up in the situation where he was killed. If Simon had not been killed, Jack’s bloodlust would have remained only for killing pigs rather than humans, as it was not until after they killed Simon that they became so
The beast that Ralph sees on the mountain is not a monster, but the corpse of a man on a parachute that got caught to the mountain. Ralph only saw him for a brief moment, and does not recognize the body as human because he is blinded by fear. In fact, a chapter later, Ralph describes the ‘beast’: “[It] had teeth...and big black eyes” (136), despite barely seeing it. His fear has changed the way he interpreted the body, so he saw a beast instead of a man. This false reality is also what causes Simon’s death awhile later. Simon is the only one to figure out that the beast is no such thing, but when he comes back in the dark the others begin to believe that he is the beast: “A thing was crawling out of the forest...The beast stumbled into the horseshoe” (168). The ‘thing’ is Simon, and after being mistaken for the beast he is blindly stabbed and beaten by the others until he dies. Without fear, the boys would never gotten this far. Perhaps the hatred would have persisted between Jack and Ralph, but had they not believed there was a beast on the mountain than Simon would not have had to go look and end up in the situation where he was killed. If Simon had not been killed, Jack’s bloodlust would have remained only for killing pigs rather than humans, as it was not until after they killed Simon that they became so