Fear In Lord Of The Flies

Improved Essays
Human beings are naturally born with a wide range of emotions, which they access in response to different situations. The loss of a favorite toy could trigger sadness, which is communicated via crying. The emotion that William Golding focuses on in his novel Lord of the Flies is fear. A group of boys is left on a deserted island after their plane has crashed due to the war. Although everything is fine at first, everything slowly goes downhill as they stop working together and start acting more on their fear. William Golding’s Lord of the Flies exemplifies the fact that fear is a natural response to the unknown and that it will unleash man’s worst qualities. Man’s fear is developed more and more as time goes on. The Lord of the Flies illustrates

Related Documents

  • Improved Essays

    Society has cultivated the human mind to filter knowledge and moral values that are taught from birth. William Golding’s novel Lord of the Flies traces society's flaws back to the true nature of humans when they are free from the constraints of society. The novel explores a group of English boys who are stranded on an uninhabited island during a period of war after a plane crash. They attempt to govern themselves in order to sort things out while waiting for rescue. However, as time passes by, things begin to get out of control and situations manifest, tempting the boys’ desire for order.…

    • 627 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    In lord of the flies, I think the "beast" is just the children's self conscious and that they are scared and confused of the truth that they are lost and alone during a war. And that their plane may have been shot down and they may be being hunted by a military force. It is them finding a way to get control of their situation and still have someone superior to them and be able to give them rules and be able to give them rules and supervision and enforce the rules. Fear is a huge reason that they are making up the beast with because they are scared that they will not have anyone to control one of them if they go off on a rampage. The first ones to start to believe in the "beast" are the little ones because they still have the most imagination and are still scared of things like monsters and demons.…

    • 636 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    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.”…

    • 419 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The “Lord of The Flies,” by William Golding has been a novel with a complex plot, diverse characters, and amazing messages. “Lord of The Flies” is a novel about a group of boys who are stranded on an island. During the novel, the boys end up voting to place one boy, (Ralph), as chief. However, later in the plot, another child named Jack starts to form his own tribe. Throughout the novel, the hardest challenge is the boys have to try to survive on the island.…

    • 495 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    “What are we? Humans? Or Animals? Or Savages?” (William Golding).…

    • 762 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Decent Essays

    The bogeyman is a make believe character that goes around to everyone's beds or closet. It makes people overreact and makes them run in fear, which can be destructive. This is like in the book lord of the flies when they get scared of the so Called beast. And so there by making fear a destructive emotion. One way fear can be a destructive emotion is it can make you less logical.…

    • 220 Words
    • 1 Pages
    Decent Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Fear is something that everyone has experienced; it is demonstrated constantly in characters throughout the novel “Lord of the Flies”. In the book Lord of the Flies, by William Golding, is about a group of young, British schoolboys being deserted on a tropical island after their plane crashed. No adults survive and the boys are forced to face the harsh conditions of the island and conflicts that uprise within their group. In Lord of the Flies, William Golding articulates that fears provokes humans to sever their moral instincts, act irrationally and allows for manipulation.…

    • 593 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    In the book Lord of the Flies, William Golding represents today's society with a group of boys stranded on an island. They are without adults, resources, and guidance to help them survive. They have to learn to work together to live but some of their differences may keep them from surviving. The boys soon learn that it is not easy to agree with everyone in the group and find out this is not as easy as it seems. They also learn that they must stay with each other if they want to survive.…

    • 1066 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    n the novel Lord of the Flies, William Golding explores the theme of loss of innocence. The novel follows the story of a group of boys who are stranded on a remote Pacific island with no adults. As the storyline progresses, the boys begin to lose their grasp on civilization, regressing farther and farther into savagery. As this regression continues, the previously innocent Ralph begins to witness the savagery that humanity is capable of--one of Goldings central ideas.…

    • 917 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Nelson Mandela, The South African president from 1994-1999 and anti-apartheid revolutionary, once said “I learned that courage was not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it. The brave man is not he who does not feel afraid, but he who conquers that fear.” This quote makes perfect sense in today's world full of cowardliness and shortcuts. Children and young adults face the challenge of steering away from being a coward and taking shortcuts in a corrupt society. The importance of not steering away from conquering fear is clear in William Golding's novel, Lord of the Flies, in which a group of young boys are separated from civilization as a result of an unexpected plane crash on a remote island.…

    • 1602 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Decent Essays

    Fear In The Kite Runner

    • 296 Words
    • 2 Pages

    Fear can cause people to make very drastic choices. Being scared can often make someone do things without thinking about the outcome. The novel The novel The Kite Runner By Khaled Hosseini is about betrayal of a young boy towards his friend and it reveals that even the people someone thinks they know can hurt and betray them in the worst way. In Khaled Hosseini’s book betrayal is the result of fear out of a difficult situation.…

    • 296 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Decent Essays
  • Improved Essays

    In Sir William Golding’s Lord of the Flies, the author depicts the imperfections of human temperament. Golding illustrates these defects through human children. Without a source of authority, the dark side of human nature is unsuppressed by rules, morals and structure, enabling society to retrograde to primordial instincts. Golding highlights this deterioration with complex symbolism consistently throughout the novel. As observed in the novel, witch lack of positive influence, the children become less civil.…

    • 393 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Ralph’s specific choice of words, and dark undertones throughout the novel has a strong significant meaning in the overall story and its theme. For example, the way the phrase is displayed makes it seem as though there is something dark and foreboding about this "creature" of boys. As though the boys are capable of bringing some kind of anarchy or devastation to the island, which foreshadows what they will do at the end of the novel. Furthermore, Ralph is really not afraid at this point, but given our further knowledge from the novel, perhaps he should be a little skeptical. This situation relates back to the theme, the only thing we have to fear, is fear itself.…

    • 265 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    William Golding’s Lord of the Flies writes about the ideas of people’s personalities and the evil within the human heart. Set within an island, a group of young boys set out to survive and be rescued; however, it is later seen how the boys end up being wild and savage when they’re left without adult supervision. Golding depicts Simon as a scapegoat whose exceptional persona on an island of chaos and anarchy makes him a target for the stranded boys’ hatred/evil. Starting early on in the novel, Simon shows a caring, generous personality, which becomes a stigma that he is “unique” in comparison to the other boys. Even though the norm for the biguns on the beach was to ignore or not help the littluns; Simon was different in that, “Simon found…

    • 744 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Great Essays

    The definition of evil is the “exercise of power” (“The Psychology of Evil”), according to psychologist Philip Zimbardo. In consonance with this definition, people execute an evil act “to intentionally harm people psychologically, to hurt people physically, to destroy people mortally, or ideas, and to commit crimes against humanity” (Zimbardo, “The Psychology of Evil”). Based on this, evil is committed with the intention to inflict harm on people and the environment. The incentive to perform evil acts, moreover, derives from the internal sentiments of an individual, the external environment encasing the individual, and the way that individual exerts these characteristics on others and on his or her surroundings. To begin with, people are inclined…

    • 1320 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Great Essays