Lord Of The Flies Vs Rumors Of Peace Analysis

Because of how humans have evolved, they naturally desire competition. Without this the human race would not have gotten very far because competition fuels invention, the desire to have the upper hand on other individuals. Two good examples of this competition in a more modern world are The Lord of the Flies by William Golding and Rumors of Peace by Ella Leffland. Both of these books are set during World War Two, and the characters in them show a hardness and unsympathetic view on humanity that is only brought out in times of peril, one character becomes racist, another murderous. However the main characters in both books are children and the point is shown even better through the fact that they are not full adults. children show what is inside …show more content…
She thinks of them as less than people; that they are not as good as her. In times of war, misconceived hatred of humans based on where they were born can blur a persons view on the world. It shows that war creates hatred where it would not normally exist. For instance some of her friends are Italian, but because she knows them personally, that they are actually people, so she doesn’t think badly of the Italians. Maybe if she had known some Japanese children, her racism wouldn’t be so horrible. At the beginning of the book if someone does not fit into her molds of enemy or friend then she gets confused and almost deletes them from her mind. For instance, Peggy, her friend, has a gardener who is Filipino but looks Japanese. Suse doesn’t know what to think of him, so she erases him from her brain and decides to never think of him again. She also struggles with the fact that enemies and friends are not very different. Helen Maria, her other friend, and also her mentor in ways, explains that soldiers don’t actually hate each other on an emotional level. She tells her about The Battle of Verdun, how they shared rations and snapshots. Suse, disturbed by this says; “‘Don’t tell me they didn’t hate each other. Don’t tell me they would have stayed there if they didn’t hate each other’”(Leffland 139). For most of the book, Suse thrives on hatred, sometimes it is the only emotion that she can feel. When she discovers that in war the soldiers do not hate each other it causes her to be her resentful and feel betrayed. This is a very interesting insight on human nature. Sometimes two forces are very similar, often the similarities drive them to war, this is because they often have similar morals. But if they stepped back, they would realise the only thing they are fighting about is the desire to be the biggest, and the best. A desire that has been with most living beings