Many authors use the island convention. Discuss why Golding uses it.

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Logan MacLaren        English        5/2/07

Many authors use the island convention. Discuss why Golding uses it.

Numerous other authors use the concept of people being stuck on an empty island. It symbolizes that the characters on the island have no way of leaving, do not have extra supplies, and have no outside influence and are completely free from law and order. Golding takes advantage of this by also using this theme of chaos and disorder within a group of young boys. These boys know only of life as it was for them in England and few of them know how to survive on their own. The island in Lord of Flies is presented to the reader as hostile, full of monsters and disasters. The island is presented in that way because it is the unknown, and to the boys, a bit scary.

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The fact that the boys are stuck on the island is brought up quite often through out the book, mainly when morale is at its lowest and the boys think that they are stuck there forever.  This is also used to point out that they do not have everything they think they need to survive, no normal everyday things they had and have no way of getting back to where they came from, thus causing depression, and cabin fever. These things alone are what cause a book to have a sense of realism.

Since on an island there is most ...

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