Write an essay answering explain what went wrong on the island and why, in order to bring out what you think Golding has to say about how society operates.

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Write an essay answering explain what went wrong on the island and why, in order to bring out what you think Golding has to say about how society operates.

Pedro Ferrer

10th Grade

November 7, 2002

In Golding’s novel, The Lord Of The Flies, a group of British children are stranded on a deserted island after an airplane crash. They manage to create their own society with rules and jobs. They chose Ralph, one of the oldest boys, as their leader. Meetings take place every once in a while in which the presence of democracy is visible.  Everyone has a say in the group decisions from the smallest to the oldest boy. They divide into two groups, the hunters and the workers, in order to run the camp in a more efficient way. In order to get rescued they light a fire on top of a cliff so it is visible to ships from a distance. People would think that with all this planning and organization a society like this would be successful, but is it really successful? Adults might be unaware of this but children are capable of doing much more than what they think. Children are capable of doing evil and good. Unfortunately in this case the evil reigns the island and this whole society is shattered by its presence. Many things led to the failure of society on the island but it is the fear of the boys, their innocence, and the absence of authority in the island, which cause the breakdown of the society.

        Fear is one of the things that lead to the failure of the society in the island. It is the fear towards the “beastie”, the fear of not getting rescued, and the fear of each other that damaged them. When little everyone is afraid of many things, but there is always an adult to calm their fear. In this case there are no adults in the island; they just had each other. The “beastie” is an imaginary monster that lurks through the island waiting to kill them. The “beastie” is portrayed as many different things like a snake, a creature from the sea, and a monster in the mountain. Little by little, fear is building up inside each of them. Jack’s fear of the beast is expressed when he says, “If you’re hunting sometimes... you can feel as if you’re not hunting, but—being hunted, as if something’s behind you all the time in the jungle.”(pg.53). The “beastie” is the source of many conflicts between the boys. The “beastie” divides the group in two; the hunters want to hunt down the “beastie” while Ralph, Piggy and Simon do not believe in the “beastie”. The boys are not able to think clearly with the thought of the “beastie” always present in their minds. Piggy realizes the reality of the beast when he says, “I know there isn’t no beast—not with claws and all that, I mean—but I know there isn’t no fear either...Unless—...Unless we get frightened of people.” (pg.84). The fear towards not getting rescued is the cause of the loss of hope throughout the group. This fear is not strongly demonstrated at first, but after the passing of the ship and the passing by of the days, it grew strong. This causes the boys to lose hope and once hope is lost nothing is left. They need motivation to survive in the island and to keep the society strong, but if this motivation were lost everything would tumble down. There is another kind of fear in he book; this fear is the fear of each other. One clear example of this fear is Piggy’s fright of Jack. When Piggy says, “I’m scared of him, and that’s why I know him. If you’re scared of someone you hate him but you can't stop thinking about him. You boy yourself he’s all right really, an’ then when you see him again; it’s like asthma an’ you can’t breathe.”(pg.93), Piggy shows that he fears that if Ralph would not protect him Jack would do something bad to him. Many boys are afraid of Jack when he had his mask on. This fear creates tension between the boys and this made the society crash.

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        Another important factor that leads to the sinking of the society is the boys’ innocence. They are all young boys about the age of eleven and lower. They still do not know much about themselves much less about the world. They are considerably mature for their age but their innocence blinds them from the truth. The boys thought that to make a society and to live with other unknown people is going to be easy, but they do not know what they are capable of doing. They never would have thought that their friends are capable of slaughtering each other. ...

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