"Lord of the Flies" and "Escape from Saddam": the Many Roads to Freedom

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Aziz

David Aziz

EAE3UI-02

Mr. Gravelle

June 07, 2011

Lord of the Flies and Escape from Saddam: the Many Roads to Freedom

At times, people are forced to make difficult decisions that can impact their lives and the lives of people that surround them. After making the decision, they must live with the consequences forever wondering if things could have been different had they made another choice. Nevertheless, when put in similar situations, most individuals will react the same way. For instance, if put in a life or death situation, one will do all it takes to survive. In Escape from Saddam and Lord of the Flies, the characters are put into a dangerous context, face the same conflicts due to their choices and, through their actions, evoke the themes of isolation and freedom in their respective novels.

 

Firstly, the characters from both novels find themselves in a similar setting. To begin with, in Lord of the Flies, the story takes place on a deserted island. The boys have very little knowledge of their whereabouts and spend a lot of time exploring the island. After Ralph was named leader, his first course of action was to become more familiar with the area. This was shown clearly when he told the boys, “If this isn’t an island we might be rescued straight away. So we’ve got to decide if this is an island” (Golding, 23). Through Ralph’s words, it is evident that the boys are completely unaware of the location of the island, or what dangers it can possibly hold. On the other hand, in Escape from Saddam, Lewis Alsamari travels through Iraq and other countries such as England, Jordan, and Malaysia, and also through the desert. When comparing the island on which the boys were stranded to the desert and all the countries Lewis was forced to cross in order to get to England, it is evident that those places are unknown for the characters. The boys in Lord of the Flies were forced to explore the island to be able to survive. In Escape from Saddam, Lewis was forced to follow specific directions to be able to travel in the unknown desert. Although Jordan and Malaysia are very different than the island or the desert, it was still unknown to the young man travelling and he was forced to go out looking for shelter and food just as the boys did. This is shown as soon as Lewis arrives in Amman and says, “I was a stranger in a strange country. I had no friends, little money, and no idea where to go to get the help and the information I needed” (Alsamari, 139). Through Lewis’s thoughts, it is made clear that he is completely lost in Amman, a new and unknown city to him. Furthermore, the circumstance in which the two stories take place is also very similar. In Lord of the Flies, the boys were not familiar with the island and what dangers it could hold. They had many dangerous times on the island, with the beastie that petrified many of boys. This was proven through the reaction of the boys after Sam and Eric and reported seeing the beastie,

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“They lay there listening, at first with doubt but then with terror to the description the twins breathed at them between bouts of extreme silence. An interminable dawn faded the stars out and at last light sad and grey, filtered into the shelter. Soon the darkness was full of claws, full of awful unknown and menace. They began to stir though still the world outside the shelter was impossibly dangerous” (Golding, 99).

Through the boys fear, we see that they were completely unaware of all the dangers the island could hold. Additionally, Ralph was also put into very ...

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