Analyse William Golding's choice of language during and after the killing of Simon. Why does the language use change?

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Analyse William Golding’s choice of language during and after the killing of Simon. Why does the language use change?

“Kill the beast! Cut his throat! Spill his blood!” This is the chant that begins the section, increased in its violence as it now says “kill the beast” representing the feelings of the boys. They want to destroy the beast but can’t find it as it is inside each of them. This causes them to get ever more angry and frenzied, starting a ritualistic “dance” with “the chant” beating “like a steady pulse”. This is reminiscent of Simon’s experience earlier when a “pulse started to throb in his temple”, just before he went into a fit. This suggests that the boys are also going into a trance or fit, but a much more dangerous one, unaware of their actions. They lose their individuality and start “the throb and stamp of a single organism”, again with the throbbing and stamping inducing images of a trance-like ritual.

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        Also the symbolisms of circles and the weather are repeated. The circle now “yawns emptily” waiting to catch someone inside. The weather is threatening, “Thunder boomed…the dark sky was shattered…scar…blow of a gigantic whip”. This is a great contrast to the clear skies earlier in the book that symbolised peace. Now they begin to become terrified by the weather and the trance and out of this terror “rose another desire, thick, urgent, blind”. This is the frantic, unthinking desire of bloodlust.

        The boys don’t want to think about what they are doing, Simon is called “Him!” and “the beast” and ...

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The Quality of Written Communication is good as far as I can tell. No obvious spelling mistakes have been made, nor is their any cause for concern at the misuse of grammar and punctuation; the candidate uses speech marks appropriately and even semi-colons, which is a real indicator that the candidate in confident in their use of the English language. A few more linguistic terms such as "narrative", "discourse" or "fricative" could aid the essay in scoring higher in the English terminology marks.

The Level of Analysis is promising, and to a great extent is indicative of a very high achiever; figure a solid B grade for the efforts here. Alas, a lot of the structuring means that the candidate does not explicitly answer the question until the last few paragraphs. A lot of the time the earlier paragraphs end with what looks to be the start of a PEE/C (Point, Evidence & Explanation/Comment) e.g. - "This gives the impression of someone being eaten alive." The comment is fair, but if it were to pin-point exactly what tone this language has and how it relates to the question it could be even better and more succinct. The candidate would be looking to say something like "The language Golding uses during the scene of Simon's death is violent, dark and far more harrowing than the contrastingly serene over-use of sibilance (repetition of 's' sounds) in the scene just after his death", and then should go on to elaborate using examples from the text.

This is a very well reasoned essay that shows a competent analysis of language in William Golding's 'Lord of the Flies'. The candidate makes a good use of their analytical skills by honing in on specific words and phrases that set the tone of the novel. As an allegorical novel, much symbolism is used not just in the story but also in the way it is written, and the candidate has sensitively appreciated this, though the flaws in this essay really lie within the structure. The candidate's analytical structure often hinders their points, preventing this essay from eliciting the full five stars because some of the analysis feels unfinished and/or unconvincing due to a lack of insight into how to effectively structure the essay. More on this in the next section.