Lord of the flies (Wiliam Golding)essay.

Essay by maree11High School, 10th gradeA+, April 2004

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Year 10 English- Assessment Task 2003

LORD OF THE FLIES ESSAY

Lord of the Flies appears to be, a somewhat ill natured story about little boys isolated on an island. In reality it is a horrible story about the general characteristics and feelings of mankind.

Being stranded on an island is a situation that can have a severe physical and mental impact on those involved. As the boy's on the island discover, such a situation can lead to their true selves breaking out from beneath their childish exteriors.

Destruction, fear, death, authority and order are some of the themes William Golding presents us with; these themes will be discussed in this essay.

In Lord of the Flies part of the nasty story is the destruction of order and the abuse of authority. When all the boys meets together in chapter 2, there is at first an agreement to order the island with a democratic system, and this is first represented by the 'conch', which is in effect the symbol for democracy on the island.

" I'll give the conch to the next person to speak. He can hold it when he's speaking."(p.45) The whole system of democracy begins to fail early on in the book, Jack's stubbornness to cooperate is the main cause of this, he hunts on his own and takes away many of the boys from democracy." All at once the crowd swayed towards the island and were gone following Jack."(p.49)

Most of the boys don't play their part in the democratic society as "They're off bathing, or eating, or playing."(p. ) Ralph makes meetings and everyone talks and makes decisions, but very rarely are these ideas actually put into action.

Initially there is some conflict between Ralph and Jack, but this is just a struggle of ego's...