Fear has the ability to manipulate people into believing there is danger when there is not, causing them to make rash decisions. These decisions can result in a disobedience to one’s cultural beliefs, as seen in Lord of the Flies and Beowulf. Even though the characters from Lord of the Flies and Beowulf come from cultures built around nobility and loyalty, fear tears them apart from the society they had worked hard to achieve.
Although the boys from Lord of the Flies tried to keep their culture’s morals, the fear of the unknown caused the children to betray their Culture. At the beginning they were able to maintain their structured society; they had an election-- a civilized way of selecting their leader-- and they had the conch. As Ralph said “I’ll give the conch to the next person to speak... and he won’t be interrupted. Except by me” (Golding 33). This shows how the children were trying to uphold their constitutional monarchy by having the conch give everyone an opportunity to speak. However, they were not able to uphold their cultural values much longer once fear came into the picture. Throughout the story the children progressively became more paranoid. At first it was just the little children that were scared of an
…show more content…
While both stories express this theme, the endings added more by expressing the different end results fear creates. In Lord of the Flies the author showed how fear can lead to not only a betrayal of one’s culture, but leave people to live in regret for the rest of their lives. This is shown at then end when the children realize the horrid things they had done and then have to try to explain what happened. However, in Beowulf the Danes story ended on more positive note because the people did not realize they had done anything wrong, even though they had been disloyal. This is shown after Beowulf kills both creatures the Danes celebrate instead of grieving over their