Fear In Lord Of The Flies Essay

Can young boys learn from their decisions if they’re impacted by fear? The savage truth of boys' emotions become revealed while they survive on an island in William Golding’s “Lord of the Flies”. In the book, “Lord of the Flies”, the author conveys that fear can cause people to desire a sense of structure through the character Piggy, the fire, and the beast.

William Golding, the author of the novel, “Lord of the Flies”, shows how fear can lead to people wanting structure through the character Piggy. In many cases, Piggy, a very logical and vulnerable character, expresses his fear, like in the example, “Piggy took off his glasses, deeply troubled. ‘I dunno, Ralph. We just got to go on, that’s all. That what grown-ups would do.’” (William Golding

Near the end of the novel, Ralph explains, “This was the first time he had admitted the double function of the fire. Certainly one was to send up a beckoning column of smoke, but the other was to be a hearth now and a comfort until they slept.” (Golding 191). Ralph can be seen admitting that he is frightened, or worried about something, but the fire is bringing him comfort because it seems to be the only thing that he can truly control anymore. He has not been able to control the rest of the island of boys ever since he lost most or all of his power to Jack. Without the fire, Ralph would end up in the dark, scared, and only left with his thoughts. The fire is leading Ralph’s small group of boys to find structure, comfort, and calmness within it. The one time the fire was not being properly used for the column of smoke, was when the boys needed it the most. Ralph says to Jack, “Ralph spoke again, hoarsely. He had not moved. ‘You let the fire go out.’ This repetition made Jack uneasy… He flushed, conscious of a fault.” (Golding 77). Although most of the children on the island don’t care about the fire as much as Ralph does, like Jack, he ended up feeling scared and tense when he learned how important the use of the fire was to Ralph. The unease that Jack now has, of Ralph, gave him a feeling of self-consciousness because he is being

The savage ways of kids have been proven to be scary and dangerous at times. So while all of the boys in the book, “Lord of the Flies”, had some amount of fear in them, some relieved it by distracting themselves like the character Piggy, while others found comfort and distraction in other things. The bonfire that some boys persisted with like the character Ralph, brought comfort and control, while others like Jack searched for the so-called beast or hunted for pigs around the island, which gave them a different but similar sense of control and structure. They all searched for some sort of distraction from the scary realities of the children on their island one way or another. What if you were in the situation of these boys, would you control yourself and resist from being fearful? The boys, of course, did not know the extent in which their fear could take them and they ended up doing unspeakable things in an attempt to distract themselves from the fear that they created. So, do you truly know the lengths you would go to survive the best you know how on a deserted