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How Does Golding Use Power In Lord Of The Flies

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Lord of the Flies, written by William Golding in 1954, shows that evil is an inescapable consequence of human nature, manifested when humans are manipulated by fear and driven by the desperation to survive. This triggers the innate response in humans to act in a savage manner, as demonstrated in Lord of the Flies where Golding illustrates this concept of unrestrained evil through a young group of boys. This is shown through human’s possession of power, withdrawal from society and decision to act upon self interests. Power allows evil to surface in humans through its acquisition and use when fear and survival instincts are integrated. Throughout the novel, the constant struggle for power is clearly established, resulting in an overthrow of …show more content…

Society separates the savage instincts within humans, without which our innate evil emerges. The effect of the boy’s sudden freedom can be explored in the characterisation of Jack and Ralph. Jack is portrayed as impulsive and power seeking where his reoccurring loss of leadership creates tension and heightens his desire to take Jack’s power. Initially, Jack grasps the necessity for society, but this disappears as he embraces hunting as leverage to influence the other boys. “Jack began to dance and his laughter became a bloodthirsty snarling,” uses imagery to correlate his actions to an animal’s, showing the early effects of limitless boundaries on humans. The later shift of leadership to Jack highlights the impetuous decisions humans make to ensure survival. Just before the conch is shattered, the personification of power and authority in “power lay in the brown swell of his forearms: authority sat on his shoulder,” shows the simplicity for Jack to rule revealing his intimidation. On the other hand, Ralph is presented as sensible and rational where his ability to adhere to social morality, “I’ve got to have time to think things out,” demonstrates civility. However, he too becomes enthralled by the experience of hunting and killing due to society’s disappearance. The metaphor, “something flittered there in front of his mind like a bat’s wing.,” signifies the island’s influence on everyone, including Ralph. He lets the island and its freedom manipulate his mind, conveying that, without society, humans are subject to act savagely from which evil arises. Therefore, evil will surface in humans in conditions without society when persuaded by fear and survival

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962 Words | 4 Pages

William Golding's book Lord of the Flies, shows how evil humans are at heart. The book is about a group of British boys who crash on an island and slowly turn savage. Jack and Ralph are split into two groups and after all the conflict ends up with people dead. William Golding in his book Lord of the flies tells us that people are more evil than good. This is shown in the killing of Simon, the killing of Piggy, and the killing of the sow.

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584 Words | 3 Pages

Ralph’s inner conflict of the desire to rule and the desire to be a part of the hunting display both a man vs society and a man vs self-conflict. Ralph realizes at times that by hunting with Jack, he can provide safety needs, but also that he needs to rule the boys rather than Jack. As evident when, “Which is better- to have rules and agree, or to hunt and kill?” (Golding 180). It is evident the boys, as well as Ralph himself, are not sure whether they would rather have food or civilization.

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825 Words | 4 Pages

At the beginning of the novel, the boys try to establish a system of rules and order to maintain their society. However, as they become more desperate to survive, some of the boys begin to break these rules and resort to violence. For example, Jack becomes more and more focused on hunting and killing animals, which eventually leads to him becoming a violent and dangerous leader. In contrast, Ralph tries to maintain order and uphold the boys' moral code, even when it becomes difficult to do so. Overall, the novel demonstrates the difficult choices that characters must make when faced with the need for self-preservation versus the need to maintain their moral code.

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735 Words | 3 Pages

Jack’s leadership is connected to darkness and evil, including the carcass of the dead pig and the shouting for more blood and killing, foreshadowing the breakdown of the boys’ sense of civilization and order. In contrast, Ralph’s leadership illustrates faith in one another and an optimistic community, focusing on the rescue and survival of the group and creating a feeling of safety and

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412 Words | 2 Pages

In William Golding’s Lord of the Flies Jack transforms from a boy who 's determined to hunt and find food for the group of boys, to a power hungry savage who disagrees with Ralph. As Jacks chaotic actions increases, the reader will notice how fear and chaos will drive people to extreme behaviors. Jack is assigned to be one of the hunters on the island and he becomes obsessed with killing the pig. Golding sets the scene by writing “the madness came to his eyes again”... “I thought I might kill” (53).

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775 Words | 4 Pages

In the novel, Lord of the Flies by author William Golding, a group of young boys crash from a plane onto an uninhabited island and begin to see new, more savage forms of themselves. After they crash, the boys decide to elect a leader for themselves. The majority vote for one of the older boys, Ralph. In the beginning, they all live in peace and follow the rules they have set for themselves. As the story progresses, some of the boys begin to lose their civic attitude.

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722 Words | 3 Pages

Their civilization starts to break down as well. The boys' isolation on the island, and their fear, leads them to chaos. This shows you that fear can lead people to act differently than their better nature. The boys go on to talk about a “beast” and how they fear it. The “beast” has caused so much fear that they hallucinate and a pig's head says to them, “Fancy thinking the Beast was something you could hunt and kill!”

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786 Words | 4 Pages

Lord OF The Flies All people have evil inside of them, no matter how innocent they may seem. In the book Lord Of The Flies by William Golding, evil can be found in places we least expect to look in, witch is ourselves. The book has many elements of evil, and some of the boys know that and use it towards their advantage to gain power. As the book progresses, the boys transform from being a group of educated school boys, to a group of wild scavengers who have the thirst for excitement.

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Evil is Within Everyone Without thinking, the laws and social rules we abide by every day are actually a fragile barrier keeping the worst of human nature from overtaking modern society. In the allegorical novel Lord of the Flies by William Golding, a plane full of British school boys is shot down over an island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. They are stranded without adult supervision or means to communicate with the outside world. This creates the perfect setting for Golding to explore the best and worst of human nature. It is in this setting that Golding illustrates what can happen when laws and rules vanish and human instinct reigns.

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This highlights how violence and cruelty leads to harm, not only to others but to oneself as well. When boys who have lost their parents, like Jack, engage in violent acts it leads to further aggression and lack of empathy towards others, like what Jack experienced. In conclusion, Jack's actions played a significant role in the demise of the island. His obsession with power and violence led him and the hunters to chaos and destruction of the

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1079 Words | 5 Pages

Stolen Power People are most prone to abuse their power and become more greedy when they grow in luxuriance or are given more authority. The book Lord of the Flies by William Golding describes a group of boys who become abandoned on a deserted island and are forced to find ways to survive without the help of an adult. In the novel, William Golding illustrates the idea that as power becomes gained the amount of control gradually declines and dominance will be quickly abused. Golding describes the theme of Good vs. Evil in his novel through his characters.

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1702 Words | 7 Pages

Being under a dictatorship can demolish any kind of sanity one has. Now Ralph has realized what power and manipulation can do to one person. He never intentionally plans on becoming a savage, and unfortunately, he misses his dignity. In response, Boyd comments, “It is rather the coming of an awareness of darkness, of the evil in man’s heart that was present in the children all along” (Boyd 27). His elaboration explains how the beast was not only in Ralph but in all of the young boys.

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1083 Words | 5 Pages

The novel “Lord of the Flies” by William Golding presents that regardless of a person's background, society should recognize that all men are capable of evil. Through verbal and dramatic irony, symbolism, and imagery, Golding turns what begins as a pleasant utopia into a dystopia. The fact that the main characters are young boys suggests the potential of evil inherited in everyone, including young children. For example, Jack is initially keen for rules and civility, but becomes obsessed with hunting – finding his lust for violence. Jack's desire to control becomes even more powerful than his desire for civilization, leading him and the rest of the boys to become savages.

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827 Words | 4 Pages

In the case of Ralph, his personal transformation from idealism to pessimism prompts his discovery of the human condition as he weeps ‘for the loss of innocence, the darkness of man’s heart’ this lament ironically symbolising the implications of his discoveries, because despite Ralph weeping like a child he’s been stripped of his negligent identity as he discovers the absence of true innocence within the human condition. Conceptually developed through the boys progressive disintegration of civility, where innocence portrayed in ‘a little dark boy...smiled cheerfully at everyone,’ juxtaposes their final depiction illustrated in ‘at once... no words, and no movement but the tearing of teeth and claws,’ where the omission of words and extended metaphor thereby epitomises that this savagery lays innately profound, tainting Ralph’s perceptions of humanity formulates his transformed identity. Accentuated, through the island’s early edenic portrayal, the mythical allusion to the Garden of Eden metaphorically insinuates the temptations towards corruption, therefore as the landscape descends into a hellish space it symbolises Ralph’s discovery and transformation in regards to what lays within humanity which completely imposes his childish

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1127 Words | 5 Pages

Throughout the novel of Lord of the Flies, William Golding provides a profound insight into human nature. Golding builds on a message that all human beings have natural evil inside them. To emphasize, the innate evil is revealed when there’s lack of civilization. The boys are constantly faced with numerous fears and eventually break up into two different groups. Although the boys believe the beast lives in the jungle, Golding makes it clear that it lurks in their hearts.

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