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Influences On Society In William Golding's Lord Of The Flies

1316 Words6 Pages
While the English school boys on the island fall to the influence of the beast and evolve into demonic creatures, modern U.S. high school students are not much different. Many adolescents let unachievable standards set by the media and their own peers dictate their social lives, and as a result, many teenagers, depressed, resort to unhealthy methods of dealing with stress when they are unable to reach the set standards. Recently within our nation, we have encountered barrages of evidence suggesting that stress levels for minors keep reaching new peaks every year. In a speech to the Brookfield East student body regarding the state of Western civilization in 2018, William Golding would, predictably, lecture upon the threat of detrimental assimilating INFLUENCEs and the dangers of demagoguery to our society. William Golding, having served in World War II, knew about the egregious disasters that could arise from brainwashing, detrimental influences. Hence, in order to ensure history would not repeat itself, Golding emphasized the slippery-slope nature of sinister INFLUENCEs on society in his novel, Lord of the Flies, namely through character development. Initially in the PLOT, everyone willingly agrees to “have rules and obey them” claiming that they have “got to do the right things” (42). However, they ultimately end up clashing between and changing their opinions on the values they advocate for in the beginning, like peace, and the opposites of those values, such as savagery.
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