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The Housekeeper And Lord Of The Flies: Literary Analysis

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In both The Housekeeper and the Professor and Lord of the Flies, the characters in each book find themselves forced out of their typical lives, and learn a great deal from their new experiences. The Housekeeper and Root find friendship and knowledge in the Professor, who first struck them as a strange and eccentric man. The boys in Lord of the Flies, after landing on a deserted island, learn from both the island and each other, but their knowledge takes a darker turn and over time creates the division and savagery the boys experience later in the book. A new environment creates learning opportunities, which can come from the influence of others or the environment itself. Individuals who learn from their mistakes not only improve their situation, …show more content…

When the boys choose a bonfire as the best way to get rescued, Ralph tries his best to keep it burning all the time. Misfortune strikes when Jack leaves the fire untended and it goes out as soon as a ship passes by the island, which to Ralph represents a huge missed opportunity. Once the ship passes, Ralph realizes how important the fire is. The boys likely could have escaped if they were more responsible and had known how essential the fire was to their escape from the island. From this failure, Ralph does his best to whip the boys back into shape. He gets very mad at Jack and his hunters for volunteering for the job of tending the fire but then not following through on it, and then calls an assembly and chastises all the boys for being lazy and irresponsible. He does all he can as leader to prevent a similar situation from happening again. Similarly, the Housekeeper realizes she can’t bring up current events because she’ll confuse the Professor. His memory ends in 1975, and the Housekeeper first starts working for him in 1992. The almost 20 year gap makes the Professor very disconnected and not up-to-date when it comes to current events. The Housekeeper learns that she can’t mention modern-day affairs, as he gets confused and leaves the conversation when he realizes his knowledge about the world is incorrect and he can’t contribute to the situation at all. The Housekeeper said she “...was always afraid of making some careless remark that might upset him.” (22) The Housekeeper has learned from previous occurrences that almost became problems that she can’t confuse the Professor with events he can’t remember due to his memory problem. When the characters from both novels make mistakes, they can sometimes realize what went wrong and avoid the problem in the

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Ralph sets rules for the boys to follow, but as they are young boys they do not listen. A big job assigned is to keep the fire going to be rescued. After a few days, two boys are in charge of keeping the fire going. The boys fail to keep a lasting fire and a ship passes by leaving the boys to go unnoticed, continuing to be stranded. This enrages Ralph knowing they may have had a chance to escape.

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At first, ralph makes a fire, hoping to stop a passing ship. Soon, after, all the boys group together, one of the boys, Jack tries to challenge ralph for his leadership, Jack tribe release a boulder on piggy, killing him. Jack then takes the other two boys hostage, leaving Ralph alone. During the process of jacks tribe trying to kill him. In the midst of trying to kill him, jack starts a forest fire.

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Changes such as marrying a black man and leaving to find something. He realized that it was a great deal at the time, and so he is astonished to listen about how his mother lead to make her own decisions, and end up making it through everything she was put up with. “I said nothing, listening in silence. I imagined that the news of Mommy’s marriage crashed through the Jewish community like an earthquake.” (McBride 226).

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Jack wants to hunt down pigs and get meat to eat while Ralph wants to focus on building the shelters and keeping the fire lit. On page 42 Ralph says “We've got to have special people for looking after the fire. Anyday there could be a ship out there” This quote shows how the fire is the key to them getting rescued from the island and surprisingly, jack initially agrees to it and assigns his hunters the job of watching the fire. Unfortunately when the time comes Jack had taken all of his hunters on a hunt with him leaving the fire unattended to burn out and die. Showing Jack's true

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The boys vote on Ralph to be their chief in the beginning of this book. Ralph is very structured and works in a way that society would. Under the direction of Ralph, the boys make a fire on the top of a mountain on the island. Ralph explains to the boys that the fire will get them rescued. This quote shows how the boys are very enthusiastic about the fire, because they all want to be saved from the island.

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Ralph soon comes to a realization and can’t believe how powerful the evil that lives inside him is. It takes Ralph the loss of a true friend to realize who he has become “Ralph wept for the end of innocence, the darkness of man’s heart, and the fall through the air of the true, wise friend called Piggy” (202). While Ralph is only twelve years old he has been through a ton in the last few weeks on the island alot for a child his age to go through. Golding uses the Naval Officer to rescue them because of how savagely the boys were acting that any adult most likely wouldn’t be able to contain them. Prior to the arrival of the officer the whole island is set on fire trying to smoke out Ralph.

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Then he starts to fell bad about not staying in contact with Morrie, which a little bit later in the story he goes to see Morrie. When he starts to see Morrie his live is forever changed. The first time he sees his old professor he starts to bargain with himself about if he should be in Morrie’s life or not. But he does want to be with Morrie in this hard time in Morrie’s life. At the end of the first visited with Morrie he tells his old professor every Tuesday.

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At first the fire was used as a signal in order to try and save the boys, making it a tool for success to return them to the normal world. Ralph proclaims “We can help them to find us. If a ship comes near the island they may not notice us.” (Golding). Furthermore, in the novel, the fire becomes a source of comfort for the boys, providing them with warmth and usefulness as a source of light and method to cook food.

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He tries to convey to the brothers that at his age, looking back and arguing about things that don’t matter in present day, such as their father’s legacy or the furniture collection, is a waste of time and not important. This puts the brothers quarrel into a bigger picture, and makes you realize that even though it may be difficult at the time, you have to keep pushing forward, because life will move

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He then brings it back to camp and cooks it up and has a feat with all the other boys on the beach this shows due to hunger and lack of civilization you can go to a dark place and do things you would have never done before. Then there's ralph ralph is twelve years old and with blonde hair and is the most charismatic of the group and is said that he is built like a boxer and is initially chosen as a leader due to his many positive qualities. Ralph makes the most smart and logical decisions out of the group followed by piggy. He is the one that comes up with the idea to make a signal fire so if a large ship of some kind or an airplane can go by the island that have a larger chance of being rescued and that's a very logical and responsible thing do due. But even ralph has lost his civilised ness and has some issues also just like jack and the other boys do

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Ralph’s meaning of power is unique to that of Jack, Piggy, and the littluns, hence his escape from the island’s corruption despite the deaths of Piggy & Simon. His initial desire to start the fire is a representation of maintaining hope, ironically because the fire, which was created by Jack, allowed for their survival. Therefore, Jack’s attempt to defeat Ralph’s characteristic of integrity managed to only find the success of Ralph. It is evident that because of his strength, Ralph is

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(P.143) Only after the mother explains how much she cleaned and how put together the boys are does he consider it. He uses this to his advantage and has guests over two Fridays in a

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Ralph says, “The fire is the most important thing on the island. How can we ever be rescued except by luck, if we don’t keep a fire going? Is a fire too much for us to make” (80). As an effort to show the boys their dire circumstances, he tries to convict them, including himself, of their ignorance. On the contrary, Jack Merridew counters Ralph’s authority with the proposition of thrill and amusement.

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However, that is of little import as his identity is shaped over the course of the four chapters of the story after he detaches himself of his old persona – he leaves his home, throws away his phone and retrieves as much of his money as possible and wonders if someone else would slip into his old life as easily as he had slipped out of it. As Mark Currie mentions in his Postmodern narrative theory, “identity is relational, […] it is not found within a person but that it inheres in the relations between a person and others” (17). Although we only get to see the events through the eyes of the unnamed narrator, he only begins to crystallize as a character once he begins interacting with others – he is the good Samaritan to the stranded Professor, giving him a lift when he needs to get back to his car and retrieves his wallet from the hotel, after the Professor vanishes, he unconsciously picks up his identity and gradually returns to life, plagued only by the fear of being uncovered as an impostor, while still feeling comfortable enough in his new identity in the company of strangers, playing along with the new game he has gotten himself into. Currie states that the way in which the author can control the sympathy and antipathy felt for characters is in direct relation to the distance from and

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