The Housekeeper And Lord Of The Flies: Literary Analysis

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,

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