What Are The Similarities Between Fahrenheit 451 And Lord Of The Flies

In the novels Fahrenheit 451 and Lord of the Flies, the parallelism in both novels traces through events that occurred during the Cold War that were reflected in the novels to help emphasize the evils of humanity. The Cold War began in the 1950’s, the same time as both novels were written, and was between the United States and the Soviet Union due to the fight of the communist Soviets and the capitalist United States. “Americans had long been wary of Soviet communism and concerned about Russian leader Joseph Stalin’s tyrannical, blood-thirsty rule of his own country.”(Cold War History, n.pag). The two countries’ fight caused an arms race, which created a growing fear, especially in the US, of who was going to be annihilated first. Even though it was seen as a fight against communism, the main

In Lord of the Flies, Jack and his boys would be a communist party, as he sought absolute control of the island, while Ralph favored the opposite. In Fahrenheit 451, the firemen are seen as the communist party, as they seek absolute control over public knowledge and burn books, much like the Soviet Union, and Montag and his other intellectuals were fighting against such control. Granger states, “There was a silly bird called a phoenix back before Christ … every time he burnt himself up he sprang out of the ashes, he got himself born all over again. And it looks like we’re doing the same thing, over and over...”(Bradbury 163). The phoenix analogy is used by Granger, correlating both with the novel’s continuing theme of fire, and because fire is seen both as a healing and destructive tool in the novel, much like the phoenix. Furthermore, the analogy was spoken after an atomic bomb is dropped on the city, and Granger and Montag had a conversation about how Granger believes it is their duty to live on and help knowledge