...In the novel, Lord of the Flies written by William Golding, british schoolboys are trapped on an unknown island without the guardianship of any adults to push order and discipline. When the young boys first arrive, they are ecstatic about the idea of living without adults, meaning they can do whatever they want. However, the longer they are stranded on the island, the more innocence they get taken from them. For instance, the first time that Jack tried to hunt, he stares at the pig holding a knife over him. Jack couldn't find it in himself to kill the pig which led to it get away. Later in the novel, Jack finds pleasure in the killing’s and even chants “Kill the beast! Cut his throat! Spill his blood!”(Golding 218). Jack chanting this is a symbol of his loss of innocence....
Words: 606 - Pages: 3
...In Lord of the Flies all the boys who arrived on the island were all innocent and naïve but without any adults to look over them they quickly started to lose their innocence and do things that where they were originally from would be deemed illegal. Once arrived on the island Jack is one of the boys who quickly shows he wants control and to lead the boys but with him wanting this he quickly turns not so innocent. One of the things that Jack does that shows he is losing his innocence is when he goes after a female pig that just had piglets. What he does is “the sow gave a gasping squeal and staggered up with two spears sticking in her fat flank.” (8.147-148) By Jack doing this it goes against human nature and killing it also reduces their...
Words: 884 - Pages: 4
...In the novel Lord of the Flies by William Golding, Ralph experiences the loss of innocence on the island. In his experiences, we see that evil is inherent in man- something only Simon has understood on the island. The boys first enjoyed the freedom from adults, but soon all civil ideas on the island collapsed, leading to chaos and the death of Simon and Piggy; a metaphor to the background of the war in the adult world. This implies that every man has some capacity for evil within himself, even small children, leading to a loss of innocence. Furthermore, Ralph’s Loss of Innocence occurs during the death of Simon and Piggy, and during the destruction of the conch. At the beginning of the novel, the remains of what would be civilization still...
Words: 934 - Pages: 4
...When people are put in life or death situations their views and morals are put into the back of their brain, and they start to only think about living. The novel Lord of the Flies by William Golding is a good example of this situation. When our main priority is physical survival we lose our innocence, empathy, and our conscience. When our main priority is physical survival we lose our innocence. For instance, before the island the boys had never killed anything, but they realize they must hunt the pigs to stay alive. Jack comes back from a hunt and says proudly, “ I cut the pigs throat” (69). This shows that we lose our innocence when our main priority is living. Others may argue that not everyone will lose their innocence when a person is forced into survival mode. However, since food is necessary for survival, it would be very difficult to not kill any animals in the process. For example, after Piggy is killed by the rock, Jack, “[v]iciously, with full intention... hurled his spear at Ralph” (181). This shows that he is no...
Words: 603 - Pages: 3
...Loss of innocence is a strong topic in Lord of the Flies, the three topics that will be talked about in this essay includes, the boys acting without fear of punishment, they had to grow up and civilization helped them remain innocent and once they became savages they lost all remaining innocence. The loss of innocence is clearly shown in the boys because they are forced to grow up. They can’t play around any more but now they have to hunt and care for themselves. “We’ll make sure when we go hunting” (Golding, 35) This is when they realize they can't play around anymore or act like young boys but they have to grow up and start hunting and find resources so that they don’t die or get sick. Another time they lost...
Words: 792 - Pages: 4
...“I'm interested in how innocence fares when it collides with hard reality.” In the book, Lord of the Flies, a group of children were being flown out of England to escape their dangerous home environment, when their plane crashed on an island with no civilization. Without parental guidance, the children tried to create their own rules and their own government. Being so difficult for young children to follow their set rules, this led to chaos among the boys, causing a ripple effect of unfortunate events, leading to the loss of innocence. The boys lost their innocence the moment they killed a mama pig, which eventually led the boys to killing a young boy, and finally, hit hard reality when starting to hunt their leader, Ralph. The boys killing...
Words: 1153 - Pages: 5
...In the "Lord of the Flies" the readers sees the school boys lose control of the situation due to youthful inexperience. William Golding interprets this to give it a deeper meaning, describing the breakdown as a reveal of human nature and its desire to break through society's regulations. Virtue rapidly descends and the naivety of the dangers clears away, the fight for survival is not of the physically demanding aspect but of the mind. Golding illustrates loss of innocence in character development, in the lack of democracy, and symbolism as a result of the struggle between civilization versus savagery. Initial impressions of the main characters tell the readers of the immaturity of the mass, excluding Piggy.1 The severe lack of panic that is replaced with joyful curiosity foreshadows mass turn of events that will soon turn the perceived island paradise into a dystopian land. The first character that leads the rest into a domino effect of savagery is Jack. He starts of hunting and insists the urgency of meat in contrast of the fire. Priority is given to surviving on the...
Words: 1340 - Pages: 6
...One wrong decision can change you in an instant, we live in a world where faulty judgement can affect the lives of others around you. It is important that everyday we try and evaluate decisions that benefit us, as well others. Innocence is something we are born with and can be defined as freedom from sin, moral wrong, lack of purity or corruption. However, things that we possess can also be lost and or taken away including our innocence. A novel that demonstrates a vast loss of innocence is in Lord of the Flies written by William Goulding. Innocence in the novel is present in many of the characters but slowly begins to deteriorate over time due to the lack of maturity and discipline from their lives, which is replaced with violence and savagery....
Words: 2052 - Pages: 9
...Hundreds of thousand of children have been forced to become child soldiers. A Long Way Gone and Lord of the Flies both share an essence of innocence that they are forced to let go of. A Long Way Gone portrait Ishmael Beah’s young life in Africa as a child soldier. Ishmael, while away from his village he learns it had been attacked by rebels and cannot return home. When the rebels arrive at the village Ismael has been staying in, he and manages to evade the rebels but must be nomadic. However, when he seems to find peace in a military occupied village, the rebels arrive and Ismael joins the fight to protect himself, becoming a child soldier. After a couple more battles UNICEF comes to take the boys to Freetown in order to be rehabilitated and educated. Esther serves as a role model for...
Words: 994 - Pages: 4
...that the innocence once possessed as a child can dissipate. Innocence can be easily viewed as temporal due to its tendency to falter in a myriad amount of people. Loss of innocence is a prevalent archetypal theme in Star Wars, Grapes of Wrath, Lord of the Flies, A Separate Peace, and Swing Kids. Although all novels display this archetypal theme well, the character Tom in Grapes of Wrath suffers the greatest loss of innocence due to the tragic effects of the Great Depression and the crime he participates in. In Star Wars, a young man, Luke Skywalker, who has lost his parents, lives with his aunt and uncle and is brought into a world of violence on his mission to become a Jedi. He encounters the ultimate archetypal devil figure, Darth Vader. Darth represents the darkness humanity possesses. Although Luke’s encounters with supernatural beings and death are frequent in the film Star Wars, this sharply contrasts with the isolation Tom Joad faces in Grapes of Wrath. While Luke’s loss of innocence is accepted as a way of life in Star Wars, including killing clones and destroying an entire planet, Tom’s inability to tolerate injustice, resulting in violence, is a crime in the world of his character. Essentially, Luke’s loss of innocence brings him closer to the people in the world he is surrounded by; his destroying of the Death Star is an act of bravery. Tom kills men who displayed violence and evil, but it is a crime in his world. In this perspective, Tom’s loss of innocence, which...
Words: 1403 - Pages: 6
...Lord of the Flies is a 1963 British film directed by Peter Brook based on the 1954 novel by William Golding. Both the book and movie of Lord of the Flies represent popular culture in the fact that the book started out being popularized by the working class and would later become a best seller and even move into the category of high culture by becoming required reading in many schools across the world as well as wining the Nobel Prize. The Lord of the Flies and book and movie demonstrate many of the traits that are often reproduced in various form media and often imitated in other works of film, television, and reading. Lord of the Flies was remade into another film in 1990 but the 1963 film is considered to be closer to the book and is the one that is used by this paper. The 1963 Lord of the Flies film is a black and white British film that is presented in the form of a third person narrative in which the audience is a outside party looking in on the cast of the film. The film is about a group of young pre-teen to teenage boys who crash land on an island somewhere is the specific ocean as a result of their plane being shoot down. In the background of the movie there is some type of war but the film never mentioned which war is taking place. With the film being based on a book from the 1950s and the film taking place in the 1960 it can be assumed that the war in question is either World War II or perhaps a future war. In the film the overall theme is that violence and hate...
Words: 1593 - Pages: 7
...In some works of literature, childhood and adolescence are portrayed as times graced by innocence and a sense of wonder; in other works, they are depicted as times of tribulation and terror. In Lord of the Flies by William Golding, the meaning of adolescence is represented by innocence as well as terror which shapes the theme, savagery vs. civilization. The boys’ adolescence is represented by the amount of innocence they present when first arriving on the island. “Ralph pursed his lips and squirted air into the shell, which emitted a low, farting noise. This amused both boys so much that Ralph went on squirting for some minutes, between bouts of laughter”, (Golding, 17). Ralph and Piggy find a shell while walking around the island and try to figure out how to use it. Their innocence is shown through the happiness and enjoyment they get from making a funny noise with the shell. The scene represents their innocent characters before conflicts arise and change them for the worst....
Words: 452 - Pages: 2
...In society today, one barely has any time to take care of one’s children. They are left alone and uncared for which often causes them to either react badly in every day life or to become accustomed to their solitude and learn to fend for themselves. Such realities can also be portrayed in works of fiction such as The Hunger Games and Lord of the Flies, two stories that may seem very different in content, but are based on very similar ideas. In these two stories, The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins and Lord of the Flies by William Golding, there are two main characters by the names of Katniss and Ralph who both go through their life journeys isolated from society and in each story, their situations becomes a disadvantage for them. Lord of the Flies and The Hunger Games are novels that portray an abuse of power as a result of leadership roles in society, an absence of identity used as camouflage, and finally, a loss of innocence among the characters as a result of living in a corrupted and chaotic environment. In both stories, there is an abuse of power, which destroys the main characters’ lives. In Golding’s Lord of the Flies, once Jack had decided to run the island the way he sees fit, things started to go downhill for Ralph. When Ralph was chief of the island, the children tried to stay as civilized as they could, and even started establishing rules and tasks for each person to accomplish. When Jack started to take control of the island, however, everything was completely ruined...
Words: 3798 - Pages: 16
...Lord of the Flies by William Golding is famous among the readers for its theme centered on civilization and savagery. One of the most important concepts that relate to the theme is the “essential illness of the mankind.” The essential illness is not an actual physical illness, but is a part of the mind of a human. In the novel, the essential illness is described as the natural evilness, which comes from human nature. Also, the illness is possessed by all humans, no matter their backgrounds. Most importantly, it is described to contribute to the fall of civilization without the supervision of super ego. First, according to the novel, mankind's essential illness is the evil which is part of human nature. This argument is indirectly introduced...
Words: 990 - Pages: 4
...The Lord of the Flies: Characters The world had witnessed the atrocities of World War II and began to examine the defects of their social ethics. Man's purity and innocence was gone. Man's ability to remain civilized was faltering. This change of attitude was extremely evident in the literature of the age. Writers, who through the use of clever symbolism, mocked the tragedy of man's fate. One such writer was William Golding. An author who has seen the destruction of war and despises its inevitable return. Through the use of innocent and untainted children, Golding illustrates how man is doomed by his own instinct. The novel is called Lord of the Flies, and is of extreme importance to help reconstruct the current wave of revolutionary ideas that swept the twentieth-century generation. Lord of the Flies portrays the belief of the age that man is in a constant struggle between darkness and light, the defects of human nature, and a philosophical pessimism that seals the fate of man. Golding's work are, due to their rigid structure and style, are interpreted in many different ways. Its unique style is different from the contemporary thought and therefor open for criticism. The struggle between darkness and light is a major theme in all the works of William Golding. Strong examples of this are found throughout Lord of the Flies. The most obvious is the struggle between Ralph and Jack. The characters themselves have been heavily influenced...
Words: 312 - Pages: 2
