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Themes of Lord of the Flies - Coggle Diagram
Themes of Lord of the Flies
Good and Evil (The Beast)
Beginning
Conch a symbol of decency (democracy) and order of society
Raplh constructing shelters with Simon (selfless)
Boys spend majority of time playing - few accidents (accept fire that kills boy with birthmark)
Beast
Golding shows that the beast is not something seperate to ourselves
Inherent darkness and capacity for evil within humanity
Battle between two forces - Jack and Ralph
Friendship
Through J+R's friendship and R+P's friendship, Golding explores what it is to be friends and how important it is to chose them wisely
Civilisation and Savagery
Conflict between competing impulses that exist within all human beings
Civilisation
Live by rules
Act peacefully
Follow moral commands
Value the good of the group
Savagery
Gratify one's immediate desires
Act violently to obtain supremacy over others
Enforce one's will on others
Initially boys try to create a civilised society (conch and democracy)
Decent into savagery
Stop following civilised behaviour (e.g. eating and toiletting)
Become physically dirtier and more dishevelled
Violence increases gradually at first but then more rapidly
Jack and hunters paint their faces (mask)
Hunters chant and dance making an offering to the Beast
Consequences of their actions become more serious (e.g. Simon murdered, Piggy deliberately killed, S+E tortured, R. hunted like an animal)
Rational thought: P+R - civilised
Irrational thought: leads to savagery and destruction
Order and Discipline
Golding explores the balance between discipline and freedom
Golding was unhappy with the public school idea at the time that firm discipline was the right way to make children behave
Piggy's brain and Ralph's self-discipline are inherent within
Jack's worst crimes could have been prevented by some form of discipline
Jack's lack of concern for order
'Got to? Who says?'
No adults on the island
Golding explores what children would naturally do to create order of their own
Crowd/mob mentality
Shown to be very dangerous - causes the death of Simon
Acts as a cover for the others accepting their part in the death
Only R takes responsibility for the death - 'That was murder'
Individuals are less distinct in a mob
Raises the issue of individual responsibility
Golding shows what happens when crowd mentality is combined with a loss of order and an increase in savagery
Choir, Pig hunts, absolved from blame
Identity
Jack becomes known as 'Chief' and is 'painted and garlanded'
Boys clothing deteriorates quickly and uniform (community and civilisation) falls apart
Others adopt camouflage and become 'striped brown, black and red'
Officer introduced through his appearance
Ralph begins to lose memory - who he is, what is important etc (and Percival forgets his 'incantation' of safety)
Loss of Innocence
Lose sense of innocence
Beginning: well-behaved, ordered and longing for rescue
Progress to: cruel, bloodthirsty hunters, no desire to return to civilisation
C3 - swimming in lagoon to C12 - painted savages, hunted, tortured, killed
Golding shows how it results naturally from their increasing openness to the innate savagery and evil
The children are not forced into changing
G. implies that civilisation can mitigate but never wipe out the innate evil that exists within all humans
Struggle to build civilisation
Conflict between man's desire to build and create society (benefit all) vs man's desire for power and fun (destructive elements - destroy humanity)
Events on the island represents what happens in societies across the world - result in war and conflict (e.g. WWII)
Conflict: External and Internal
Contrasting pairs in the novel
External
C2 - boy with birthmark first mentions a 'beastie'
C3 - R. struggles to build shelters against forces of nature
Internal
C5 - Simon struggles to articulate his thoughts and is not understood
C8 - R cannot think clearly - shutters coming down in his mind
Fear
Affects the boys
Express fear in the assembly when discussing the Beast and nightmares
R. worried that fear stops the boys acting rationally
R. recognises the power of fear to distort behaviour
Fear becomes paralysing (seeing parachutist and figuratively - not being able to start the fire)
Stops most of the boys except Simon who is able to master his fear and see the reality
Dealing with fear
Try to ignore it
Turns into bravado or violence
For Jack the boys' fear becomes an opportunity to seize power
Afraid of?
The unknown or themselves
Religion
Concepts
Allegorical aspects considering good and evil
People who are influenced by others around them - Goldings experience in WWII
Pre-Christian religion - J leads the hunters to worship the Beast
Lord of the Flies
Beelzebub
Simon's hallucination brings together concepts of death, religion, sin and punishment
Original sin
Adam and Eve - humanity suffers because A+E went against God's instructions
Every human is born sinful and need Christ's forgiveness to enter heaven
Boys are doomed to tear each other apart with violence
Mankind is inherently violent and sinful - only held back via social conditioning
Simon
Religious imagery - Christ-like martyr figure
Seeks solitude but ends up speaking with the devil (like Jesus did)
Spends time in church-like clearings and ministers to the littluns like Jesus did
Gets crucified by those that don't understand him - when trying to tell the truth to the boys
Choir boys associated with the church - symbolise the ultimate in childhood innocence - Golding able to present idea that evil exists in everyone