- What qualities do each boy represent? (Ralph, Piggy, Jack, Roger, Simon, the littleuns)
- How does the society the boys have created emulate the society of the adult life they left? (think about why the boys were evacuated and the time period the novel was written)
- What happens to mankind when we are left without the rules and laws of society and no one to enforce them?
Wednesday, June 1, 2011
Lord of the Flies
No doubt you have all started Lord of the Flies. As you read through this book, I will be curious to read your thoughts. What I most love about this book is that it can be read on two levels. First, it is an adventure story of a group of young boys stranded on a deserted island. Second, Golding comments on issues of human nature and society. Each character represents the make-up of society and mankind. The island serves as a microcosmic view of society. Think about the following:
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The qualities represented by the boys all differ and play a very important role in the book. Ralph is a leader who believes in working together in unity to accomplish anything. Piggy has intelligence that help him to stay sane and remind Ralph of what is to be accomplished.
ReplyDeleteI think Ralph represents a leader who is mostly strong but can sometimes be influenced by others even if it is not truly what he believes. Jack represents a bold leader who is very persistent. Piggy represents those people in society who have great ideas and management but do not have the voice to speak out. He feeds great information to Ralph but isnt viewed as one of the greater leaders.
ReplyDeleteThis book illustrates in the first chapter that when there are no laws and rules they becomed restored by leaders. The littleuns are more inclined to swim and not focus on creating a fire or building shelters. While the older survivors restore some of the rules of society and seperate into different jobs, such as hunters and gatherers, and fire watch, and set a unspoken law to share the food
ReplyDeleteWhen mankind is removed of all rules, society falls apart. This is easily represented in the book through the boys. When they arrived on the island,they were alone. There were no adults to enforce rules onto them. Although, at first, they created their own society with their own rules, eventually, Jack split it up. When this happened, there was complete havoc. Now that they lost any sort of order and structure they had, everyone went wild. With no rules and no one to maintain order, people can do anything they want to and have no repercussions afterward. One such example of this is the death of Simon. That death was not very pretty, but neither was what became of mankind on the island because of a lack of rules.
ReplyDeleteRalph is like a democratic leader who tries to keep the boys together on the island and has a mild-temper. Piggy uses the conch for authority and believes in rational thinking and order. Jack is a strict leader and rules with an iron fist and is more physical with his leadership than Ralph.
ReplyDeleteA lot of people are saying that without order, there is complete chaos and rules fall apart. Is that totally true though? The boys did manage to at least form some style of government. Granted, there were problems between the boys on the island, but the problems didn't really stem from a lack of order, but rather a conflict between two factions. If only one form of government existed, either Ralph's democracy or Jack's autocracy, would the boys have had as many problems as they did?
ReplyDeleteThe boys really had no sense of how the world they came from was truly run but they knew that they had to elect a few of them to be in charge of the rest of the boys. They did have issues, but was a reaction to things that had occured. They kind of had a schism where Jack didn't agree with some things that had happened so he went and took some boys with him and started their own new group. When there is nobody to enforce the rules, riots begin and crimes start to sky rocket. Everyone thinks they can get away with whatever they want...which they practically can when there is no one there to stop them.
ReplyDeleteThis book reminds me of our government class. When Mr. White was asking us about what it would be like without government. well you get a perfect example here.
ReplyDeleteJake is making me really rethink my first comment. yes, there was a form of government that did evolve. which now makes me think of our sociology class. i believe it is Karl Marx who came up with social darwinism, and he is right, amnonst the chaos, balance will naturally become restored amongst people for the greater good of society, and the strongest will prevail.
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