The idea of Dystopia is used in many novels and stories both modern and ancient, it simply reflects the idea of how modern society is taking a path which might lead us to a dystopian society. Although these novels are talking about dystopia in general but each novel or story show us a different way to reach the dystopian society, the author of Lord of the Flies William Golding's use kids that are abandoned on an island to show how the society at their age can lead to be dystopian regarding making rules and choosing leader(s) to maintain and control the human actions, William Golding's gave us his idea of dystopia in an indirect way.
William Golding's the author of Lord of The Flies was born on September 19, 1911, in Cornwall, England. his parents urged him to study the natural sciences although he tried writing a novel. Golding followed his parents’ wishes until his second year at Oxford. In 1940, a year after England entered World War II, Golding joined the Royal Navy, where he served in charge of a rocket-launcher and participated in the invasion of Normandy. Golding’s experience in World War II had a philosophical effect on his view of humanity and the evils of which it was capable to show. After the war, Golding continued writing novels. His greatest success came with Lord of the Flies. Golding wrote several more novels, but he never matched the popularity and success he enjoyed with Lord of the Flies.
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During a nuclear war, a group of British boys found themselves stranded on an island. At first, the boys attempted to form a culture like the one they left behind. They elected a leader called Ralph who with the help of Piggy attempts to create rules for housing and health. A major challenge to Ralph's leadership was Jack. Jack commands a group of boys to participate in hunting then draws the other boys slowly away from Ralph's leadership because of their natural attraction to adventurous activities. The battle between Jack and Ralph got worse by the boy’s fear of an imaginary beast living between them. One night, a flight battle occurs above the island, somehow a victim of the battle fell with his opened parachute eventually coming to rest on the mountain trees. This sight created panic to the boys as they thought the dead body for the beast. In reaction to this panic, Jack forms a group joined by almost all of the boys. The boys who join Jack are tempted by the protection Jack's seems to provide. Eventually, Jack's group slaughters a pig as an offering to the beast, they put the pigs head on a stick. Of all the boys, only Simon had the courage to discover the truth of the sighting on the mountain trees but after witnessing the death of the pig, Simon begins to hallucinate. As Simon suspected, the beast is not a living thing but is hallucination hidden in each boy's spirit, Weakened by his vision, Simon faints. After gaining consciousness later he rushed to the mountain trees and finds that its only a dead soldier. Struggling to bring the news to the other boys, he trips into the boys beast dance. Identifying him as the beast, the boys beat him to death. Jack's group stole Piggy's glasses to start a cooking fire, leaving Ralph unable to continue his fire signaling for rescue. When Ralph and his boys approach Jack's group to request the return of the glasses, one of Jack's boys released a huge rock on Piggy instantly killing him. The tribe captures the other two boys as prisoners, leaving Ralph. Jake group decided to hunt down Ralph to kill him, so they start a fire to force him out of his hiding places creating a wide island fire. A passing ship sees the smoke from the fire which came to rescue them.
At the begging after the plane crashed the setting of the novel was taking place in a utopian environment where no one was doing harm to others. “No grownups!” (pg8), ralph realizes that there are no grownups on the island and so he is exited over the vision of being on his own, then he begins to enjoy the time he has on the island so he takes in the beauty and the freedom of his surroundings. So basically ralph I having fun not realizing the seriousness of the others in the group. The first point of a dystopian environment was when Ralph took over the society and was trying to control it, while another boy named Jack who started to become more and more of a savage every day after killing a pig. This would have been okay until measures went to extremes where Jack started to become more violent where he started to kill others to let them choose to be civil(Ralph) or savage(Jack). This then gave jack the idea of being rescued and gave more thought to be the last man standing of them all. Each day these boys are in fear of an imaginary beast in the island, and this fear blocks their actual vision of being one society, like when Sam and Eric saw a dead parachuter hanging on a tree that they thought it was the beast. Because of that Jack found a way to use this fear for his own advantage, and to bring the others to his side to his side. When Ralph was in charge of the island the setting was more of a utopia, but after Jack started to become a savage, he gained more respect from the followers of Ralph, and when Jack started to supply the others with food and offered less work, more started to follow Jack and his savage leadership, until Ralph became less of a leader. When Jack became the biggest leader, the island started to get out of hand, and this lead to a clear dystopia. In this way jack is one of the biggest reason for starting a dystopian society among all of them. Now what started all of this are small things that build up to other problems the more the boys stayed on the island stranded without grownups one of which is fear of the beast, “There isn’t anyone to help you. Only me. And I’m the Beast…..Fancy thinking the Beast something you could hunt and kill….You knew, didn’t you? I’m past of you? Close, close, close! I’m the reason why it’s no go? Why things are what they are?” (pg143) People driven by fear can do things they wouldn’t normally do such as when they killed Simon and Piggy. This illustrate that the beast is only an illusion of their fear. Which takes us to our next reason of this dystopian small community which is illusion after fear. Because of this fear of the beast a phobia started to light up in everyone’s mind which escalated to hallucination and that’s how the beast came to life. This also effected the society to be more dystopian because now this society is getting scared and apart like when jacks team killed a pig, chopped his head and put it on a stick as a gift for the beast to stay away from the kids. However, fear also started to plant another characteristics in some kids which came to be power. Because of fear some people develop power to over come and win over the fear but other rather try to ignore it, in lord of the flies there where 2 kids who stood up against this fear who are jack and ralph. As mentioned before ralph wanted to use this power to save themselves to survive this island until they are rescued but Jake wanted this power to have fun and mess around the island, this obviously caused controversies against the others which by continuing the story it cause a dystopian society lead by Jake. The excess of power can also create other characteristics which only started in one person but was contagious and spread fast which was savagery. The main reason of almost everyone leaving Ralph and going to Jake was his savagery. Jake offered food, hunting, and less work to whom join his team, which worked and attracted most of the boys. This obviously was the highest peak of the dystopian environment everyone was into, 2 groups each have different perspective of leading a tribe resulting to force actions on one another to attract the rest to their side, this basically sum up the definition of a dystopian society.
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