William Goldings Lord of the Flies Essay -- Essays Papers

Lord of the Flies I chose to do one of my book reports on William Golding’s Lord of the Flies. The reason I chose this book is because it deals with many issues that are important to leading a solid Christian based life. It also deals with some issues that were talked about in class, for example discrimination, prayer and civilized behavior. The book starts out with Ralph and Piggy walking through the woods on what appears to be a deserted island. We are told that a plane transporting many young boys between the ages of 5 and 12 crashed on this island and these are the first two characters that we meet. Ralph and Piggy find their way out of the woods and onto a beach where they discover a conch shell that can be played as a horn. Ralph sounds this horn and shortly after a number of young boys emerged from the woods. It is now revealed that no adults are on the island and it is just the boys. They then decide to form a make shift government and piggy appoints Ralph to be the leader since he initiated the meeting. One boy named Jack, a member of a boy’s choir, protests the fact that Ralph was named the leader. So to please Jack, Ralph tells him that he will be in charge of hunting and gathering food, this along with teasing Piggy about his weight pleases Jack. The boys them split up and start to scope out the island and Jack organizes the first hunt, which is unsuccessful. As time goes on Ralph notices that many of the boys aren’t really doing any work and would rather be playing or sleeping instead, this worries him a little. He then goes out to explore the island with a choirboy named Simon, when they came back they called a meeting by signaling the conch. At this meeting Ralph sets up some basic rules. The main ones being that you can only talk at a meeting if you are holding the conch and that a fire must be keep going all the time on top of the mountain in case a ship passed by so that they could be rescued. The other boys like the ideas and rush up the mountain to start a fire. After they gather a bunch of firewood they realize that nobody can start a fire without matches. Piggy then suggests that they use the lenses of his glasses to spark a flame. The fire starts and gets a bit out of hand and Piggy thinks that one of the younger boys has been burned to death. All of the other boys laugh at Piggy and deny the incident. This is the first ... ...ll right. So we see how important parents are and how much they can influence their children. These boys were too young to be stranded alone and they couldn’t distinguish between right and wrong. I’m sure that as adults they would look back and see how hostile and evil they had become. Someone who has a similar view of this book is Kristian Moe who is a teacher in New York. I found this statement at www.malvik.no/engelsk/lordoftheflies.htm, he writes, â€Å"I feel that the book is very sad. In some ways it is even a little grotesque. It portrays human nature in its worst and darkest. It is very scary, and it makes me think about the world wars, and about Hitler’s racism and hatred. I can not believe that we have so many dark sides within us, but maybe we do.† In conclusion, I have to say that I enjoy this book because it is exciting and scary at the same time. I’m sure that everyone at one point in their life has dreamed of being on a deserted island, but I’m also sure that nobody would want their experience to be like the one we see in this book. Unless of course that have no sense of Christian values and are willing to subject themselves to that type of devilish behaviour.