lotf Flashcards
(14 cards)
intro
- golding explores ‘man produces evil as bees produce honey’
- encompasses the inspiration of the novel
- implies evil is a natural quality within everyone
first para topic sentence
evil is inherent and innate within humanity
first para point 1
‘the long scar smashed into the jungle’
- from beginning of novel destructive nature of humanity and its negative impact upon natural world is depicted
- metaphor of ‘scar’ alludes to permanent wound boys have inflicted upon the island
- scar is ‘long’ and ‘all around’, suggesting no escape from devastation of ‘mankind’s essential illness’
- sibilance of ‘scar smashed’ is arguably oxymoronic; sibilance connotes to peaceful implications, denoting Golding’s criticism of evil being normalised due to WWII
first para point 2
‘ralph watched them, envious and resentful’
- Ralph is a generally pragmatic and innocent character
- although he’s resentful, he is still drawn to excitement of Jack’s tribal chant and feels ‘envious’ when not involved
- highlights primitive appeal of evil, as even the best of us can be tempted by the freedom that evil offers
- innocence and evil will always be in conflict due to amount of discipline it takes to overcome instinctive evil within mankind
first para point 3
‘Fancy thinking the Beast was something you could hunt and kill!’
- exclamative emphases mankind is powerless against evil due to mocking tone adopted by the beast
- capitalisation of ‘Beast’ allows us to physically see the power dynamic between the innate evil within humanity and society, where mankind is inferior
- personification of beast suggests the ironic implication that the beast is human and humans are the beast
second para topic sentence
evil is presented as something that develops overtime
second para point 1
‘holding the delicate thing in his sooty hands’
- symbolically emphasises fragility of order and civilisation through adjective ‘delicate’
- juxtaposition between fragility and Jack’s ‘sooty hands’; image of corrupt darkness that begins to develop in the novel
- foreshadows how this corrupt and innate evil inside of the boys will eventually overcome innocence and civilisation, and all else the conch stands for due to its predisposed fragility
second para point 2
“kill the pig, cut her throat, bash her in”
- emphasises how malicious the boys have become; their hunting seems like a ritual rather than a necessary evil to survive
- Golding’s changes to tricolon of imperatives in chat highlight the vast extent of violence
- earlier ‘spill her blood’ whilst still violent, becomes ‘bash her in’, which serves no purpose except fulfilling their desire for sin and evil
- originally, hunting was for survival, making it clear that they’re losing ties to their former conditioning and innocence, and are perhaps purely evil now
second para point 3
‘there came a pause, a hiatus’
‘the blade continued to flash at the end of a bony arm’
- even through Jack, a character notorious for being traditionally ‘evil’, sentence structure of ‘a pause, a hiatus’ using a comma mimics jack’s hesitation
- still somewhat conditioned by the civilised world
- ‘blade’ associations of violence and death heavily contrast with image of jack’s ‘bony arm’, highlighting Jack’s youth and innocence
- not physically designed to kill, which allows the reader to truly see the gravity of his descent into evil and savagery later in the novel
third para topic sentence
presents notion of evil as disregarded through certain characters
third para point 1
‘there was a bowl of cornflakes with sugar and cream’
- highlights innocence and joy of childhood through images of sweetness and luxury that Ralph had
- Golding’s inclusion of this dream as a flashback emphasises lack of evil and savagery within Ralph
- even amidst violence and dystopia, he still returns to images of safety and naivety of childhood to comfort him
third para point 2
‘conch exploded into a thousand white fragments and ceased to exist’
- simultaneous death of the two major symbols of civilisation and innocence - Piggy and conch
- violent image of ‘explosion’ alludes to WWII and implies war and evil has triumphed over civilisation and destroyed it
- ‘thousand fragments’ this damage is irreparable
- ‘white’ symbolises purity and cleanliness; could be referencing the lack of evil within Piggy
- through the medium of Piggy’s character, Golding is able to express injustice of killing of civilians he witnessed during his role in WWII
third para point 3
‘simon found for them the fruit that they could not reach’
- direct parallel to ‘the feeding of the 5000’ in the Bible
- reveals Christ-like nature of Simon, as he is the only bigun who cares for the littlun’s
- Golding uses character of Simon to reinforce his essential goodness and rejection of inherent evil
conclusion
Golding contends that ‘human nature, when free from the constrains of society, draws people away from common sense to evil and savagery’. through the characters of Ralph, Simon and Piggy, Golding almost utilises them as a microcosm for society, in which they guide the other boys away from mankind’s essential illness
