The Thing

That One Five Paragraph Essay about William Golding's Story

Michael Chelberg

In 1954, just about ten years subsequent to WWII, a man by the name of William Golding wrote a novel based on his feelings towards the worl's society. The story of his idea was based on approximately 25 British

boys whos plane crashed on an uninhabited island somewhere in the Pacific Ocean. He named his creation, "The Lord of the Flies". You can read about how they live there for a couple months or even years and what they do to survive. The children set up their own small govt. system which, in time, fails and falls apart. Some of the boys turn into savages by the last couple of months they are there. The whole novel is a parable to what the author pictures the people of today's world as. Golding continuously reinforces his opinion throughout the entire novel of how he believes that every person has some savage personality inside of them, whether it be dominant in their behavior or not. If one were to break down the tale so that it could be more easily understood, they might include two main characters and a couple major events to help.

The first character that could be used in order to support given ideas is Jack. Jack is one of the eldest boys on the island, at the ripe age of twelve. He is certainly a leader, even though the actions he chooses to encourage are not in the best interests of the rest of the general republic. Jack does only what pleases him at the present time and what offers him some instant gratification. His mind is set on a one way track and he is extremely skillful at persuading others to follow him. In short, Jack is a Ð''people pleaser'. Golding gives us a complete and thorough explanation of Jack throughout the plot line. He wants us to see the correlation between this savage boy on a secluded island and the society back in the real world. By the end of the story, Jack is made out to be a n anarchist who loves to hunt and who lives to kill. He is in fact a true savage. Following, is an excerpt taken directly from "The Lord of the Flies". It demonstrates Jack's character; bla dee dee da da and bla nla da da da da.

A second character that Golding uses to manipulate his story is an individual named Ralph. Although Ralph holds an extremely different role from that of Jack, almost completely opposite, he is used to restate the same proposal. Ralph is also an elder on the island and plays a leadership role. However, where Jack stands for chaos, terror, death, and anarchy, Ralph strives for unity, completeness, an equal voice in their "govt", and just simply to be rescued. When Jack set off on another one of his killing rampages to spear a pig so that the group may eat meat instead of fruit, Ralph stayed back on the beach with Simon and the Ð''littluns' in order to build sheds for which everybody could benefit. He remains passionate about his ideas the entire story, even when he cannot remember what they are. Here is a passage from the third chapter on pg 47-48. It is a conversation held between Ralph and Jack after Ralph has been constructing shelters and just when Jack comes back from an unsuccessful hunt. He tried to convey the compulsion to track down and kill that was swallowing him up.

"I went on. I thought, by myself-". The madness came into his eyes again.

"I thought I might kill."

"But you didn't."

" I thought I might."

Now some hidden passion vibrated in Ralph's voice.

"But you haven't yet."

His invitation might have passed for casual, if it were not for the certain undertone.

"You wouldn't care to help with the shelters, I suppose?"

"We want meatÐ'--"

"And we don't get it."

Now the antagonism was audible. "But I shall, next time! I've got to get a barb on this spear! We wounded a pig and the spear fell out. If we could only make barbsÐ'--"

"We need shelters."

Suddenly Jack shouted in rage. "Are you accusingÐ'--"

"All I'm saying is that we've worked dashed hard. That's all."

They were both red in the face and found looking at eachother difficult. Ralph rolled on his stomach and began to play with the grass.

"If it rain slike when