Fear Corrupts All - Lord of the Flies

Fear Corrupts All

Period 6, Honors English

 A person’s actions and thoughts can be changed dramatically with one simple thing, fear. If a group of people get lost in a jungle, they will all soon begin to lose their minds, simply because of their inability to escape the jungle. That inability of escaping the jungle will eventually strike them with fear which will make them think differently and do things differently, even if it means harming others to get what they want. Fear is defined as an unpleasant emotion caused by the belief that someone or something is dangerous and is likely to cause pain or a threat but in this situation, it would be defined as a feeling of anxiety concerning the outcome of something or the safety and well-being of someone or oneself. The people lost in the jungle fear for their own safety, that they will forever be trapped in it. Eventually they will become mentally unstable with the fear corrupting their minds and begin thinking “with fear”. Fear will take control of their mind, making them do what they believe will be right for them for the safety of their survival. Depending on the mentality of each person before fear had struck them, their new mentalities will vary. A situation like this is somewhat similar to the situation in Lord of the Flies by William Golding; the only difference is that people here are children, making them more vulnerable to fear and having the changes caused by it more dangerous, especially since they haven’t fully matured yet and don’t have the correct mentality of what is right from wrong.

In Lord of the Flies, a group of kids encounter a plane crash, leaving them stranded on an island with no adult supervision and no communication with anyone outside it whatsoever forcing them to continue their own lives by creating their own civilization. William Golding portrays how fear changes each character's mentality throughout the novel through different characters and different ways. Ralph, who is the main protagonist in the novel, was affected by fear. He went from a civilized person to someone who lost it all, especially in the end when he had realized what the group of kids and he has become. Although Ralph seemed like he would’ve been the least to have been affected by fear, especially with the characteristics given by Golding and the fact that he became the chief, it all came crashing down whence Jack began to separate from Ralphs civilization and created his own. Jack is portrayed as a somewhat formal person; being the leader of a choir, he seemed to be looked at with more authority because of it. Throughout the novel, Jack ends up becoming a sort of “monster” when he finds out that hunting was his passion, and eventually, him and his group start hunting and killing for the fun of it. Then there’s Roger who, as described in the novel, is already not mentally stable, receiving pleasure out of hurting things. In the beginning of the novel he was already shown wanting to hurt the “littluns” and eventually taking advantage of it when everyone began to lose their civilized mentality. The Beast is the main cause of the distortion in everyone’s mind. It is the antagonist in the novel, and is shown in different forms throughout it.

From the beginning of the novel, Ralph is already shown as a good leader with the characteristics given by Golding. It goes more into depth with his leadership when it’s realized that Ralph knew what needed to be done to get rescued and he knew that leadership is required, “Seems to me we ought to have a chief to decide things” (Golding 22). This makes him a somewhat natural leader to the other boys on the island since he was the first to state so. One decision he makes as a leader was to build a fire. He stated “we must make smoke on top of the mountain... We must make a fire” (Golding 38) to be able to flag down a ship. This makes him a somewhat natural leader to the other boys on the island since he was the first to state so. Even the conch he gets helps him become chief because to the other kids, the conch symbolizes leadership since Ralph was the one who blew it and managed to organize all the kids together, “Him with the shell...Let him be chief with the trumpet-thing” (Golding 22). Ralph is also shown as a hopeful person in the beginning of the novel. When Piggy is asking him of how they’d get off the island he responds with “…when he gets leave he’ll come and rescue us” (Golding 11). Even though Piggy doubted him that his father would not know where they were, he continued to tell him that eventually his father would find out. “They’d tell him at the airport” (Golding 14), he says, even though the airport would have no communication with their plane, he still shows that he kept his head up and seeing the situation they were in, in a positive