Lord
of the Flies – Rationale - by Jenn.K Paul Mark Casey
(Pages 187-225)
Jack leads the discrimination against Piggy throughout the book. In
chapter 11 it is taken to the next level when Roger dropped a huge boulder
on Piggy. He was obviously under the influence of Jack’s ideas
of hatred towards people who are different. In doing this Jack, promoted
the idea that drove Roger to destroy the conch, which was the symbol
of the civilization that stood in the way of his tribe. “The conflict
between Jack and Ralph, between civilization and savagery, marks the
beginning of the book’s climax. In the ensuing chaos, the two
natural objects that have come to symbolize each side- the conch shell
and the Lord of the Flies- are destroyed by allies of the opposite side.
Roger, the character least able to understand the civilizing impulse
crushed the conch shell as he kills Piggy, the character least able
to understand the savage impulse. In the next chapter, Ralph, the governing
exponent of civilization, will destroy the Lord of the Flies, the governing
totem of dark impulses within each individual” (www.sparknotes.com/lit/flies/).
Jack even seems quite proud of himself as he says, “See? See?
That’s what you’ll get! I mean that! There isn’t a
tribe for you anymore! The conch is gone - ” (200). In our world,
negative and discriminatory ideas influence peoples decisions to resort
to these sort of actions far too much. Everyday people are discriminated
against, pushed around and even killed. The events that follow are all
a result of these actions and usually lead to more suffering and pain.
After these events Ralph is now on his own and Jack has free reign of
the island. He will, and does, everything that he can in his power to
eliminate his adversary by killing Ralph. The question is that after
he killed Ralph, who would have been next and how quickly before his
tribe started to cave in on itself?
We decided on this sequence because of all the action and potential
to relate to some serious issue that are going on in this world, right
now. In the novel, the group of people destroyed their society. The
main theme of our presentation is whether or not we have reached a similar
point in our society and where will we go from here. We would we like
to incorporate into our presentation the question of, is the use of
violence necessary? Jack used violence to get his way and it led to
the killing of Piggy and the attempted murder of Ralph. By the following
quotes from the book it seems that deep down inside the characters they
questioned a good point that we want to include in our presentations.
“Which is better- to have rules and agree, or to hunt and kill”
(200). “Which is better, law and rescue, or hunting and breaking
things up” (200). Ralph tried to communicate to the others that
they need to recognize the conflict of ideologies. Jack’s violent
streak ended only because the officer showed up. It would have been
interesting to see what would have happened. Jack and his ideas were
bringing about the end of the island by destroying the entire island
to defeat his enemy.
As correlation
to the real world we would like to focus on what is occurring in Iraq
today. The United States keeps pushing everyone to join their cause,
and they feel they need to take out Iraq and their weapons, and that
they are protecting themselves from a dangerous and hostile enemy. The
ideology of continuing to push, just like Jack pushed everyone to join
him. Will this situation between Iraq and USA lead to the same result.
Will all of the different countries join into a war to take out someone
else who does not have the same ethics as their own?
Jack, who didn’t care about the fire and making sure they were
rescued, was the one who started the fire. The very fire, which got
them, rescued. This was and example of one of the ironies portrayed
in the final chapters. Another irony is that of the rescue officer is
quite disgusted about how the boys behave on the island, and yet, he
is fighting a very similar battle only on a larger scale. “Golding’s
use of irony in the novel’s last chapter complicates the boundaries
between civilization and savagery, implying that the two are more closely
connected than the story has illustrated. After all, the boy’s
appalling savagery brings about the rescue that their most coordinated
and purposeful efforts were unable to achieve” (www.sparknotes.com/lit/flies/).
Our presentation will be taking the form of Power Point Presentation.
This is an appropriate medium because we can incorporate many of different
types of media, such as, images, music, transitions and audio as well
as a very powerful overall effect. These are also the reasons why the
presentation will appeal to modern audiences. As of now, tasks have
not been appointed and are just being done by whoever can. We may need
some assistance from some one to help with transferring images from
a digital camera. We are making our production guide in the form of
a storyboard. Our PowerPoint presentation must be laid out in a slide
by slide format with details and slide outline.
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