Lord of the Flies-Part 3

These past couple of weeks in English we read up to chapter nine in Lord of the Flies. We looked explicitly at how Golding further characterizes Jack, Ralph, and Simon and how the characterization of these boys adds to the development of the plot.  We started with Ralph, and looked at how Golding describes him dreaming of feeding the wild ponies twice, making it a significant insight to Ralph’s character. The wild ponies remind Ralph of his past, when he was in a civilized atmosphere. It also shows that he misses home and longs for the peacefulness of his old life. Dreaming of his past keeps him sane to a degree. It also displays how the bastion between wild and civilized has been lost, as Ralph has now become the uncivilized creature.

In chapter eight, Ralph forgets for a moment about the purpose of the fire. Towards the middle of the book, Ralph expressed his worries about forgetting why the fire was necessary, like the other boys did. That was foreshadowing this moment, and perhaps future moments where Ralph will also regress in his morals and stable mindset to become like the other boys, only interested in hunting and having a good time. Golding shows that even those who seem above man’s ‘essential illness’ can fall into a more primal state.

We explored the significance of the choir boys putting on their black caps again and how Jack’s reaction reveals more about his character. They put them back on after Jack officially breaks from the group and forms his own, comprised of mainly the original choir boys. The caps show that they are thoroughly loyal to Jack. Before, with Ralph as leader, they may have taken off the caps out of a fear of being viewed as different or unloyal to Ralph, but now they can look and act as a group again. Jack, when seeing the black caps, is extremely happy that he has followers once again. Jack obviously needs to be follows in order to feel important; this portrays his insecure nature.

                Finally, we discussed the reason for Simon’s death. Simon is the only boy in the island who understood the situation and life in a deeper, more philosophical sense. Contrarily, he was also the most misunderstood boy on the island, one who the other boys would not miss. Golding chooses Simon to die because if he lived, there would be a chance of the boys preserving some sanity, but since he dies, no one would miss him. The way he is killed is significant because it displays how primal and savage the boys have become; they did not even stop to think that the ‘beast’ they were killing was one of them. 

This relates to the movie One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest in that the main character, Randle McMurphy, is the ‘voice of reason’.  He, like Simon, is the only one who truly understands what is happening to his peers: the institution is only worried about the control they have over the patients, and none of them are getting better. Just as the patients in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest are crazy, so are the boys on the island. The island is metaphorically like the institution, because they are all trapped. And just as Randle is lobotomized in the movie and expunged from the plot, Simon is killed. Jack and Nurse Ratched are also quite similar: both are hungry for power, so much so that they are oblivious to the suffering they are putting the others through.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_Flew_Over_the_Cuckoo's_Nest_(film)

As we reach the climax and end of the novel, we can truly see the toll the island has taken on the boys.