Meaning And The Use Of Fire example essay topic

409 words
The novel The Lord of the Flies by: William Golding is about a group of kids who were traveling across the Pacific Ocean when their plane went down, the boys have to learn to survive and try to get rescued. The main way of getting rescued was that the group of boys had was to have a fire going on the mountain at all times during the day in hopes of a ship or an airplane seeing the smoke that the fire produced. The fire granted the boys a sense of survival, hope for rescue, and reason for order; but when they ceased to cooperate with each other the fire no longer existed their hope and security vanished. The fire is a major player in the novel.

Throughout the novel you see the meaning and the use of fire getting more and more away from the point of being rescued. At one point in the book the use of fire is to kill Ralph their original chief by chasing him out of the dense jungle with it. When doing so they were going to kill him. Fire is one of the many motifs in The Lord Of The Flies which had many different meanings. The fire symbolized comfort, warmth, safety, and the hope of being rescued.

Even though the conflict between the boys's ophisticated side and their savage side was very one sided because of the multitude of negative events occurring simultaneously. The savage side eventually won over the civilized side. Because in the beginning they were proactive and using their heads, then in the end of the book they were lazy, all about fun, and violent. The fire eventually became a symbol of violence, aggression, and supremacy. Jack and his tribe set forth to get the fire and took it with force and violence they did this because they had no other way of making fire. Then they used the fire as a tool to doom the gang that Ralph's sophistication still had bought him a few followers to force them and brainwash them into turning on Ralph and to follow Jack to a life of fun and games.

Though the Jack's tribe wasn't about fun and games after all as it seemed on the outside it was just a way to ease their frustration, anger and an overwhelming need to lash out.