Blogger #23 - Benjamin Owens - Period 9 - 11/10/2021

Benjamin Owens                                                                                             November 10, 2021

Blogger #23                                                                                                                        Period 9

The Human Condition - 11/10/21

Events of the Day

        In today’s class, we continued yesterday’s lesson about the analysis of Lord of the Flies, Chapter 8: “Gift for the Darkness”. In chapter 8, Jack and his hunters split off from Ralph’s group and hunt on their own. After each successful hunt, they leave a part of their catch for “the Beast,” in hopes that it will leave them alone. Simon finds one of these sacrifices, a pig’s head, and believes it is speaking to him. The pig’s head, also referred to as “the Lord of the Flies,” tells Simon that it is the Beast itself.


        We began class by analyzing a quote from the scene where the Lord of the Flies speaks to Simon. The quote is on page 143, and is as follows:

        “There isn’t anyone to help you. Only me. And I’m the Beast.”
        ...
        “Fancy thinking the Beast was something you could hunt and kill!” said the head. For a moment or two the forest and all the other dimly appreciated places echoed with the parody of laughter. “You knew, didn’t you? I’m part of you? Close, close, close! I’m the reason why it’s no go? Why things are the way they are?”

        In our groups, we first reread this section and paid attention to things such as diction, tone, and word choice. One thing that my group and I noticed was that many of the sentences were very short, which made the text more intense and suspenseful. Another thing we noticed was how threatening the “Lord of the Flies” sounded. For example, he told Simon that “There isn’t anyone to help you. Only me.”

        After discussing with our groups, we all shared our conclusions. Some other interesting observations were that the pig’s head uses rhetorical questions and repetition as it speaks to Simon.

        Next, we had to complete the following sentence based on the above passage:

        “Our group finds this passage absolutely ___ because it illuminates ___ about the boys on the island, thus demonstrating that the human condition ___.”

        But to complete this sentence, we first had to understand what it meant. More specifically, the phrase “human condition.” Mrs. Peterson explained to us that the human condition is the way people interact with each other. In other words, it’s a part of human nature.

        So, what does this passage say about the human condition? After a lot of discussion, and some difficulty fitting our conclusions into the right format, my team concluded that the pig was very threatening as it explained how its existence was part of human nature. There isn’t actually a beast, and the dead pig’s head is obviously not one. The true beast lies in the fact that humans would savagely slaughter a pig and leave its head for some “beast” that very few of them had ever even seen. We tried to fit our results into the sentence like this:

“Our group finds this passage absolutely threatening because it illuminates the beastly nature about the boys on the island, thus demonstrating that the human condition is savage."

        In retrospect, our sentence isn’t grammatically correct, but it’s still what we came up with. Some other teams came up with some really good answers (that were grammatically correct), such as:

“Our group finds this passage absolutely terrifying because it illuminates the insanity about the boys on the island, thus demonstrating that the human condition is inherently evil.”

        This answer in particular stood out to me because the group claimed that people are not just inherently savage, but evil. So, where could you draw the line between savagery and evil? A tiger that kills its prey is savage, but not truly evil. On the other hand, a murderer is evil, but not necessarily savage. I think that the difference between savagery and evil is that someone who is savage wouldn’t be aware that their actions were wrong, but someone who is evil would be aware and continue anyway.

        After this, Mrs. Peterson spoke about allusions (an allusion is any unexplained reference in literature) and how they were present in Lord of the Flies. An example of an allusion is the boys’ reference to Treasure Island in the beginning of the book, when they talk about how fun they believe island life will be. Treasure Island expresses a very interesting theory: the Natural Goodness of Man Theory. The Natural Goodness of Man Theory states that when separated from the corruptions that society encourages, humans will revert to a state of natural goodness. Meanwhile, the Lord of the Flies expresses a much different idea: that humans are inherently evil, and when they are separated from the restraints of society, they will show it.

Reflection

        Today we learned a lot about human nature, more specifically human nature outside of society. We already have an understanding of how people behave inside of society; after all, we see it every day. But we never get to see how people behave outside of civilization, which is what makes books like Lord of the Flies and Treasure Island so important. And ideas like the Natural Goodness of Man Theory and its opposition (which I suppose would be called the “Natural Evil of Man Theory”) express the core ideas of each story. On the one hand, perhaps people are naturally good and perfect; on the other, perhaps they are naturally evil. Maybe, as John Locke thought, they are naturally nothing at all. But regardless of the truth, both perspectives are equally significant and meaningful. After all, if we can’t understand ourselves, it becomes that much harder to understand anything else.