Aim: how does William Golding draw on human nature and the Bible to create complex themes as depicted in Chapter Eight of Lord of the Flies
We started the lesson with a cluster work (10 min) as we continued from yesterday’s lesson on chapter 8 of Lord of the Flies. We did a close reading of an excerpt from chapter 8.
“‘There isn’t anyone to help you. Only me. And I’m the Beast.’ Simon’s mouth labored, brought forth audible words.‘Pig’s head on a stick.’
‘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 what they are?’”
We annotated the text for diction, mood, tone, and syntax that Golding used to take a deeper look into the boys’ savagery as they stay on the island. And made a thesis statement filling in: Our group finds this passage absolutely____because it illuminates_____about the boy on the island, thus demonstrating that the human condition______.
Diction
Diction is the word choice of the author and a part that plays into the style of the author. A classmate pointed out how the diction used in the Beast’s dialogue makes it seem as though the boys would be at loss without the Beast. And another noticed the repetition in “close, close,close” and how it was used to push thoughts into Simon’s head more and more.
Mood
The mood is the feeling or the overall atmosphere the reader gets from a piece of work. The overall consensus of the mood of the excerpt above was the suspensefulness reading it and how ominous the Lord of the Flies felt.
Tone
Tone describes the way the author wants their writing to be perceived, this is usually done so by word choice and can go hand in hand with diction. Team 2 started off by saying how the author wanted us to experience the same hallucination that Simon was going through during this conversation. Team 1 added how there was hopelessness as well because the Beast states how the boys would never be able to live without his presence, referring to savagery. This also opened up the discussion of mockery and intimidation from the Beast.
Syntax [2:50] is the order in which words are put together in a sentence and is a stylistic practice. The way in which the words are manipulated show the dire situation the boys are in. As well as the power that the beast has over the boys and the fact that so many of the boys succumb to savagery and temptation.
Human Condition talks about the way humans interact with their environment and how they work. This could be religion, laws, and morals. With this in mind along with my team we made a thesis that stated: Our group finds this passage terrifying because it illuminates the desperation of the boys on the island, thus demonstrating the human condition that when facing an adversary, humans would go to extreme lengths to find a reason for why something is happening. When coming up with this thesis we talked about how Simon’s hallucination could portray his feelings that what they are doing is immoral, but unable to explain why and therefore creating this vision. This connects to culture and religion as many civilizations created stories to explain their world.
After the cluster work we read page 205(digital) 142(paper copy) of the book. We were reminded about how in this chapter and the whole book itself, there is a recurring theme of the power of nature. Reading this excerpt lead us into the biblical allusions that are seen in the book. The title in itself means prince of devils in Hebrew (Beelzebub). With the reference of the devil along with the dialogue “Close, close, close!”, the class discussed how this could mean closing into something like the boys’ unavoidable savagery or close in proximity of how close the boys were to falling victim to the beast.
Allusion
An allusion is a reference to an external source without explicit explanation, because the author is under the impression that most people would understand. Ms.Peterson explained to us how there were many biblical allusions along with allusions to other books. The biblical allusion is seen when the boys think that the Beast is an external force similar to how Satan is in the Genesis account, but is actually something that is innate. Lord of the Flies references books that are in contrast to it. Treasure Island shows the natural goodness of man theory and believes that if people are removed for society and corruption on an island we would revert back to times where people were good. Golding shows the opposite, that without rules, boundaries, and expectations people would turn to savagery and go under devolution.
We then looked back at the aim and had a discussion starting with how human desire is a theme that is portrayed in the book using biblical allusions.The boys’ savagery when hunting the sow shows lust and temptation even though it was once for survival. But as their intentions become twisted into having a game their primitive nature comes out.
Reflection
From this lesson I learned about writing with a clear purpose. William Golding’s style is very purposeful which can be seen clearly in the diction, mood, tone, and syntax of his writing. His writing incorporates these writing tools and uses it to present an analysis on human behavior with a constant theme. Not only is his writing structure, but the content of his work is purposeful as well. He uses allusions biblical and not to help readers grasp abstract concepts like human desires, temptation, and savagery. Along with the natural goodness theory, this made me reflect on myself as well as the communities that I’m a part of and wonder how close and how susceptible we are to becoming like the boys in the book. If we were to be in a situation where we were stuck on an island, would we be the good person or become the beast?
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