Essay Plan Flashcards
First paragraph - semantic field of permanence
- scar
- edenic setting
- question religious and social constructs
- Golding presents the ‘darkness of man’s heart’ to be a facet common to all and inextricable from human existence through his use of a semantic trail of permanence throughout the novel. Most prominently, this is exemplified through the mark gouged in the landscape upon the boys’ arrival as a ‘scar’.
- scar P1
- The noun ‘scar’ is conative of something which mortally wounds, cutting deep and corrupting from within. This reveals that the arrival of the boys, in all their religious purity and adorned with ‘silver crosses’, was something that fundamentally corrupted the balance of this Edenic setting
- edenic setting P1
Hence, Golding may be highlighting that as much as man may attempt to mask and shroud its own corrupted core with feelings of religious purity and of racial superiority, it is all done in futility as this ‘darkness’ persists regardless.
- Questioning religious and social constructs P1
- Perhaps also, this reveals his questioning of the contemporary religious construct as its attempts to instill morality among its followers seems to offer nothing to remedy this ‘illness’, perhaps the reason for Golding’s rejection of formal Christianity.
second paragraph
- imagery of the boys
- coupling of connotations ‘stain in the darkness’
- Jack inspires something irreversible
- a societal disorder that Jack catalyzes
Furthermore, Golding cements this lexical field into the imagery of the boys, for example as Jack is metaphorically referred to as a ‘stain in the darkness’. This coupling of the connotations of something irremovable and constant and the harsh sibilance of the noun ‘stain’ suggests the chaos Jack inspires is something irreversible, having awakened some deep-seated aspect of the human psyche. Moreover, this imagery may be alternatively viewed as symbolic of the societal disorder which Jack catalyses, evoking the concept that the thirst for anarchy and a society devoid of morality is something ingrained into the human subterranean mind, something ‘essential’ to the human condition.
paragraph 3
- religious imagery and illusion
- passing the ‘choicest fruit’ to the ‘endless, outstretched hands’.
- jesus
- contrast jack
- ‘serves you right if something gets you, you useless cry-babies
- exist facets of human nature which one can use to transcend these desires and our own inner evil,
sing religious imagery and allusion, Golding crafts as a benevolent construct, who offers contrast to the others’ more savage and atavistic instincts. This is most prominently exemplified in his attitude to the littluns, passing the ‘choicest fruit’ to the ‘endless, outstretched hands’. The superlative ‘choicest’ emphasises the kindness with which he treats the littluns, whilst the hyperbolic adjective ‘endless’ conveys the great number of people he helps.
jesus
- contrast jack
- ‘serves you right if something gets you, you useless cry-babies P3
Furthermore, this act of kindness mirrors Jesus’ feeding of the 5000, hence likening Simon to a Christ-like figure, casting him as an inherently good character. This attitude to helping the most vulnerable stands in great contrast to the others, especially Jack who instead plays on the fears of the littluns to gain power, claiming ‘serves you right if something gets you, you useless cry-babies’, a clear exploitation of the littlun’s fears. Thus Simon is created as the antithesis to the despot Jack and the rest of the boys who succumb to their transgressive desires, accentuating the ubiquity of human cruelty.
exist facets of human nature which one can use to transcend these desires and our own inner evil P3
However, it can also seem to highlight that there exist facets of human nature which one can use to transcend these desires and our own inner evil, something reflected in Golding’s own life as he aligned with the Christian teachings that all humans need salvation from their sinful vices and can bring this about with obedience to Christian mores.
paragraph 4
- necessity of rules
- ‘kill the beast. Cut his throat. Spill his blood’, a chant comprised of monosyllabic language coupled with harsh consonants
- boys surpass all moral constriants
- contrast with previous eloquence
- highlights importance of enforced moral standard
- even from the most innocent great evil can arise
- democracy
Golding presents the necessity of social regulation through structural regression, noting that it is essential in order to prevent humanity’s baser instincts from prevailing over rationality and order. While hunting for the beast, Jack cheers: ‘kill the beast. Cut his throat. Spill his blood’, a chant comprised of monosyllabic language coupled with harsh consonants, reiterating the boys’ merciless intent and lack of compassion.
- boys surpass all moral constriants
- contrast with previous eloquence P4
This also provides stark contrast to the previous eloquence of the choir boys who stood in ‘obedience’. These primitive hunters’ increasingly simple sentence use and decreasing length and complexity of dialect reveal their civil regression and their embracing of atavism. Moreover, the crescendo of cruel connotations amassed by the dynamic verbs evokes a sense that the boys have surpassed all constraints of morality.
-highlights importance of enforced moral standard
- even from the most innocent great evil can arise
- democracy P4
Overall, this regressive structure may have been employed by Golding in order to highlight the importance of an enforced moral standard, since in the absence of social control, from even the most innocent great evil can arise.
democrocy is born as a fragile yet functional system to confine innate evil of humanity
Paragraph 5
- imagery of simons death
- organism
- charecterised by ‘ teeth and calws’
- asyndetic listing
- dynamic verbs
- simon is a ‘it’
- powerful diatribe
However, the true extent of the boys’ capacity for evil is revealed through Golding’s vivid use of imagery as the boys collectively murder of Simon in a mad, bloodthirsty frenzy. Specifically, Golding’s use of metonymy and synecdoche in portraying Simon’s slaughter sharpens the graphic intensity of the boys’ violence, as ‘the crowd … screamed, bit, struck, tore’, characterising them by their ‘teeth and claws’. Here, the boys are collectivised as ‘the crowd’, suggesting that they have been reduced to a mere ‘organism’, devoid of humanity and the capacity for individual thought.
- asyndetic listing
- dynamic verbs P4
This is furthered by the exhaustive asyndetic listing – ‘screamed, struck, bit, tore’ – with the crush of dynamic verbs conveying the egregious extent of the violence the boys perpetuate.
- simon is a ‘it’
- powerful diatribe P4
Meanwhile, as the boys converge on Simon, he is dehumanised in an entirely different manner, framed as a mere ‘it’. Perhaps this is to reveal arguably the most insidious effect of the boys’ tribalism, that it disillusions them to the truth and causes them to view their only opportunity for salvation as a threat. Overall, this contributes to a powerful diatribe directed toward the human tendency to follow the actions of the mob, irrespective of the consequences. This, contemporarily, was especially relevant as Golding had witnessed the great evil that had arose under the third Reich in Germany, with tribalistic nationalism deluding the masses and fostering hateful darkness.
conclusion
- diatribe to question humanity
- darkness in mans heart
- spark of hope through simon
In conclusion, Golding uses the novel as a diatribe to question the true nature of humanity, emphasising that the ‘darkness of man’s heart’ is something inherent to all. However, through the construct of Simon, a spark of hope is created, putting forth that one can supersede these primal limitations that dwell within through the exercise of empathy and altruism
