LOTF Themes

Question 1

Savagery
(dehumanising)

Answer 1

‘Imitation war cry that was answered by a dozen voices’

Question 2

Savagery
(savage need for blood)

Answer 2

“Kill the pig. Cut her throat. Spill her blood.”

Question 3

Savagery
(loss of innocence)

Answer 3

‘His laughter became a bloodthirsty snarling’

Question 4

Loss of civilisation
(Piggy)

Answer 4

“There was no Piggy to talk sense. There was no solemn assembly for debate nor dignity of the conch”

Question 5

Loss of civilisation
(rejecting bounds of society)

Answer 5

‘Bollocks to the rules’

Question 6

Loss of civilisation
(mourning corruption of innocence with the inherent evil of man)

Answer 6

“Ralph wept for the end of innocence, the darkness of man’s heart, and the fall through the air of the true, wise friend called Piggy’

Question 7

innocence
(stark contrast to violent chase scene)

Answer 7

“A semi-circle of little boys, their bodies streaked with coloured clay”

Question 8

Innocence
(unable to comprehend brutality)

Answer 8

‘You aren’t playing the game’
(Ralph to Jack)

Question 9

Fear
(loosing control and safety)

Answer 9

‘you can feel as if you’re not hunting, but being hunted’

Question 10

Fear
(fear of turning against one another)

Answer 10

‘I know there isn’t no fear, either … Unless we get frightened of people’

Question 11

Fear
(overcoming fear with violence)

Answer 11

‘If there’s a beast, we’ll hunt it down.’

Question 12

Leadership
(the children need the stability of authority)

Answer 12

‘A link with the adult world of authority’

Question 13

Leadership
(too much leadership leading to tyranny)

Answer 13

‘This weapon, so indefinable and so effective’
(Ralph’s status as chief)

Question 14

Power
(corrupting nature of authority)

Answer 14

‘Power lay in the brown swell of his forearms, authority sat on his shoulder and chattered in his ear like an ape’

Question 15

Power
(power of democracy)

Answer 15

‘They obey the summons of the conch’

Question 16

Nationalism
(blindness of british nationalism)

Answer 16

‘After all, we’re not savages. We’re English, and the English are best at everything.’

Question 17

Violence
(militaristic language)

Answer 17

“machine-gunned piggy”

Question 18

Violence
(overcome by a primal urge for violence)

Answer 18

‘He tried to convey the notion to track down and kill that was swallowing him up’

Question 19

Democracy
(importance of democracy in civilisation)

Answer 19

‘We’ve got to have rules and obey them.’

Question 20

Civilisation
(questioning societal conditioning)

Answer 20

‘Roger’s arm was conditioned by a civilisation that knew nothing of him and was in ruins.’

Question 21

Crowd mentality
(dehumanising and violence through crowd mentality)

Answer 21

‘There was the throb and stamp of a single organism’

Question 22

Crowd mentality
(danger of mob mentality - liberating internal violent savagery)

Answer 22

‘the mask was a thing on its own, behind which Jack hid, liberated from shame and self-consciousness.”

Question 23

Evil
(Simon sees the internal evil which is the real beast)

Answer 23

‘Simon became inarticulate in his effort to express mankind’s essential illness.

Question 24

Evil
(danger of excessive power)

Answer 24

“they had outwitted a living thing, imposed their will upon it, taken away its life like a long satisfying drink”

Question 25

Evil
(duality of man)

Answer 25

‘The picture of a human at once heroic and sick’ (simon’s perception of the LOTF)

Question 26

Friendship
(childish)

Answer 26

‘Jack and Ralph smiled at each other with shy liking’

Question 27

Colonialism

Answer 27

‘savoured the right of domination’

Question 28

Savagery vs civilisation
(Jack vs Ralph)

Answer 28

“There was the brilliant world of hunting, tactics, fierce exhilaration, skill; and there was the world of longing and baffled commonsense.”