Response Journal about Lord of the Flies novel by William Golding

Response Lord of the Flies

Well, this is the second novel i read about contrasting in the novel. I have read sense and sensibility before, which consists of 2 sisters who have different characteristics reflected sense and sensibility. And now, lord of flies has also contrasting lifes between civilization and surgery, or individualism and community. Even this novel includes children, but they seem to act like adults with their unbalance behaviour.

Although ‘Lord of the flies’ was a short novel, it took me time to read, because I needed to read again in several parts. Well, I think this is not that kind of a story that just have to read as its words. It gave me a lot of questions, and I needed to think as I read because it was quite hard to fully understand.

Why did life in the island get messed up? This was the biggest question I had for the novel. i think Jack is a right key word for answering this question. He’s the one who starts  violence and brutality happened in the island. actually he only showed a little violence and brutality to start with. But it grew bigger and bigger until it reached to murdering. Eventually his savageness inspired a lot more kids to become violent and this messed up the life in the island. Another small question I had that relates was, ‘would there be any difference if there were some adults?’, and the answer was definitely yes. Ralf and Piggy’s thoughts were more like grownups’ but it was hard to get Jack to listen, which was probably because they were at about the same age level. I could see from pg.202 that even only one powerful adult can control quite a lot of kids.

To get a little more deeper, I could give the questions ‘why did the kids get so wild and brutal?’, and ‘what does thinking more like a grownup mean?’. The answer of these two questions also came together. Most kids were in Jack’s group because it looked stronger and cooler by hunting, but Jack was sort of a dictator there, and the kids only could do what Jack ordered them to do. They did not discuss or vote or anything, but only followed Jack, who as I mentioned before, had that small little violence to start with. In another hand, Ralf’s group had rules, and they had assemblies to discuss and communicate. It clearly showed that the two groups were very different in the ways of running from page 180 where piggy said
“Which is better, law and rescue, or hunting and breaking things up?”
“Which is better to have rules and agree, or to hunt and kill?”
Eventually (akhirnya) Jack’s group without any rules or system became wild and violent, and Ralf’s group who acted more like grownups, and had rules and agreements stayed almost the same.

I think, originally, the thing that messed up the life in the island was fear that kids had. It started with a kid saying that there’s a beast in the island. This small fear that started with the littleuns soon spread to the whole group. The lord of the flies was the beast, which was the pig’s head. But actually, the beast did not exist.
-”Fancy thinking the beast was something you could hunt and kill!” said the head.
-”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? (pg.143)
I could see that the beast only existed in the fear of kids’ minds.

Overall, the ‘Lord of the flies’ was quite a hair rising story, but it was enjoyable and interesting. I still cannot define about the fear, but when I was thinking for a long time about it, I was curious, What is fear? and how powerful is it?