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   luannw Teacher
   High School - 11th Grade

   eNotes Editor

   Fear is part of what brings out the savage nature in the boys, the evil that Golding felt was part of all people.  Fear is a reaction that tends to strip people of the ability to think with reason, so Golding uses fear to do that with the boys.  The fact that the story deals with children makes this easier since children tend to have fears of things like beasts and monsters.  At first, it's the littluns who express fear.  They fear the vines, or "snake-things", and they think there is a beast out in the water.  The fear begins to progress to the older boys, especially after Sam and Eric see the parachutist who has fallen from the sky in chapter 6.  They think, when they see his body moving because wind is catching the parachute still attached to his body, that he is "the beast" that the boys have been afraid of.  When Jack and Ralph both see the parachutist from a distance and they, too, think it is the beast, the fear is with all the boys.  This leads Jack to offer up a sacrifice, in the form of the pig's head, to the beast.  Fear drives the boys' actions through much of the story after chapter 6.  When Simon comes running into the circle of frenzied boys in chapter 9, fear and their frenzy drive the boys into attacking and killing Simon, the only one who knows that the beast is really just a dead man. Fear, in the last chapter, drives Ralph to begin to think like a savage, like a pig,  in order to save his own life from Jack and his troops.

   Sources:

   http://www.enotes.com/flies/chapter-6-summary-analysis

   http://www.enotes.com/flies/chapter-8-summary-analysis

   http://www.enotes.com/flies/summary

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   Posted by luannw on Wednesday February 11, 2009 at 5:48 AM