Theme Of Fear In Lord Of The Flies

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H. P. Lovecraft wrote: “The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown.” Fear is a chemical reaction that takes place in the same part of our brains as excitement and happiness; that is what makes it so addictive to some people (Javanbakht & Saab 1). However, fear is not always a good thing; it can compel people to do things that in normality, they would never normally do. Lord of the Flies is an allegory written by William Golding to exemplify fear and its effect. Golding also uses the books to symbolize the events of World War II. The characters in the book point back to important figures of the war with actions what match up in ways to show how impactful the war was.…show more content…
He says, “Maybe there is a beast… Maybe it’s only us (Golding 77).” The boys believe the best solution for ridding the island of the beast is to kill it. Desire for blood and killing begins to rise in them, causing them to give into their evil sides. The Lord of the Flies is the evil burgeoning through the island; the boys are unaware that they have vivified the power of evil. Similarly, as the beast is to the boys, psychological warfare was to the holocaust victims (Rosenthal 1). Psychological warfare is the application of unhostile, precisely planned threats, propaganda, and other tactical moves for one side of a war to advance before the other; it is used to get into the opponent’s head and force them to make decisions based from their fear (Longleyguest 1). If a person is feared, they can force the prey to do things or act a certain way that is of the abuser’s wishing. In Lord of the Flies, Jack makes the other boys fear him and with his power he can manipulate them, “’I’m scared of him, says Piggy. ‘And that’s why I know him. If you’re scared of someone you hate him, but you can’t stop thinking about him (Golding 81).” When the people in World War II were hit with psychological warfare from the Nazis, they fear them and were more likely to do as they wanted; also, they became too scared to stand up for themselves and others around them (Histoy.com
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