Philosophical And Political Aspects Of Lord The Flies
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Philosophical and Political Aspects of Lord the Flies
Is easy enough to make a broad generalization about philosophical, political or even religious interpretations on each book ( even if we consider religion in some way vinculated to philosophy), but in reality the issue is an extremely complex one. It would be so comfortable to reduce a story to a mere source of external references and to lose all the nuances that make literature a special phenomenon; IÐÒm not saying literature is only style but it must not be subdued to its content. And, unfortunately, that is a typical contemporary quirk.
This not only happens in literature; for example, in childrenÐÒs films, where the content is supposed to be political unexisting, there always appears somebody who tries to give the movie a second political reading, trying therefore to measure its value by any subjective comment. It would appear then that some creations do not have enough interest if viewed from a neutral point of view.
The fact of the matter is that literature is not a mere moral eulogistic topic. In this essay we shall try to contrast several interpretations, mainly focusing on philosophical and political aspects, including religion if necessary.
A number of key issues arise from the simbology of the book. The story is an allegory traced with great skill and allows the reader to give the book second readings.
Firstly, we would like to explain some possible meanings of the islands as a metaphor. When framing the book on an island, the authorÐÒs purpose is to freely experiment with the characters and the role they shall take within the book. This virgin territory can be identified with the primary idea of all times. In fact, the story illustrates the corruption of mankind since a kind of the Rousseaunian Natural Man disappeared due to the establishment of some sort of social -or, what is the same for the french philosopher- anti natural order.
As for the will of being rescued that the children have, one may observe that a real, but unconscious anxiety to escape from terrenal world could be deduced from a strictly religious point of view; therefore the island is a secluded portion of a bigger world that waits outside.
Another point of a view could be synthesized as follows: the author extrapolates a group of children from high class school to a wild and unexplored territory. We could blend the kidÐÒs origins with their final destination, in this case a desert island dwelled by a supposed beast. If these children come from a well based class they have to be the living example of moral, religious and political correctness. This purity, not only because of being children but also because those circumstances could be identified with the so called innate leniency that some philosophers maintain. When you find out that these lenient children fall into total depravation, you question yourself if real goodness in mankind is rather dubious.
Existentialism fits too with the idea of escaping from routine. A great effort is made to that purpose, but when the unavoidable frustration that appears as a result of that fight make strength fade away; as the fire in the novel finally disappears.
In addition to this, we shall consider an island as a symbol of loneliness, of solitude; escaping is sometimes an impossible task. This existentialism tortures and leads anyone to void. Some may desire to escape from the island which bears human condition.
Human condition is depicted through the main characters in the novel. Each one embodies a determined social stereotype which will be later on deeply explained. This existentialist dissatisfaction is a factor which endarkens human kind like other factors such as the kind of fear which is dealt through the book, being this one of the main causes of chaos. Those parallelisms, being some of them adventured, are valid too exposing two questions which take far beyond this point: to what extent is cruelty a mere result of circumstances or a genuine feature in mankind.
We shall now shortly analyze the novel. The will of being rescued will unite all the children with a same purpose. They pursue a determinate objective. For this purpose, a first rudimentary political and social order is established. We would like to trace a parallelism between the situation of the kids when their plane crashed and the so called Natural Man conceived by Rousseau. The Natural Man was an idealized savage who lived in harmony with his instincts and enjoyed communion with nature. Once the social order appeared, the corruption of his condition begun, and the consequences of a degraded order derived into a different kind of savagery: social savagery, a kind of paradoxical parable. The plot in the novel describes with special care how the democracy of the shell generated enough envy and conflicts to finally fracture their attempt to organize themselves under a rational thought.
An elementary hierarchy was established at the same time with a first order. Apart from that those who reincarnate some kind of power that will be later outlined, the mass is curiously seen as a bunch of hypocrites. Only a few worked hard when constructing the shelter; the majority did not make great efforts and hid in the anonymous existence of plurality. Based on people whose main interests are not as solidary as we would like to think, social order is then seriously threatened.
The fire has a crucial importance as it represents the common will of abandoning the island. In fact, the knot of the novel starts when Jack is ashamed by Ralph, for being the guilty of its extinction in the very moment a boat was sailing at a long distance. Jacks success on hunting the pig is endarkened by his carelessness: the seed of rivalry and hate between the two characters is going to change the events into a tragedy.
The fear which the beast provoked in them is also a factor which we must point out.