The Lord of the Flies and Castaway had a lot more similarities when I thought more into depth about it. I had to think about the civility and savagery that the boys and Tom Hanks went through. Also the symbols in the stories and what they represent.
One big similarity that is obvious is that they both got stranded on an island because of a plane crash. Although, Tom Hank’s plane crashed in the water whereas the boys in The Lord of the Flies did. Another obvious difference is that Castaway is about a single grown man and The Lord of the Flies is about a bunch of English boys. The story and the book from the plane crash progress relatively the same. They set up shelter, hunt for food, and even see a boat in the distance which they fail to signal. The way they try to signal boats or planes is different also. In Castaway he forms words on the shore, but in The Lord of the Flies they make a signal fire on top of the mountain. The geography is very similar because of the mountain and the beach with trees.
During Castaway, the director took a more almost comical approach. In The Lord of the Flies Golding took a lot more of serious and almost scary approach. Another big difference is the loss of civility. It showed up in Castaway when Tom Hanks when up on top of the mountain and thought about suicide, but you could tell he still had a grasp on it when he did a proper burial for the pilot of the plane. In The Lord of the Flies, they completely lose grasp on civility when they think that Simon was the beasty and they murdered him savagely with nothing but their teeth. From there the book spiraled downhill with the death of Piggy and the conch shell breaking.
There were a lot of similarities and differences in the symbols in The Lord of the Flies and Castaway too. One big one is the Conch Shell in The Lord of the Flies. It shows structure and organization. In Castaway, the stopwatch showed a lot of structure in the idea that it was the only object that linked him...