Beaulieu 1
Danielle Beaulieu
Mrs. Darby
English 4
2 October 2008
The Beastie is Coming, The Beastie is Coming!
Man has nothing to fear but fear itself. This is completely true in the book Lord of the Flies written by William Golding. It is about a group of boys, 12 and under, who are trapped on a deserted island with no way off. They have to survive until a boat passes and sees their smoke signal. While on the island they learn a lot about who is and isn’t a good leader, what it is like without parents and most importantly fear and how it can tear people apart. They fear this snake like thing they call a beast but they never actually see it. While trying to take down the beast the boys turn savage and incidentally take down their own society.
From the time the boys landed on the island until they were rescued they always feared the beastie. At first they didn’t want to believe the little boy and his story and thought he was crazy. “Ralph laughed, and the other boys laughed with him. The small boy twisted further into himself.”(Golding 35) They never gave the littlun a chance and never heard him out. The other boys just went along with Ralph and Jack because they all thought it was ridiculous but some actually feared it. As to not scare the rest of the littluns the older boys had to think quickly. “He must have had a nightmare. Stumbling about among all those creepers.”(Golding35) Even thought they felt it wasn’t true they had to justify it. The littluns wanted to believe it wasn’t true but the fear of the beastie
Beaulieu 2
was already setting in. No matter what the bigguns said they couldn’t stop what had already begun.
After hearing all the nonsense of the beastie for so long many of the boys had started to believe it. Even the big bad Jack was starting to believe it. “Just a feeling. But you can feel as if you’re not hunting but-being hunted, as if something’s behind you all the time in the jungle.”(Golding52) Paranoia is...