Paragraph #1William Golding used fear in The Lord of the Flies throughout the whole novel. We first realise this is a factor that the boys face when the quote “only thing we fear is fear itself” is used. This links back to the decline of civility because we are shown how if we keep fearing something it will just affect the way we act.This is demonstrated when all the boys became savage like at the end of the book as they were scared of the beast and they didn’t want to face their fears, so they just ended up turning against each other. The boys ended up fearing weather or not they’d get rescued which led them to make a signal fire, or the fact that they were fearing that they wouldn’t have any food, which then caused them to hunt.
The second quote that William Golding uses that represents fear leading to the decline of civility is “we may stay here till we die with that word the heat seemed to increase till it became a threatening weight and the lagoon attacked them with a blinding effulgence.” The fear of never being rescued comes to reality, Ralph freaks out when the word die is said because he knows that there is a possibility that he could end up dying in the future.Lastly, the quote that “the thing is fear can’t hurt you anymore than a dream” this relates to fear in the decline of civility because fear is only as scary as you make it seem and as much as you believe it, dreams are all based of what’s going on in your head and how much sense it makes to you. In the end of the story the beast is only their imagination which proves my point that fear is only as scary as you believe for it to be.
All these quotes show the impact that fear had on the boys while they were stranded on the island and the decline of civility.
