Essay Topics for Lord of the FliesENG2DI-05
Basic rules:
- Before you start writing your essay, be sure that you do a plan and make sure that you have enough to argue about – three full body paragraphs worth.
- Your thesis is the CONCLUSION you have come to about your topic: when you finish your plan, double check that what you are proving is actually your thesis. IF it isn’t, change your thesis to reflect what you have actually proven.
- How much evidence do you need to adequately support each topic sentence/argument? Usually, three pieces of evidence is considered the right amount.
- Each topic sentence must prove an aspect of your thesis.
Possible topics:
- General topic – Setting
-The setting of the book is key to understanding it. These are typical boys and the setting forces them to try to take care of themselves. Some of them get out of hand.
-social conditions: despite Ralph’s efforts to create and impose rules on the island, the boys ignore, or begin to follow them but then stop. What does this say about the boys? About Ralph?About Piggy?About Jack?
-Golding wrote this novel after WWII and has stated that it shows his belief that mankind could easily degenerate into homicidal mania without rules and punishments for not following them.
b. General topic – Characters
-trace the changes that three characters go through in the course of the novel
-Golding creates believable characters in LoF.
-Golding’s work would be better if his character’s were more believable.
c. General Topic Themes and Issues
-Lord of the Flies is too far from the experiences of today’s youth to be a good learning tool for them.
-Despite being set in a future that has not occurred, Golding’s portrayal of the degeneration of a group of boys from orderly to murderous is just as relevant today as it was in the year that it was published.
-Golding proves conclusively, in Lord of the Flies, that humans are born evil, and must continually strive to control their inner urges to do harm if the world is to survive and thrive.
-True events over the last fifty years show that Golding’s belief that all humans are born evil is not true.
-People learn best from positive examples that they can strive to be like, rather than reading tales of the horrors that humans are capable of.
-History has shown that the only way to have an impact on human behavior is to scare humans into acting correctly, against their base instincts.
-Golding’s work is still culturally relevant because Lord of the Flies is a perfect example of the bullying (?environment?) that still exists in schools today, and which continues to lead to the deaths of young people. (Same or different because of the actual murder being committed by the boys versus the impact of bullying causing kids to take their own lives?)
-Fear is the engine that fuels violence: “There is nothing to fear but fear itself