Journal #4: Lord of the Flies （summative）

This week, Ms. Caldwell stressed connections greatly, and that is what my group has focused on, especially on Wednesday. That day, we were supposed to make many connections and share it within our group, then write about one main one. In our group, we stated many small connections, such as Lord of the Flies connecting to World War II, but our big main connection was a text to world connection was to the current crisis in Libya. Ghadafi, the leader of Libya for over forty years, created an unfair society for his people, and when they decided to rebel, he started attacking his own people. This is like Lord of the Flies where Jack was the leader of his tribe and he decided not to care about the fire and hunted only. When Ralph and Piggy rebelled against them because they wanted to get out of the island and the fire was the only way out, Jack would not listen, and he even started killing, as expressed in this quote: “The rock struck Piggy a glancing blow from chin to knee; the conch exploded into a thousand white fragments and ceased to exist” (ch. 11). Jack killed Piggy and he exploded the conch, the symbol for power and order. As soon as that conch was destroyed, the island was in a huge mess, and ultimately Jack and his tribe went inhumane.

The above connection can relate to an essential question: What does power have to do with fairness and justice? The amount of power that one person possesses controls how fairly and just they treat one person. The more power one has, the more unfair and unjust they will treat people, and vice versa. For example, a little boy has more power over another boy who is even littler than him, so he bullys him. However, when he is reported he will not treating the adults unfairly because he has no power over the adults.

Then on Friday, we watched the black and white film of Lord of the Flies. Although the internet was laggy, the film made me picture Lord of the Flies much better and clearer as visuals along with reading is always helpful!

In our group, I would have to say that our discussions were not as smooth and deep as before the break, and that is very obvious due to a two week long spring break between the English classes. However, we still had a pretty good discussion as we all tried to give examples of connections from the book to ourselves, other texts and the world.

In this book, the plot, setting and characters had major changes to them. When I started reading the book, I connected it to Hatchet (see my previous summative journal) as I thought it was going to be another boring survival book. It was about survival at first, but as the novel progressed, the main problem was not about surviving on the island - it was about humanity and how Jack and his tribe were being beasts, killing and being totally cruel and unjust，as they repeatedly say "Kill the beast! Cut his throat! Spill his blood!" (ch.9) Although the book does not say this, but should Jack had not been rescued, I make the assumption that he and his tribe will not be human anymore - they will evolve or de-evolve to a totally new creature, a totally new species. This is why I think this ending is slightly odd. Ralph was being chased by Jack and suddenly a ship comes and rescues him, leaving Jack and his group's aftermath unknown...

I would rate it a 7.5 out of ten because the plot, characters and setting were easily understandable, but some parts of the book dragged on and it just lacked that entertainment factor; I was not enjoying it fully when I read it. Oh well, I guess that's why we are analyzing them...

I improved on this journal as I brought in some quotes, I analyzed it more and gave it a rating.