Lord of the Flies Critical Lens

"Literature opens a dark window on the soul, revealing more about what is bad in human nature than what is good." The critical lens states that written works expose us to the positive and negative effects of characters in a novel, most of the time, we are told the negative points of the character rather than the positive points. This quote is true, as shown by literary elements in Lord of the Flies by William Golding and Ordinary People by Judith Guest.

First, in Lord of the Flies by William Golding, a main theme is the loss of innocence. Ralph, a protagonist of the novel, twelve years old, competes with the antagonist of the novel, Jack for leader of the group. Ralph represents human instinct, he is a caring, mature young boy and although he is very kind, the savagery and human nature will kick in when he is forced to survive. Ralph realizes all his friends have become corrupt and savage. "Ralph wept for the end of innocence." The children will always be at battle, on the island, and when they go home but on the island they aren't just in a mental battle they are in a physical battle, with human nature. No matter where the boys go or where they will be in life their mindset will always be fight! Stay alive! Survival to the fittest! This illustrates the interaction between human nature and a human being because once you are forced to fight for your life you need to do what is right and be in control. A lot of the time human nature will try to take over a human being and then those two aspects become in a battle with each other and represents how human being and human nature could be in constant war. When the boys are on the island, three boys die from a fire. The first fire foreshadows the fire that illustrates savagery and this quotes shows how the boys have become so savage. " Course we have. 'Cos the smoke's a signal and we can't be rescued if we don't have smoke." In the first fire, a boy is killed ad this foreshadowed further killings. In the second fire, many boys died, Simon, Piggy and the littleun, this fire was intended to kill Ralph but ironically saved him instead. This novel shows how evil mankind can be and what it can do to people in a short period of time.

Next, in Ordinary People by Judith Guest, Conrad, the protagonist of the novel, is a disturbed teenage boy. His brother's death triggered his mental state. He tried to kill himself because he couldn't handle his brother's death. His mother, Beth, the antagonist of the novel has corrupted him into being crazy and has maybe even put him into his mental state. When he slit his wrists on the bathroom floor, she was furious with him, not because he tried to kill himself but because he got blood all over her shiny, white tile floor. The human nature of Beth is she is very obsessive and might even be a bit crazy she, thus her human nature caused Conrad to become just as bad as she is and Beth put