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Why Is Fear Important In Lord Of The Flies

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Though people make a majority of their decisions subconsciously, fear is at the core of them if people examined them closely. The world often operates on fear and it is unavoidable. This constant presence of fear means that it is important to understand how it affects humans and ask why is fear has such a major role in people’s lives. William Golding wrote Lord of the Flies as a way to explore the many aspects of human nature, including the role fear plays in our lives. Golding illustrates how boys would behave if left on an island with no adults. Each boy comes from a different background, and when they come together on the island, fear is at the root of many of their actions as they work to survive. Golding demonstrates that there are a few reasons for this fear. …show more content…

Consequently, people are more inclined to have a false positive reaction. As people panic more than necessary when faced with fear and anxiety, they allow the fear to play a bigger part in their lives. Golding depicts this point in Lord of the Flies when the boys are confronted with the idea of a beast. Near the end of the book, the boys are acting out the killing of a beast when they noticed “A thing was crawling out of the forest. It came darkly, uncertainly. The shrill screaming that rose before the beast was like a pain. The beast stumbled into the horseshoe” (152). The boys, led by Jack, go on to kill the beast-like creature, who turns out to be Simon. The boys risk a false positive reaction and overreact to their uncertainty. While some may argue that this example does not show how overreacting to fear saved the boy, that is irrelevant to the fact of whether or not the boys overreact, which they did. Humans continue to panic when encountering fear, and thus plays a major part in everyday

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