Lord of the Flies Short Essay
Lord of the Flies Summer Assignment 7/23/08
William Golding describes a lot of different situations in the book by different moods along with other writing skills. In the excerpt from pg. 199-200, the general mood is fear. He uses similes and metaphor to describe the mood and helps us picture the time of the excerpt. In the following paragraph, I will describe how he shows the readers what the mood is. First of all, the first sentence of the quotation gives us the first hit of the mood. Ralph screams that is long and filled with “fright and anger and desperation.” Golding also writes that Ralph was screaming, snarling, bloody which indicates confusion and distortion. Ralph’s scream is also continuous and foaming, as if he has lost his mind and has gone crazy. As he screams, Ralph shoots forward and bursts from his hiding place. Golding wrote these expressions instead of ‘ran out of’ or ‘jumped from’ to emphasis the point that Ralph was in fear and desperation to get away from the place. During his run, Ralph ‘forgets his wounds, his hunger and thirst, and became fear’, which also literally tells us how scared he was. The series of short, sharp cries behind him also indicate the excitement and fear from the boys behind him. Golding also uses metaphors to create a mood around Ralph. Sentences such as ‘the roar of the forest rose to thunder’ and ‘a tall bush…burst into a great fan-shaped flame’ show us the hopeless desperate feeling he was in. The sentences create a trapped feeling among the readers thus showing how he is feeling. The fact that he is running towards a beach shows a dead end which is another hint of fear and desperation. It shows fear because he knows he is trapped, and desperation because he knows he’ll be caught. The sentence ‘desperate ululation advanced like a jagged fringe of menace and was almost overhead’ also gives us a feel of the trapped feeling. The metaphor ‘jagged fringe of menace’ also shows another sign of fear.
William Golding describes a lot of different situations in the book by different moods along with other writing skills. In the excerpt from pg. 199-200, the general mood is fear. He uses similes and metaphor to describe the mood and helps us picture the time of the excerpt. In the following paragraph, I will describe how he shows the readers what the mood is. First of all, the first sentence of the quotation gives us the first hit of the mood. Ralph screams that is long and filled with “fright and anger and desperation.” Golding also writes that Ralph was screaming, snarling, bloody which indicates confusion and distortion. Ralph’s scream is also continuous and foaming, as if he has lost his mind and has gone crazy. As he screams, Ralph shoots forward and bursts from his hiding place. Golding wrote these expressions instead of ‘ran out of’ or ‘jumped from’ to emphasis the point that Ralph was in fear and desperation to get away from the place. During his run, Ralph ‘forgets his wounds, his hunger and thirst, and became fear’, which also literally tells us how scared he was. The series of short, sharp cries behind him also indicate the excitement and fear from the boys behind him. Golding also uses metaphors to create a mood around Ralph. Sentences such as ‘the roar of the forest rose to thunder’ and ‘a tall bush…burst into a great fan-shaped flame’ show us the hopeless desperate feeling he was in. The sentences create a trapped feeling among the readers thus showing how he is feeling. The fact that he is running towards a beach shows a dead end which is another hint of fear and desperation. It shows fear because he knows he is trapped, and desperation because he knows he’ll be caught. The sentence ‘desperate ululation advanced like a jagged fringe of menace and was almost overhead’ also gives us a feel of the trapped feeling. The metaphor ‘jagged fringe of menace’ also shows another sign of fear.