Compare and contrast Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe with Golding’s Lord of the Flies Essay

This essay give compare the two figments, Robinson Crusoe and skipper of the Flies, to see how each author reflected the bloom of view of society at the time that they lived in. The nature of acculturation depart be viewed from their two different perspectives.Daniel Defoe published Robinson Crusoe in 1719 William Golding published Lord of the Flies in 1954. Both novels are the first fiction kit and boodle of their respective authors and they deal with the issue of being deprived of the surroundings of the civilisation that they are used to. The former is nearly a slice, ravishwrecked repeatedly, and how he survives in the face of slavery and savagery. The latter concerns a group of schoolchildren whose plane crashes onto an island after a nuclear war breaks protrude and explains how they cope and variegate as time wears on with no sign of a rescue.Although the subject division of these two have gots is corresponding on the surface, there is a contrast in the way the t wo authors represent civilisation. Daniel Defoe was a novelist, journalist, businessman and spy. He defended William of orangeness and Marys rise to the throne. He attacked the Church of England in his concur The Shortest Way with Dissenters and he was fined and imprisoned, but after his release he became a spy for the government. He did not begin writing until he was most sixty.The Robinson Crusoe narrative was inspired by the actual experience of Alexander Selkirk on the island of Juan Fernandez from 1704 to 1709. Defoe wrote for the middle and lower classes and his realism and sentimentalism pleased them. At the time Britain was at the beginning of its Empire building phase and was entering a well-off Age. After the union with Scotland in 1707, internal trade prospered in this, the largest customs-free electron orbit in Western Europe. The aristocracy and upper middle class that controlled fan tan also controlled the principal vocation and banking companies, so that the gr owth of new enterprises was much rapid than anywhere else in Europe.The gradual control of the seas, the establishment of trading posts in exotic lands, and the policy of taking overseas territories as plundering from successful wars en competentd Britain to gain commercial benefits and to build the worlds largest empire. at bottom Britain, the Industrial Revolution was under way. New countries were seen as lands of opportunity and pick many pot emigrated to make their fortune in tobacco emergence or gold mining etc. There was a world(a) air of optimism concerning mankinds future and when Crusoe is shipwrecked the only survivor on an unkn take island he fights for survival not only in the physiological mavin but also in the sense that he fights for his feel that civilisation would conquer alone difficulties.The main(prenominal)(prenominal) character of Defoes book is Robinson Crusoe. Crusoe wanted to go to sea and explore rather than follow his beginners wishes and p ractise uprightness as it says on the first paginate My fatherdesignd me for the Law but I would be satisfied with nothing but going to Sea. Robinson Crusoe repeatedly went out to sea, even so though after each expedition he always vowed to go home and stay on land. Eventu ally he was shipwrecked on an island and this is where the main narrative of the story begins.In this book he retains a stiff sense of civilisation. This is drawn after he rescues a savage from other(a) savages who were about to eat him. He called him Friday after the day that he had met him, immediately taught him incline and what his morals were I likewise taught him to say Master, and then let him know, that was to be my nameI would give him Cloaths. Crusoe also warned Friday off cannibalism and when he after rescues a Spaniard and Fridays father from savages, he thought he had an congressman of society How like a King I looked The whole soil was my ownproperty so that I had undoubted Right of Dominion My people were perfectly subjugated I was absolute Lord and Law-giver. Order is brought out of chaos by civilisation.The Lord of the Flies, on the other hand, was written when the snappy War was under way, nuclear tensions were high and people were nervous and dread(a) about the future of mankind. The story reflects Goldings thoughts about civilisation what in his view it was really like when the coating was stripped away. The story begins with the planing machine crashing and the group of schoolchildren forming a semblance of a society with a democratically appointed leader. However as the narrative progresses, civilisation slowly falls apart the main group of male childs become savages and lives are taken. The book ends with all sense of civilisation being lost and the main character ravel for his life. Eventually civilisation is restored in the form of a Royal navy cruiser, after spotting the signal that the boys initially lit, coming to rescue them.The main character in Lo rd of the Flies is named Ralph and this story starts with another boy and him discussing what happened to the plane that they were in. After finding more children and no adults he called a meeting where he said, Seems to me that we ought to have a chief to decide things. This shows he had some views on the need for planning. Jack, another boy, also had some sense of civilisation After all, were not savages. Were incline and the English are best at everything. This is ironic, as later on he is the one to break all the rules and become the chief of the savages. Eventually they came to a disagreement over a signal they had lit to try and suck rescue ships. Ralph wanted to keep it going, but the other children wanted to operate animals. The group acted like a savage tribe and eventually chooses to leave school living one of Ralphs friends, piglet, offers the choiceWhich is better to be a pack of painted niggers like you are, or to be commonsensical like Ralph is? Which is bette r to have rules and agree, or to hunt and kill? Which is better, law and rescue, or hunting and breaking things up?The group then killed him and Ralph was foot race for his life. He represents a leader of a democratic society, which soon collapsed. wizard chanced nothing What could they do? Beat him? So what? Kill him? A pulsate sharpened at both ends. At the end, when an officer from the rescue ship asks him who was in charge, he declared himself the leader again knowing that no one would dare challenge him in the face of civilisation saved by power. Ralph had no power in the story to protect his civilisation. agent lay with those who had the weapons.In Robinson Crusoe human freedom, based on close, is seen to be a higher way of living in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Defoe notes the armorial bearing of religious differences and uses the situation to express his belief that freedom of belief should bring down religious bigotryWe had but three Subjects, and they were of three different Religions. My man Friday was a Protestant, his Father was a Pagan and a Cannibal, and the Spaniard was a Roman Catholic however, I allowd Liberty of Conscience throughout my Dominions.The reverse gear is true in Lord of the Flies as the group degenerates from genteel English schoolboys to primitive hunters only interested in the hunt and the kill. A pigs head on a pole represents trust in this story, similar to a totem pole that the native Americans and other similar tribal people used. This represents a relapse to a less intelligent form of existence.Lord of the Flies is similar to Animal Farm by George Orwell, in that the impression of civilisation disappears and chaos reigns as they overthrow the soul in control and all the order that goes with it. By contrast, Robinson Crusoe is similar in mentality to The Swiss Family Robinson (Johann Wyss) in that both retain an optimistic outlook even after they have been shipwrecked on the island. In both of th e preceding(prenominal) books they find and make living areas, they capture wild animals to make a farm and they both are religious. A further modern good example of the Castaway plot is in TV shows like Big buddy or other situations where a group of people is stranded in an area and has to adapt to keep any semblance of control. The pressure seems to go the group and behaviour is altered compared with what is normally seen in public society.The boilersuit feel of Robinson Crusoes plot is optimistic reflecting the times that Defoe lived in. Rene Descartes, a philosopher of the period, believed in the power of human spirit and reason over the force of nature. He said that True knowledge must come from human reason alone. Defoe uses pirates and savages to emblemise a more primitive and uncontrolled force and uses Crusoes triumph over them to illustrate human spirit. Lord of the Flies, however, is pessimistic all semblance of civilised society is stripped away. The two world wars undermined to capacity of human beings to interact and use reason. Advances in society and technology had ruined faith in rationalism and a belief grew that if left to our own devices, human would in essence revert to animals. In the former novel the main character was on his own and it was only later did he have any company. There was no pressure on him to change into a savage and he could keep to the way he was without anything to transfigure him.Lord of the Flies, however, portrays children like a pack of wolves, with the most influential ones being the leaders. When one of them started to backslide into savagery, he took the rest with him. William Golding essentially believes that all humans are evil inside, but it is just that civilisation puts pressure on you to keep in place and if it were not for the controls present in civilised society, we would all be like the savage group. There was no Piggy to talk sense. There was no solemn assembly for debate nor dignity of the c onch.The Navy officer who arrived to take them back to the waiting ship said, I should have thought that a pack of British boys would have been able to put up a better show than that. Robinson Crusoe, on the other hand, arrived home with Friday (his servant) and immediately wanted to set sail again for due south America. My true friend the widow earnestly diswaded me from it, and so far lived with me, that for almost seven years she prevented my running abroad. This shows that he fluent had an adventurous spirit and was willing to go out again assured that he would be able to cope with any troubles.Both stories show that civilisation needs controls before it is effective rules need to be oblige and reason alone may not be enough to command survival. Crusoe may not have survived without his gun and Ralph had nothing to protect himself with when the symbol of civilisation (the conch) was broken. In spite of this similarity, Defoes book presents a optimistic outlook for the futu re of humanity as civilisation spread across the globe, whereas Goldings work suggested that the weapon would be used not to go for civilisation, but to destroy it. Both reflect the world view of their times.