English 102 Lords of the Flies Short Essay Assignment

Due: Thursday, May 12

Directions: Please write a short essay (5 paragraphs) on some aspect of Lord of the Flies. Topics choices might include characters, conflicts, symbols, or themes. Please refer to parts of the novel in your essay, but since we may all have different editions of the novel, you need only include the chapter number when quoting or referring to an event. Finally, please assume that your reader has read the novel.

• Character analysis—Ralph, Jack, Piggy, Roger, Simon, the littluns
• Conflicts—between characters, within a character, between a character and the environment, between philosophies, between competing “truths”
• Symbols—the conch, Piggy’s glasses, the signal fire, the beast, the Lord of the Flies (the sow’s head). Characters can also be symbols.
• Themes—loss of innocence, the nature of “us,” civilized society vs. savagery, power, identity, religion

E How to Write the Introduction

(to an essay about something you have read)

GENERAL ADVICE: Remember to do this in your essay's introduction if you are writing about something you have read:

ü name the author

ü name the work

ü give a brief summary of the content

ü build a bridge (a transition)to your thesis

ü state your thesis at the end of the introduction

Here's an example:

Let's pretend this is our assignment:

Directions:  In a short essay, apply the following statement to Golding’s Lord of the Flies: "From chaos, patterns emerge."

• Please consider the entire novel when extracting and developing your examples of chaos and the social patterns that emerge.

Now let's assume we want to use Simon, one of the characters in the novel, as an example of 'patterns emerging from chaos. '

This would be an example of an opening paragraph:

William Golding's novel Lord of the Flies tells the story of a group of World War II-era British boys who crash-land on an uninhabited island and attempt to survive until rescue. The physical island is a paradise, complete with blue lagoons and plentiful food, almost an Eden. However, without an adult survivor to provide social control and direction, social chaos is immediately present. Because of this chaos, as the days pass some of the boys begin to exhibit social patterns far different from those that their society was designed to teach them. An excellent example of patterns emerging from the chaos is the character Simon.

A suggested outline:

Paragraph 1: please see above

Paragraph 2—your first point

Paragraph 3— your second point

Paragraph 4— your third point

Paragraph 5—a brief but elegant conclusion