Patty's essay

Lord of the Flies Expository Essay

Patrick Reed

The novel “Lord of the Flies” is based around one principle thesis statement, progress is created through order. This is proving many times in the novel and in our everyday lives. At the start of the novel they made some progress because they had some sort of order, then at the second quarter some progress was still made but less because the order was diminishing, and so on in the third quarter and then in the fourth almost no progress was created because all order was lost and they became savages. This thesis is also represented when you compare a developed country to a developing country. Or in any factory of some sort.

At the start of the novel Ralph had created a sense of order on the island by calling assembly and called for an election which he was elected in. Everything Ralph did was to make them more civilized, “we ought to draw a map,” he said just so they can be more organized. He even divided them into hunters, fire watchers, workers and began making huts. Everything was progressing very nicely. This is a parallel to the life of the first nations before the Europeans came, organized into groups and different tasks with one leader, and they were doing quite nicely for them selves (before their land was taking).

“They're hopeless. The older ones aren't much better. D'you see? All day I've been working with Simon. No one else. They're off bathing, or eating, or playing.” This shows how the progress is diminishing because even though Ralph is trying to make order no one is following his instructions even though they elected him. This is like a factory, once the workers stop listening to their boss then their efficiency goes down because the rules are in place so the most progress can be made while working there.

The last half of the book almost no progress was made. All the kids ended up turning against their leader and following the most savage of them all Jack. There was so much lack of order that they began to regress. They let the fire go out which was their only hope of rescue, they started painting their bodies, and starting wars with each other. This is almost the same scenario as in developing countries, their governments lack in helping them so the drug lords and arms dealers (Jack) run the country instead and it brings chaos among the people and little progress is created.

If we do not have a strong leadership and listen to them our civilization will regress instead of progress and our quality of living will decrease dramatically with the amount of order we have as people start turning to the wrong people for help, this is an example of WWII people were desperate so they turned to the most drastic person to fix their problems, and that didn't help progress our civilization much. This is why we need order for us to progress.