The Impact of Fear

Fear is one of the strongest emotions because it can motivate us into doing something we don’t usually do. But sometimes fear will take advantage of us, and control us into doing something we don’t want. In the book ‘Lord of the Flies’ by William Golding, fear is a common topic among the boys and at multiple points of the book, and at some points it even causes the boys something that they might not do in their regular everyday life. In society fear is part of our everyday life and it can even change and make our decisions for us, so when fear is right here with us and pressuring our minds, it will make us do things that we may regret later.

First, Simon’s death can significantly be compared to the Vietnam war. At this point of the book all of the boys except for Simon are having a feast with the meat Jack hunted, and Simon is in the forest talking to the ‘lord of the flies’ about the beast, then Simon went to met with the boys to talk about the ‘beast’. So before Simon met with the other boys, Simon is representing United states, then Jack and the other boys represents North Vietnam. But after the killing, Simon became South Vietnam and Ralph and Piggy became the United States. The Vietnam war was a conflict between the north and south of Vietnam and the United States of America join force with South Vietnam. The reason for the U.S. to join the fight is because they feared that one of their allies, south Vietnam, would be controlled by the communists. Like the United States, Simon was trying to stop the other destroying themselves over the beast. Even with the help of the United States,  South Vietnam was still ‘kill’ by north Vietnam, and also like south Vietnam, Simon was killed by Jack and the other children, even though he was trying to help them. Then according to nationlreview.com and history.com Vietnam was an “outright military defeat,” and ‘The nation spent more than $120 billion on the conflict in Vietnam from 1965-73’ and about 58,200 American men and women was killed or missing in the war. Although in this war with the boys and the ‘beast’ only had one death, it was still a great lose for Ralph, Piggy, and the littluns. After the killing Piggy said that “we was scared!”(156). This shows that the boys made a rash decision because of their fears of the ‘beast’ and they took action against the ‘beast’. In both of the conflicts shown above, fear has taken a big role in each of them and it showed that fear can make people have rash decisions, then later regretting of their choices.

The French Revolution was one of the most horrific events that has ever occured. In this event, fear had a major part and there is many points where fear takes part, especially with events that involved King Louis XVI. First, King Louis was resisting against the people of France or the bourgeoisie, so he moved to Versailles. Then he was being threatened by the people of France, if he doesn’t move back to Paris then they will kill him and his family. Naturally he moved back to Paris because he was afraid of being killed. But later Louis tried to escape France and its problems with his wife because they fear what the people might do to his family if they stayed in France. This was a poor choice made by them because they got caught when crossing the borders and they both was executed for treason. So if King Louis is still alive he would regret his choice as he got killed because of them. Similarities can be found in the end of the book where Ralph and Piggy went to Jack’s camp to get Piggy’s specs back. So both Piggy and Ralph can represent King Louis and Jack with the hunter can represent the people of France. First, Ralph feared that because of Jack’s outrageous action they might not be able to get rescued so then he was resisting against Jack with reason, so Ralph said: “we’d have given you fire if you’d asked for it-”(176) but that did not work and it quickly turned into a fight against Jack. Soon after the fighting started, Piggy got murdered, but the reason for the killing of Piggy is that he stood up against his problems instead of running away from them. Piggy would regret his actions because it caused him to get killed. As these two events showed that fear can very will take control of a person even though they had a legitimate reason for their actions, they still ending up regretting their choice.

No matter who we are, fear is there with us. Even if we are kings or a powerhouse nation or a group of boys, fear is right there pressuring and controlling their choice and decisions. Although fear is a strong emotion, we can still try to overcome it by think over our choice with logic.