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

This essay will comp atomic number 18 the both novels, Robinson Crusoe and superior of the Flies, to see how each author reflected the point of view of high ordination at the time that they lived in. The constitution of purification will be viewed from their two different perspectives.Daniel Defoe published Robinson Crusoe in 1719 William Golding published cleric of the Flies in 1954. Both novels are the set-back fiction works of their respective authors and they deal with the issue of being disadvantaged of the surroundings of the cultivation that they are apply to. The former is nearly a man, shipwrecked repeatedly, and how he survives in the bet of slavery and unwarrantedry. The latter concerns a radical of schoolchildren whose plane crashes onto an island after a nuclear war breaks forbidden and explains how they roll in the hay and change as time wears on with no sign of a rescue.Although the subject matter of these two earmarks is similar on the surface, there is a contrast in the sort the two authors re give birth shade. Daniel Defoe was a novelist, journalist, businessman and spy. He defended William of Orange and Marys rise to the throne. He attacked the perform of England in his book The Shortest Way with Dissenters and he was fined and imprisoned, merely after his dismission he became a spy for the g everyplacenment. He did not begin compose until he was al approximately sixty.The Robinson Crusoe narrative was inspired by the actual sleep with of Alexander Selkirk on the island of Juan Fernandez from 1704 to 1709. Defoe wrote for the heart 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 first appearance a Golden Age. After the union with Scotland in 1707, internal avocation prospered in this, the largest customs-free area in Western Europe. The aristocracy and upper middle class that giveled Parliament to a fault controlled th e principal trading and banking companies, so that the evolution of new enterprises was more rapid than whateverwhere else in Europe.The gradual control of the seas, the establishment of trading posts in exotic lands, and the policy of taking oversea territories as booty from successful wars enabled Britain to gain commercial benefits and to build the homos largest empire. Inside Britain, the Industrial Revolution was under way. New countries were seen as lands of opportunity and resource many muckle emigrated to make their fortune in tobacco growing or gold mining etc. there was a general air of optimism concerning mankinds future and when Crusoe is shipwrecked the nevertheless survivor on an unknown island he fights for survival not lonesome(prenominal) in the physical sense experience but also in the sense that he fights for his view that civilisation would conquer all difficulties.The briny percentage of Defoes book is Robinson Crusoe. Crusoe wanted to go to sea and explore quite an than follow his fathers wishes and practise law as it says on the first page My fatherdesignd me for the Law but I would be satisfied with goose egg but going to Sea. Robinson Crusoe repeatedly went out to sea, even though after each expedition he always vowed to go home and stay on land. Eventually he was shipwrecked on an island and this is where the main narrative of the trading floor begins.In this book he holds a strong sense of civilisation. This is buildn after he rescues a savage from an separate(prenominal) savages who were about to eat him. He called him Friday after the day that he had met him, immediately taught him English and what his morals were I standardisedwise taught him to say Master, and therefore let him know, that was to be my nameI would give him Cloaths. Crusoe also warned Friday murder cannibalism and when he later rescues a Spaniard and Fridays father from savages, he cerebration he had an example of society How like a King I lo oked The whole country was my ownproperty so that I had undoubted pay off of DominionMy concourse 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 Cold War was under way, nuclear tensions were high and people were nervous and fearful about the future of mankind. The horizontal surface reflects Goldings thoughts about civilisation what in his view it was really like when the coating was mere(a) away. The story begins with the aeroplane crashing and the grouping of schoolchildren forming a colouration of a society with a popally appointed leader. However as the narrative progresses, civilisation slowly falls apart the main group of boys be succeed savages and lives are taken. The book ends with all sense of civilisation being lost and the main character footrace for his life. Eventually civilisation is restored in the form of a Royal Navy cruiser, after spo tting the signal that the boys initially illume, advent to rescue them.The main character in Lord 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 read/write head to decide things. This shows he had some views on the deficiency for planning. Jack, another boy, also had some sense of civilisation After all, were not savages. Were English 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 headway of the savages. Eventually they came to a disagreement over a signal they had lit to try and attract rescue ships. Ralph wanted to keep it going, but the other children wanted to chase animals. The group acted like a savage community and eventually chooses to abandon civilised living one of Ralphs friends, Piggy, offers the survival of the fittestWhich is better to be a pack of painted niggers like you are, or to be sensible like Ralph is? Which is better 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 running for his life. He represents a leader of a democratic society, which soon collapsed. One chanced nothing What could they do? Beat him? So what? garbage down him? A stick 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 protected by power. Ralph had no power in the story to protect his civilisation. Power lay with those who had the weapons.In Robinson Crusoe human immunity, based on reason, is seen to be a higher way of living in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Defoe notes the presence of religious differences and uses the situation to express his belief that freedom of belief should overrule religious bigotryWe had but 3 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 Papist however, I allowd Liberty of conscience throughout my Dominions.The opposite is true in Lord of the Flies as the group degenerates from civilised English schoolboys to primitive hunters whole interested in the hunt and the kill. A pigs head on a pole represents religion in this story, similar to a totem pole that the inwrought Americans and other similar tribal people used. This represents a relapse to a less reasonable form of existence.Lord of the Flies is similar to wight Farm by George Orwell, in that the impression of civilisation disappears and chaos reigns as they overthrow the person in control and all the order that goes with it. By contrast, Robinson Crusoe is similar in outlook to The Swiss Family Robinson (Joh ann Wyss) in that both retain an optimistic outlook even after they have been shipwrecked on the island. In both of the above books they find and make living areas, they capture undue animals to make a farm and they both are religious. A pull ahead modern example of the Castaway plot is in TV shows like Big Brother or other situations where a group of people is stranded in an area and has to adapt to keep any semblance of control. The jam seems to affect the group and behaviour is altered compared with what is normally seen in public society.The overall feel of Robinson Crusoes plot is optimistic reflecting the multiplication 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 symbolise 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 beingness wars undermined to ability of human beings to interact and use reason. Advances in society and technology had destroyed faith in rationalism and a belief grew that if left to our own devices, humans 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 transform 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 basically 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 conference for debate nor dignity of the conch.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 span again for South America. My true friend the widow earnestly diswaded me from it, and so far prevaild with me, that for almost seven years she prevented my running abroad. This shows that he still had an adventurous spirit and was willing to go out again confident 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 enforced and reason alone may not be enough to ensure 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 positive outlook for the future of humanity as civilisation spread across the globe, whereas Goldings work suggested that the weapon would be used not to support civilisation, but to destroy it. Both reflect the world view of their times.