Instincts, They're Just the Way of Nature! - Final Essay for Lord of the Flies

Rain cascades down, hitting the windshield harder than hail. The street has become its own stream, about an inch or two deep.  Looking down at the speedometer on her car, she knows she’s going too fast, especially in this weather, but she can’t help it, she is driven by something uncontrollable. Lighting strikes, the tree before the bridge falls, she slams on the break, but it is not enough. Sliding with the water on top of the asphalt she spins, hits the tree and flips. She is falling. Finally the car plunges into the river where she used to play as a child. Before she can realize what has happened, water fills the car. Adrenaline pumps through her veins; she finds the release mechanism for her seatbelt, and rolls down the window. Taking one last breath she swims to the surface in hopes she doesn’t lose consciousness on the way there.
                Nothing can prepare ourselves for a moment like that. Sure, there are classes we could take, even videos we could watch, but when it comes down to the actual moment, nothing can prepare us. The only thing we have in a moment like that is our instincts – our primal nature to survive.  Instincts craft our decisions in moments of crisis in ways nurture cannot, thus demonstrating the power of nature. The war between nature and nurture has been around for centuries, however through the lives of Ted Bundy and Kate Ogg, as well the characters from William Golding’s novel, Lord of the Flies, the power of nature is proven to be the victor.

There have been various experiments performed to prove the power of nature in moments of duress. Found in the article, “Basic Instincts: The Science of Evil” written by Caroline Borge,  an experiment in 1961, involving a physiologist named, Stanley Milgram, and multiple test subjects performed to demonstrate how people react to a stressful situation. In this experiment Milgram advised test subjects to give electric shocks to a person who would be sitting in a separate room. Now of course there wasn’t a real person being shocked in that room, there was just a man screaming as if he were being shocked.  When the experiment started, a man in a white lab coat “instructed participants to administer what they believed were increasingly painful electric shocks to another person. Although no one was actually receiving shocks, the participants heard a man screaming in pain and protest, eventually pleading to be released from the experiment. When the subjects questioned the experimenter about what was happening, they were told they must continue” (1). Without a fight the subjects continued until there was no sound from the other room, only silence. Just human nature: be told, obey – Not even another thought. The participants just followed their instincts, the baseline rhythm of nature, be told, obey, be told obey.

However, unlike the simple be told, obey, rhythm of nature, there are instincts that run much deeper, more advanced and dark than any upbringing or nurture can bring. Instincts that run so deep they pump through the veins, veins filled with so much evil identical to the veins of Ted Bundy. Bundy was a young, handsome, and clever man who used this against his victims. At times he would even camouflage himself uniforms usually not seen as threatening to women. Thus, he would use this to lure his victims and kill them in horrific ways. An online article about Ted Bundy, from Wikipedia, claimed his instinctual behavior started when “he attempted his first kidnapping in 1969,” (2) shortly escalating to a brutal murder in 1971.  Police even believe he may have been guilty of “[abducting] and killing an eight year old girl” (2) when he was fourteen also according to Wikipedia’s online article. Events like these do not occur because someone did not get enough love when they were a child, they occur because people like Bundy have instinctual behavioral problems that only nature can cause – when it became time to make that decision as Bundy’s veins pumped with adrenaline, to kill or not to kill, his instincts told him to kill and kill he did.  Ted’s instincts even caused him to escape prison twice just to kill again. They told him to bash their faces in, slit their throats, rape them like a dog, and dispose of them like trash when he was done. They turned him into a blood thirsty savage who had lost all control. Again, nothing like this can be cause by nurture, what Ted Bundy did was something so disturbing, so disgusting only instincts could push him to do.

Differing from the evil and brutal instincts of Ted Bundy, comes the story of a mother whose instincts were literally life-saving to her child. When a woman gives birth it is completely instinctual to hold her child, to press it against her chest, and breathe in the aroma of the new life she has brought into this world. However for Kate Ogg, the mother of new born twins, the experience of child birth almost turned tragic. The expecting mother had delivered the first child, almost eleven weeks premature, their daughter, Emily. Emily had turned out to be healthy, breathing on her own, but when their son, Jamie, was delivered the delivery room fell silent as doctors struggled for twenty minutes to revive him according to an MSN News article titled, “Mom’s hug revives baby that was pronounced dead.” Kate asked the doctors if she and her husband could say there farewells to their little boy, “but a strange thing happened on their way to farewell. After five minutes, Jamie began displaying short, startled movements … The baby’s doctor told the parents any movements were purelpy reflex and their son was not alive.” (1) Yet, after a period of two hours with their new born son, Jamie opened his eyes.  Jamie’s doctor was in disbelief as he checked the infant’s vital signs, and in astonishment was dumbfounded as the child was indeed alive. Later when speaking about the event, Kate Ogg explained her actions after Jamie had been delivered and was not successfully revived by doctors, “putting him back on my chest was as close to him being inside me where he was safe.” She was purely following the motherly instincts given to her by nature, the need to hold her infant, the instinctual love that is uncontrollable. The reason her child survived was because of the actions she took, choosing to hold her child to her chest, for him to feel the warmth of his mother. She saved him by simply just using her motherly instincts.

Like the instincts that nature gave Ted Bundy and Kate Ogg, William Golding gave his character Jack in Lord of the Flies, the instincts to become the animal he is through the Golding’s amazing capability to illustrate a masterpiece of imagery with his words while still implying the harsh reality of Jack’s true nature.  In the first signs of Jack’s animalistic behavior Golding described him as “dog-like, uncomfortably on all fours yet unheeding his discomfort … he closed his eyes, raised his head, and breathed gently with flared nostrils assessing the current of warm air for information” (48). In this moment Jack is being described as a dog, a hunter looking for pray – looking for the scent of the next kill, in a position attack at any angle. Jack is an animal, he is a savage, and his instincts clearly demonstrate his next move – to kill. But imagery was not Golding’s only technique to empowering human nature his novel, diction also played a large role.

Golding’s usage of diction was extremely clever when it came to describing the instinctual nature that Jack –as well as other characters – possessed, but also the possibility of those instincts in any given human. As illustrated by Golding’s imagery, Jack and his crew have escalated to full on hunters, especially when they decide to kill the sow.  The sow’s death is not a peaceful one, as once she was attacked and pursued through the forest, “she blundered into a tree, forcing the spear deeper still; and after that any of the hunters could follow her easily the drops of vivid blood.” (135) Later on, “Jack found the through and hot blood spout over his hands,” (135) as he slit the throat of the sow.  Golding’s vocabulary choices were important to really imply that bit of power which really shined through as the boys’ true animalistic, hunter instincts come out during the killing of the sow, almost like the instincts of Ted Bundy.  In the moment that the threshold between Jack and the boys and the choice to kill the sow or not was crossed, the boys’ instincts started racing through their minds; the adrenaline pumped through their veins and in that moment of decision they chose to kill the sow. They were not thinking about, “Oh well my mother taught me to do this,” or “My father wouldn’t approve of killing an animal like such a savage,” they were thinking about how good that pig would taste later.   How good it would be to finally eat.  There was no time to think about that, they just had to do what their instincts told them to do, and they did.

By analyzing the power of instincts through the lives of Bundy and Ogg, as well as Golding’s characters, we are able to see that nature’s force is much stronger than that of nurture. The way a human being is built is based off our instincts. A woman is made to be a mother, nature gives her all the physical necessities, however in that moment when she must embrace that motherliness, it is her instincts, her inner nature that will craft her life.  Look at the moments in Kate Ogg’s life; her decision to follow her motherly instinct has changed her life forever, just like Ted Bundy and Golding’s characters. Our nature determines our lives as we are forced to make decision every day, whether life-threatening or simple, nurture cannot compete with force of nature.

                                                                               

               

               

The Beast Within the Boys and Mankind's Essential Illness - Lord of the Flies

All of us have an unknown creature within us, a beast some would say, when our lives become so chaotic, so savage that they are unleashed upon ourselves. These beasts bring us fear as we try to live because we are too frightened to believe such a monster could live inside of us.  In William Golding’s Lord of the Flies, we are able to experience these beasts through the lives of innocent children who just, like many of us, are too frightened to realize there is a savage beast within ourselves.

            The boys and their “world, that [is] understandable and lawful, [is] slipping away,” (91) as their savagery becomes relevant to each other and they are forced to face their fear of the beast within them.  As tensions rise, fights begin to break out among the boys, including one significant one between Piggy, the one character that seems to understand what is going on, and Jack, a hot tempered mess at this point of the novel.  In this argument Piggy questions the boys, “What are we? Humans? Or Animals? Or savages?” (91) This question infuriates Jack, who snaps back, “You shut up, you fat slug!”(91)  However, Piggy is right. In this time of chaos on the island, the boys are turning savage; they are forgetting everything they have accomplished and throwing it out. We are humans, but as humans we must learn that we have the capability to become people we never thought existed when we are put into situations like that of the boys.

However, there is one boy who starts to see what is happening. That boy is Simon, a scrawny kid that no one seems to want to listen to, even when he tries “to express mankind’s essential illness.” (89) What is mankind’s essential illness? The lack of humanity. Humanity does not exist on this island, there is no kindness or compassion, there is hate.  Still, the boys do not understand there is actually not a physical beast on the island, but a metaphorical one within themselves, as they are frightened of what is happening to them, as well as each other. 

Changes in the Boys and Mask - Lord of the Flies

Masks have been used to hide behind for centuries, either literally or metaphorically. People have used them to hide from themselves, as well as others. In the novel, Lord of the Flies, by William Golding, one of the main characters, Jack, finds himself hiding behind a mask, not only from the other characters in the novel, but from the changes that have occurred within himself.

As the novel progresses, multiple changes take place within Jack. One of the evident changes in Jack was the animalistic way he acts towards the other boys, but also when it comes to when he hunts. In one particular scene where Jack is preparing to hunt, the author describes Jack as, “Dog-like, uncomfortably on all fours … He closed his eyes,  raised his head and breathed in gently with flared nostrils.” (48) He has changed from his old structured self, into a newer, more rebellious leader; a leader who is domesticated, yet wild. However these changes are a struggle for Jack to handle, which is where the concept of hiding behind a mask is key.

In the beginning of the novel, it is noticeable that Jack lives his life out of fear. As the novel progresses we see that these changes within Jack are alarming to him. To cope with these changes, Jack begins to paint his face with different colors, colors that represent those of a powerful mask. For Jack, the mask is a way to hide himself from the other boys – practically symbolizing a barrier between them. In the scene where Jack is painting his face, there’s a moment where Jack looks ,”in astonishment, no longer himself but at an awesome stranger,” (69) in the mirror which illustrates the way Jack becomes different, no longer himself when the mask is on, it is a barrier for him to hide behind. The mask is also another way for Jack to feel powerful. When he wears the mask he usually hunts, which has been a tradition in many tribal groups. In Jack’s case, when he paints his face power overcomes him and he is almost chief like, chanting things like, “Kill the pig. Cut her throat. Spill her blood.” (69) Yet, Jack isn’t much of a leader, only when he puts on that mask he is empowered to do things that he normally would not do. These changes within Jack are a wake-up call to what’s to come ahead and clearly demonstrate the purpose of masking ourselves from society and ourselves. 

The Motif of Authority and Its Importance - Lord of the Flies

Authority is a concept that we, as humans, sculpt our lives around. We need authority in order to maintain a life without chaos. For example, in society we built a democracy for our country in order to obtain a leader, an authority figure who keeps our country running. Now, imagine our lives without authority. What would we do? How would we react? Authority is truly the most important way to stay sane in such a chaotic, as demonstrated in the novel Lord of The Flies, by William Golding.

            Throughout the novel there are various examples of how important authority is in our lives. The plot begins as Ralph, the main character, abruptly finds himself on an island after the plane he was traveling on went down. As he is exploring the island, he comes across another boy, Piggy. Piggy asks Ralph, “where’s the man with the megaphone?” (7). This is a significant sign of a repeating element in this novel. Here the boys are stranded on an island, there is no sign of adults, and they are immediately seeking authority, someone to tell them what to do or how to leave the island. Later as they explore the island together they find a conch shell, another sign of authority. Ralph decides to blow the conch shell to perhaps attract other boys who may also be on the island, thus boys start to appear from all over the island. This illustrates how people are immediately attracted to authority; we want to have a leader because without it there is only chaos.

            As the boys start to discuss what exactly they are going to do on the island, they suggest making a democracy which is an interesting idea.  Again, the boys are stuck on an island, they have no rules, no leaders, and all they want to do is pick a leader and make rules. Also they are going right back to what they just had before the plane crashed, where the world outside of the island was violent and scary to many of them. What makes them think that if they make a democracy like the adults did that it is going to end up to be successful? As people, we need to take the time to think about the concept of authority.  It is what our lives rely on every day, yet many of us wouldn’t know what to do if it ever fell apart. How would we live without authority? Amongst all of the arrogance and absurdity of our always moving world, we will learn to live an adequate life without authority through the lives of the young boys in this novel.

A Purpose

It's a question that often crosses my mind, something that most people also think about. What is my purpose in life? What do I stand for? In Graham Greene's novel, The Power and the Glory, each character represents a different purpose in life. Greene's trying to tell people to have a conviction in something, to stand for what they believe in, and not to waste their lives, because a life without a purpose is a life not worth living.

Of the many characters in the novel, the Whiskey Priest, was quite interesting. He was the Christ figure in the novel, as well as a man whose conviction lied within his feelings and beliefs. How do you determine if a man is good or bad? Their actions. The Whiskey Priest had many scenes in the novel in which he had to choose between his wants and feelings or his beliefs. One scene in the beginning of the novel he had to choose between taking the Vera Cruz -- a boat that would take him out of the world of despair he had been stuck in for the past ten years -- or going with the young boy whose mother was dying. The Priest chose to attend the boys dying mother because it was the right thing to do, but in contrast from him choosing the right thing to do he also chooses the wrong thing -- what he wants or feels -- like in the scene where he had went with the Indian woman to lay her child to rest.

In this scene the Priest found a little boy who had been shot by the "Americano"(150) and he went with his mother to bury him. They had found a small plateau that had white crosses all over and the woman put her child down under one and left "[a] small lump of sugar… lay by the child's mouth -- in case a miracle should happen or for the spirit to eat"(156) before walking back to where she had came from. The Priest who had walked downhill now came back to the plateau to see the dead, lifeless child lying on the ground with the sugar next to it. He had been starving, so he picked up the lump of sugar and ate it because he wanted it. He chose to steal something for his own needs, something no man should do. So, how do we know if the priest was a good man? If he had good conviction? His actions show both good and evil. In the end the priest died for what he believed, what he stood for. He didn't waste his life doing nothing, he stood for his beliefs and his death was influential to Mr.Tench -- who left the country after witnessing the Priest's death. This gave hope in the world of despair in which the Priest lived, that others didn't need to waste their lives either, they could stand for something as well.

Another character that represents a purpose in life is the lieutenant. He has a very different purpose than the priest. The lieutenant is against the church and is after the priest, yet his conviction is not for evil, it is for his work. "His gaiter were polished, and pistol-holster: his buttons were all sewn on."(20) This quote describes the lieutenant's appearance as well as his personality. His polished gaiters represent his polished attitude and convictions about the church and his work. He also believed that violence was always the answer, as for this quote, "A little blood never hurt anyone." (p. 56) clearly shows his intentions when trying to solve a problem, as well as in the scene in which he took hostages to kill, until the Priest would turn up somehow. But the lieutenant is not all violence and evil, he shows remorse in his actions, "Those men I shot. They were my own people. I wanted to give them the whole world."(198) Also, when the Priest had been ironically released from jail, the lieutenant had given him a few pesos, showing that he is caring, not entirely evil like the Mestizo.

"He was in the presence of Judas."(91) This quote was used to describe the Mestizo's presence in front of the Priest. In the novel, the Mestizo represents the Judas figure as the Priest represents the Christ figure, and just like in the bible, the Mestizo, or Judas, is waiting for the "iron moment"() to betray the Priest, just as Judas betrayed Jesus to the Romans. This moment of betrayal is also an example of the Mestizo's pure evil conviction. In one scene while the Priest had been leaving a small town, he had a sense that he was being followed and when he turned and stopped, the Mestizo insisted on guiding the Priest to Carmen. On their journey the Mestizo kept asking the Priest, "Why do you not trust me?" The answer to that question was quite obvious. Why trust a man who has bad intentions?

The Priest had an early sense of a pure evil conviction from this Mestizo, who symbolizes Judas and living like an animal. Described with only two teeth: his canines, he represents somewhat of an animal. Another scene also shows how he is like an animal; this scene is after the Whiskey Priest had made his way to Carmen and managed to get put in jail. He had to clean the cells out to pay off his bail. While cleaning out the cells, he came across the cell in which held the Mestizo. This animal like man had been standing next to vomit, just as a dog would. The Mestizo lives exactly like a dog -- he's described as to looking like a dog and his disgusting behavior mimics those of his looks. He shows us that even a life full of evil conviction is not a life wasted.

There are many ways to live your life; you can sit around and waste it not having a reason to live, or you can have a conviction. These characters show us how to have a conviction, how to live with a purpose, because we only have one life and you can't afford to waste it.

The Mestizo and The Priest - The Power and the Glory

Auther's Note - This is a response to the scene in The Power and the Glory, in which the Priest meets the Me stizo, the character who symbolizes Judas.


"He was in the presence of Judas." (91) This quotes describe a scene in the novel, The Power and the Glory, in which the Whiskey Priest had encountered a man called Mestizo. This Mestizo character had only two teeth: his canines, thus representing somewhat of an animal. While the Priest had been leaving a small town he had a sense that he was being followed and when he turned and stopped the Mestizo insisted on guiding the Priest to Carmen. On their journey the Mestizo kept asking the Priest, "Why do you not trust me?" The answer to that question was quite obvious. Why trust a man who has bad intentions? The Priest had already sensed a feeling of a pure evil conviction from this Mestizo who symbolizes Judas and living like an animal.

After the Whiskey Priest had made his way to Carmen and managed to get put in jail, he had to clean the cells out. While cleaning out the cells he came across the cell in which held the Mestizo. This animal like man had been standing next to vomit, just as a dog would. The Mestizo lives exactly like a dog -- he's described as to looking like a dog and his disgusting behavior mimics those of his looks. It's only a matter of time until the Mestizo betrays the Priest, he's waiting for that iron moment, just as Judas had waited for the perfect moment to betray Jesus to the Romans.

Alternative Realities

An essay response to Life of Pi by Yann Martel

Why do we need fiction? Some may say that we need fiction for entertainment and to look outside our existence, but for Piscine Molitor Patel it was a matter of escapism from his miserable reality and surviving on a small white boat in the middle of the ocean. In the novel, Life of Pi, the main character, Piscine, Pi for short, is faced with two hundred twenty-seven days of misery and the only thing that kept him alive was his fiction story about the animals on the life boat that replaced the people, making his life less wretched and more livable.

In the animal story, Pi replaces the actual, human characters that accompany him in the life boat with animals from the Tsim-Tsum. In this story he is able to hide the gruesome deaths and pain that the actual people endured with a fictional story of the animals, each animal symbolizing another person. Even though Pi is included in the fictional story as a person, he is represented by Richard Parker -- the giant Bengal tiger. Richard Parker is like another side of Pi, one that can sink to such a level of disparity, becoming capable of killing others, causing Pi to under some of the hardest things in life at such a young age.

One of the first horrible encounters Pi had was the slow death of the zebra, also known as the sailor, who broke his leg while jumping to safety in the life boat from the Tsim Tsum. After his leg had become badly infected, the cook, replaced by the hyena in the animal story, cut it off, allowing him to die a slow, painful death. Following the zebra's death, the hyena ate him, and after eating the zebra the hyena moved on to the orangutan, Orange Juice. Orange Juice was a loving, motherly orangutan representing Pi's mother. Losing you mother can be quite devastating especially if you witnessed her decapitation as she cried out in pain, which is another concept that can use fiction to escape a cruel reality. So after watching his mother and the sailor die it is only Pi, Richard Parker, and the hyena are left on the boat, though they are low on supplies. Richard Parker attacks the cook and kills him, which leaves only Pi and Richard Parker alone on the boat. Since Pi and Richard Parker are the same character, just different versions of each other, they create a paradox -- a minor theme throughout the novel -- on the life boat; Pi being a more mellow, less violent version, versus Richard Parker who does what he needs to in order to survive. With Pi creating this other version of himself to cover up the terrible things he had to do to live he is able to see past them, unlike a person not using a fiction reality to get away from their own misery who would become insane.

At one point of the novel, Pi stated, "[W]ithout Richard Parker I wouldn't be alive to tell you my story." (164) This quote is another example of using an alternative reality to survive. Pi created Richard Parker to distract him from his miseries, to provide an escape from the lonely world on the life boat. Richard Parker kept Pi alive; he gave Pi a way to sink to such levels of despair that did not cause as much harm to Pi's mental state because in Pi's eyes he saw Richard Parker to be a totally separate person than him even though he knew that Richard Parker wasn't real.

There was one scene that clearly shows how Pi survived with the help of Richard Parker; this scene was when Pi came across a Frenchman. Up until that point, Pi, had been managing well, but he had started to lose hope. He had lost his eye sight, drank the last of the water, and had been waiting to die when the Frenchman came upon him. Pi had been talking to Richard Parker, but really he was talking to his other personality. Richard Parker and Pi were talking about food when the mysterious man butted into the conversation. This man and Pi then started talking, which led Pi to invite him into the boat. One thing led to another and Pi found himself almost being killed by the Frenchman so he pushed him into Richard Parker's side of the boat, and Richard Parker ate most of him. This time Pi even had a little bit of him which lead to the returning of his eyesight. While talking to Richard Parker, Pi, was able to hold on for just a little bit longer, until the Frenchman came and was killed. The killing of the man was quite brutal since he fought back, but was no match for Richard Parker. After regaining his eyesight Pi saw the man on the other side of the boat and immediately was disgusted that Richard Parker had ripped him apart, but Richard Parker did what he had to do to survive.

Towards the end of the novel, Pi reaches a state of despair in which he loses all hope of survival. With this mental state Pi remarked, "The lower you are, the higher your mind will soar."(358) This quote was said as Pi's mind was in a desperate pursuit to escape his physical situation as his existence on the life boat began to be too much for him to handle; he starts to slip away, and his mind soars to its obligation of escaping reality through fiction in his animal story which hides his unbearable level of scavenging and pain of losing the real people in the boat. It also proves that at the lowest point possible in life -- which Pi was considering he was starving in the middle of the ocean on a life boat with a huge Bengal tiger onboard -- Pi reached for his last hopes for survival: faith and his creative imagination.

Living in an alternative reality can have its dangers, but for Pi it was the only way to survive. Death and pain are hard things to endure and to watch others endure, and with Pi's fiction animal story he was able to not think about the sailor dying slowly, his mother being decapitated, the cook who had gone crazy getting what he deserved, and most of all what he had done to survive. He teaches us that sometimes life is miserable and hard, and for the times that it is its okay to use a little imagination to escape from that reality.