Lord of the Flies and the Tv Show Lost Essay Example

different points. Even when Jack in the novel is first introduced he is described as, “His face was crumpled and freckled, and ugly without silliness” (Golding 21). This harsh description sets him to having an evil personality, and he goes on to kill Piggy and Simon in “tribal savagery” (Golding, Sir William Gerald). The Jacks both make decisions and get people killed from their actions.

In both The Lord of the Flies and Lost, the first thing the groups did was get food. The food sources include wild boar, and whoever caught the boar was praised, like Jack in the book and John Locke in Lost. In addition to wild boar, both islands carried fruit such as mangoes and bananas when other food was scarce or wasn’t being caught. Also, the wild boar similarly runs wild and attacks a few of the survivors. Therefore, getting food was a priority when both groups landed on the islands.

Early in both the novel and show, there is a fear of an anonymous monster or beast. In both stories, the fear of the beast makes both camps scared to be in the forest and stay on the beach just to avoid an encounter with it. Piggy tries to get everyone to believe there isn’t a monster to keep all the young children calm, “But there isn’t a beast!” (Golding 37). Piggy fiercely tells the group that there is no beast and there is no reason to worry about one because the idea of one is just preposterous. The stories reveal what the beast is towards the ends, and the groups are then not as afraid of

it. Since the beast in Lord of the Flies was a human, I would not be surprised if the beast in Lost also has human origin.

Golding’s novel and Lost both use the term, “the Others.” This phrase is used to describe an opposing tribe on the same island. The book coins this term with Jack’s group, and the TV show uses this term to occasionally describe the inhabitants of the island who hurt the survivors. The Others in Lost, and the Others described in Lord of the Flies both take part in, “ritualistic murder” (Golding, Sir William Gerald). The Others share the same purpose, which is to steal and hurt from the group on the beach. In addition, they also both try to get the survivors to join the Others at points. Something that continuously occurs are the inhabitants of the island killing people from the original surviving tribe. The similarity between both of the Others is more than just coincidental.

The point that is focused the most on in Lord of the Flies is the critique on the society and nature of humans. This same point can also be argued for in Lost. The evil natures of some characters are greatly exploited. Jack in the novel has an extremely evil personality, which leads him to choose bad decisions and break away from the main tribe forming his own group. In Lost, several characters like Kate and Sawyer have criminal backgrounds, and the choices they make are based upon where they came from and what they did before their crash on the island.

The competition between leadership and other subversive attempts

at leadership are both duly noted in the book and show. In Lost, Jack is forced to become a leader due to his occupation as a doctor before the plane crash. In Lord of the Flies, the character Ralph is also forced to become leader due to his possession of the conch. These characters did not necessarily apply to the job of leading the tribes, but were both chosen to do so. Throughout the novel, Jack and Ralph become competitors and rally against each other for the leadership role, and then Jack splits up into his own tribe. The same thing occurs in Lost where Locke disagrees on many of Jack’s decisions about leaving the island, and decides to go out and make his own tribe, taking anyone that is willing to go with him.

Through the beginnings, leadership issues, use of the term the Others, Lord of the Flies and Lost are truly similar. The ways described makes it impossible for Lost to not share some of the same plot as the novel. The more Lost advances through its seasons, the more similarities between the TV show and William Golding’s novel are created. A viewer of Lost may even be able to figure out what may happen next by reading the book. Therefore, Lost is indebted to the reading of Lord of the Flies, and the plot of the show would be severely altered without the creation of the novel.