Good afternoon, students and teachers. Today I will be analysing Lord of the Flies and We are going and how the writer of both of these texts have displayed metamorphosis. Metamorphosis is a concept often seen in literature and is used as an idea to stimulate complication in many famous texts. Lord of the Flies and We Are Going are texts that both show how metamorphosis occurs within people when certain situations or circumstances arise.
Lord of the Flies is a famous novel published in 1954 by William Golding and is a story about a group of young boys who crash on an island somewhere in the Pacific, its exact location is unknown. We Are Going is a poem written by Oodgeroo Noonuccal in 1964. Similar to Lord of the Flies, it shows how tough situations cause metamorphosis.
Lord of the Flies is a novel surrounding a group of boys who crash land on an island when trying to escape the dangers of a nuclear war. The schoolboys set up a system of rules where the person holding a seashell called the ‘conch’ is the only person allowed to speak. As the story continues, the boys lose all sense of order and the group splits into two smaller groups, one led by Ralph and the other Jack. Eventually Ralph’s group gets smaller and smaller as other boys leave to join Jack. Whilst all of this is happening, the boys believe in a dark monster which haunts the island through the boys’ dreams. The combination of all these factors and the enormous amount of stress that builds up due to survival instincts acts as a catalyst for metamorphosis within the boys causing them to lose their sense of humanity.
Throughout the novel, Jack progresses through several stages of metamorphosis sped up by the need to survive. Early in the book, Jack and the choir boys go out hunting and eventually find a small pig which is entangled in some vines. Jack hesitates in killing it and it escapes making Jack think that ‘Next time there will be no mercy’. Golding successfully shows that Jack has begun metamorphosis from an innocent British school boy to wanting to develop the maturity needed to survive. The opportunity to kill another pig arises and this time Jack does exactly as he wishes. He does not hesitate, killing the pig with speed and savageness, hanging its dead body on a stake and chanting, ‘Kill the pig. Cut her throat. Spill her blood’. Once again Golding has shown that Jack is progressing through metamorphosis at an extremely fast rate as a result of survival instincts. In this example, Jack has gone from hesitating to kill the pig to being eager to kill and hunt for the group. After he has killed the pig he is proud and therefore chants, allowing us to believe that it is more than likely that Jack will kill again, possibly with even more savagery. Towards the end of the book, Jack’s group of hunters creep up on a group of sleeping pigs, a mother with several little piglets. J...
