Negative Consequences of Fear in "Lord of The Flies" by William Golding

Imagine that you have been on an air crash; you land on an island in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. You have nothing except for fear. What would you do? Fear, is not only an emotion frightens you, but it also would come along with other undesired influences. In the novel “Lord of The Flies” by William Golding explains this point perfectly through the survival of a group of young boys on an isolated island.

Throughout the entire story, fear brings about several negative consequences to people, such as, weakening courage, losing mind, and preventing people from doing appropriate things. First of all, fear is likely to weaken people’s courage. In other words, it makes people cowardly. In the beginning of the novel, the boys didn’t express much fear against the beastie in the jungle. They still had adventurousness to explore around the island and ignite fire to make signal on the mountains. However, the circumstances changed after they discovered something that made their hair stand on end. “No go, Piggy. We’ve got no fire. That thing sits up there – We’ll have to stay here”. This speech from Ralph responded to Piggy reveals that he had been completely defeated by fear. He didn’t dare to go up the mountains anymore. He was not as brave to take risks as he used to be. The contrast above distinctly identifies that fear reduces courage.

Other than weakening people’s courage, fear will also result in losing people’s mind. One, Two, fear leads people to make impulse decisions and judgments that end up with grave consequences such as death. “Kill the beast! Cut his throat! Spill his blood! Do him in!” This speech was yelled out by a bunch of boys when the saw the “beastie” ran towards them. However, this is an example of dramatic irony, the “beastie” was actually Simon who was going to announce that the “beastie” they saw is only a dead body of a pilot. As the boys were nervous and panic awfully, they murdered the “beastie” – Simon without even thinking twice. As a result, they made a careless and serious mistake which is enough to attest that fear will lose people’s ability to think. Thirdly, fear is apt to prevent people from doing appropriate things. According to the novel, at the beginning of chapter five, Ralph used the conch, which is a symbol of power, to convene an assembly in order to censure the kids for their failure to obey the rules. Due to the fear of unknown and beastie, the boy wandered around anxiously instead of courage.