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

This essay will compare the two novels, Robinson Crusoe and Lord of the Flies, to see how each author reflected the point of view of society at the time that they lived in. The nature of civilisation will be viewed from their two different perspectives. Daniel Defoe published Robinson Crusoe in 1719; William Golding published Lord of the Flies in 1954. Both novels are the first fiction works of their respective authors and they deal with the issue of being deprived of the surroundings of the civilisation that they are used to. The former is about a man, shipwrecked repeatedly, and how he survives in the face of slavery and savagery. The latter concerns a group of schoolchildren whose plane crashes onto an island after a nuclear war breaks out and explains how they cope and change as time wears on with no sign of a rescue. Although the subject matter of these two books is similar on the surface, there is a contrast in the way the two authors represent civilisation. Daniel Defoe was a novelist, journalist, businessman and spy. He defended William of Orange and Mary’s rise to the throne. He attacked the Church of England in his book The Shortest Way with Dissenters and he was fined and imprisoned, but after his release he became a spy for the government. He did not begin writing until he was almost sixty. The Robinson Crusoe narrative was inspired by the actual experience of Alexander Selkirk on the island of Juan Fernandez from 1704 to 1709. Defoe wrote for the middle 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 entering a ‘Golden Age.’ After the union with Scotland in 1707, internal trade prospered in this, the largest customs-free area in Western Europe. The aristocracy and upper middle class that controlled Parliament also controlled the principal trading and banking companies, so that the growth of new enterprises was more rapid than anywhere else in Europe. The gradual control of the seas, the establishment of trading posts in exotic lands, and the policy of taking overseas territories as booty from successful wars enabled Britain to gain commercial benefits and to build the world’s largest empire. Inside Britain, the Industrial Revolution was under way. New countries were seen as lands of opportunity and resource; many people emigrated to make their fortune in tobacco growing or gold mining etc. There was a general air of optimism concerning mankind’s future and when Crusoe is shipwrecked – the only survivor on an unknown island – he fights for survival not only in the physical sense but also in the sense that he fights for his belief that civilisation would conquer all difficulties. The main character of Defoe’s book is Robinson Crusoe. Crusoe wanted to go to sea and explore rather than follow his father’s wishes and practise law; as it says on the first page: â€Å"My father†¦design’d me for the Law; but I would be satisfied with nothing 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 story begins. In this book he retains a strong sense of civilisation. This is shown after he rescues a savage from other 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: â€Å"†¦I likewise taught him to say Master, and then let him know, that was to be my name†¦I would give him Cloaths.† Crusoe also warned Friday off cannibalism and when he later rescues a Spaniard and Friday’s father from savages, he thought he had an example of society: â€Å"How like a King I looked†¦ The whole country was my own†¦property; so that I had undoubted Right of Dominion†¦My people 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 story reflects Golding’s thoughts about civilisation – what in his view it was really like when the coating was stripped away. The story begins with the aeroplane crashing and the group of schoolchildren forming a semblance of a society with a democratically appointed leader. However as the narrative progresses, civilisation slowly falls apart; the main group of boys become savages and lives are taken. The book ends with all sense of civilisation being lost and the main character running for his life. Eventually civilisation is restored in the form of a Royal Navy cruiser, after spotting the signal that the boys initially lit, coming 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, â€Å"Seems to me that we ought to have a chief to decide things.† This shows he had some views on the need for planning. Jack, another boy, also had some sense of civilisation: â€Å"After all, we’re not savages. We’re 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 chief 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 hunt animals. The group acted like a savage tribe and eventually chooses to abandon civilised living: one of Ralph’s friends, Piggy, offers the choice: â€Å"Which 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. â€Å"One chanced nothing! What could they do? Beat him? So what? Kill 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 freedom, 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 bigotry: â€Å"We had but three 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 allow’d 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 only interested in the hunt and the kill. A pig’s head on a pole represents religion in this story, similar to a totem pole that the native 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 Animal 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 (Johann 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 wild animals to make a farm and they both are religious. A further 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 pressure seems to affect the group and behaviour is altered compared with what is normally seen in public society. The overall feel of Robinson Crusoe’s plot is optimistic – reflecting the times 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 Crusoe’s triumph over them to illustrate human spirit. Lord of the Flies, however, is pessimistic: all semblance of civilised society is stripped away. The two world 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 wi thout 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 essentially 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. â€Å"There was no Piggy to talk sense. There was no solemn assembly for debate nor dignity of the conch.† The Navy officer who arrived to take them back to the waiting ship said, â€Å"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 sail again for South America. â€Å"My true friend the widow earnestly diswaded me from it, and so far prevail’d 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, Defoe’s book presents a positive outlook for the future of humanity as civilisation spread across the globe, whereas Golding’s work suggested that the weapon would be used not to support civilisation, but to destroy it. Both reflect the world view of their times.