A Comparison of Lord of the Flies to Sympathy for the Devil
6 June 2012
Guess My Name: A Comparison of Lord of the Flies to Sympathy for the Devil The story The Lord of the Flies is a timeless piece of literature written by William Golding. Many who have read this story have been inspired in different ways, one of these groups being The Rolling Stones. In their song Sympathy for the Devil, there are striking similarities between the lyrics and the content of The Lord of the Flies. In one line of Sympathy for the Devil, the lyrics go like this, “I watched with glee, While your kings and queens, Fought for decades, For the gods they made.” This is almost directly taken from the key point in the story that human nature, when faced with fear, is to create a fictional excuse for what is causing, or protecting you from, this fear. Ralph and Jack are fighting over this beast that they had created within themselves, as the pig’s head explains to Simon before his epileptic fit (143). Ralph and Jack then go to war in part because of this beast they have created, and they split because of the indecision of whether or not it’s real thing and if so where it comes from and how to deal with said beast. This is much like how kings and queens used to bring entire countries to war over gods and goddesses that had been blatantly created as a way to deal with the human’s common fear of death. People would die over fictitious gods much as kids died on the island in The Lord of the Flies over a beast that they too had created out of fear. The Lord of the Flies shows how it is in human nature to savagely defend your beliefs out of fear of them, and Sympathy for the Devil is taking this concept and directly portraying it in the afore stated lyrical verse. Just as Jack and Ralph and all the other inhabitants had created and fought brutally over the beast in fear, humans created and fought brutally over gods that they had no way of knowing for sure whether or not even existed. It’s all just in human nature and is described wonderfully in both
Guess My Name: A Comparison of Lord of the Flies to Sympathy for the Devil The story The Lord of the Flies is a timeless piece of literature written by William Golding. Many who have read this story have been inspired in different ways, one of these groups being The Rolling Stones. In their song Sympathy for the Devil, there are striking similarities between the lyrics and the content of The Lord of the Flies. In one line of Sympathy for the Devil, the lyrics go like this, “I watched with glee, While your kings and queens, Fought for decades, For the gods they made.” This is almost directly taken from the key point in the story that human nature, when faced with fear, is to create a fictional excuse for what is causing, or protecting you from, this fear. Ralph and Jack are fighting over this beast that they had created within themselves, as the pig’s head explains to Simon before his epileptic fit (143). Ralph and Jack then go to war in part because of this beast they have created, and they split because of the indecision of whether or not it’s real thing and if so where it comes from and how to deal with said beast. This is much like how kings and queens used to bring entire countries to war over gods and goddesses that had been blatantly created as a way to deal with the human’s common fear of death. People would die over fictitious gods much as kids died on the island in The Lord of the Flies over a beast that they too had created out of fear. The Lord of the Flies shows how it is in human nature to savagely defend your beliefs out of fear of them, and Sympathy for the Devil is taking this concept and directly portraying it in the afore stated lyrical verse. Just as Jack and Ralph and all the other inhabitants had created and fought brutally over the beast in fear, humans created and fought brutally over gods that they had no way of knowing for sure whether or not even existed. It’s all just in human nature and is described wonderfully in both