The Descent Into Darkness Essay

947 words - 4 pages

The desire for power can often lead to one going outside the accepted boundaries of society in order to reach his or her goals. In William Golding’s novel, Lord of the Flies, readers are exposed to a group of young boys who all express varying characteristics as a result of being removed from society. The story begins when the boys crash land on an island in the Pacific Ocean and are left to fend for themselves without the assistance of adults. A boy named Ralph calls the boys to a meeting and the oldest of the boys, Jack, challenges him for the position of leader. As the story progresses, Ralph and Jack’s conflicting morals split the boys into two groups that fight for dominance on the ...view middle of the document...

Jack takes his hunters and moves to the other side of the island, while Ralph attempts to maintain civility. No longer does Jack only want the choir boys to follow him but he also wants to control everyone else, he’s entered his dictatorial stage. "'Fear can't hurt you any more than a dream. There aren't any beasts to be afraid of on this island....Serve you right if something did get you, you useless lot of cry-babies!'" (82). Jack explains that the only thing the boys have to worry about are tangible dangers, not their imaginations. By saying this, he also hints that he’s one of the true dangers on the island. This gives him power over the little ones through telling them they’re weak and authority over the older boys by showing that he isn’t afraid of the island. Not only can Jack lead through fear but also through his ability to control the hunters. The hunters are at Jack’s disposal and Ralph knows that his group can never win in a fight against them. "’Kill the pig, cut her throat, spill the blood'” (69). Jack leads this chant when him and his hunters take down a pig. Golding shows that Jack has moved to a position in which the hunters almost worship him and his acts. Ralph now knows that Jack is too far gone to attempt to bring him back to a semi-structured life on the island. The feeling of power that Jack get’s from the hunt fully breaks him away from the thought of being rescued and now he only wants to hunt. This is the final step in Jack’s removal from civilized society and his full embrace of the savage...

"Into the Darkness" by Barbara Michaels

565 words - 2 pages Michaels, Barbara. Into The Darkness. New York, NY: Simon & SchusterInc., 1990Let me tell you a story about a woman named Meg Venturi. She was born in Sedon, a small New England town. Her Grandfather Daniel Mignot, a roguish and mysterious founder of a majestic empire, died after a sudden short illness. So Meg had to back to Seldon, which is the small town that she ran away from so many years before. She expected only to pay her respects and

Colonization: The Bringing of Light Into the Darkness

1410 words - 6 pages Heart of Darkness is saturated with light imagery used to represent the coming of the colonizers, and the civilization they are said to embody, into the darkness of Africa. This scene begins with the narrator on board The Nellie, a ship anchored on the Thames River outside of London at sunset. As the sun sets the light on the Thames is brilliant. The narrator patriotically recalls the great British sailors, from Sir Francis Drake to Sir John

A Journey into the Soul in Heart of Darkness

1618 words - 6 pages A Journey into the Soul in Heart of Darkness A picture is an abstract idea, brought into context to form something concrete. They are made up and created to give off some sort of feeling or mood, that one can relate too. The atmosphere helps determine what kind of mood the picture will take. Any author, of either a painting or piece of literature will set the mood by

Freedom in Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer and Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad

2015 words - 9 pages In an advanced society such as ours, there are still restrictions and censorship brought upon the citizens that causes freedom to be oppressed. Ultimate freedom is sought out by many in a quest to improve their living style, although a better life style is not always guaranteed. In the novel Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer and the novella Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad, both authors depict that having complete freedom challenges a persons

Jeffry Dahmer "heart Of Darkness". A look into the makings of a killer as exemplified by Jeffry Dahmer

994 words - 4 pages serial killer is born. The evil thoughts residing in the subconscious can surface with morbid consequences. This is where the true "heart of darkness" resides, in the intertwined gray matter of the brain. A killer is not born of screaming mothers and frantic nurses administering painkillers inside a hospital room, yet in the mind where a crossed signal from a traumatic occurrence can down-spiral into an orgy of killing all to subside an insatiable

The Darkness Overflowed Into an Extra Day

2096 words - 9 pages it go. He had this routine for every day he fished and every fish he caught. However, on February 28, 1964, he fished before the sun, and the last fish he caught, 3 pound bass, he held, watching the reflection of its opening and closing mouth as it slowed until, eventually it stopped. He let it slide from his hand into the water, barley breaking the smoothness of the water’s surface, sending a gentle ripple through the image of his reflection

Edgar Allan Poe and Lawful Universe in A Descent into the Maelstrom and The Masque of the Red Death Comparison

546 words - 2 pages The ways of a lawful universe are well illustrated in a metaphorical sense through controversy literature by Edgar Allen Poe. The world as an organized and orderly response to society's actions are best conveyed in two of Poe's short stories, including: "A Decent Into The Maelstrom" and "The Masque Of The Red Death."In "A Decent Into The Maelstrom," the ways of the world proved to benefit the fisherman in his efforts to not submit to his

Ascending to Darkness. This is a short story fantasy story about a young elf who goes into the world seeking magic just to be corrupted by evil lure of power

1014 words - 4 pages yet.I set out into the world in search of knowledge of this art of the Arcane and found on my path a wise teacher assigned by the gods to guide me in my learning of the world that I now newly stepped into. In his wisdom he could never have foreseen what would happen to his new student whom he joyfully showed the world too. He taught this young elf all he, in his human life, had learned thus far and sent this young student into the world alone once

Descent into Postpartum Psychosis; This is a nine page research essay on the short story "The Yellow Wallpaper" We had to do an analysis on the story and use third person

2863 words - 11 pages women per one-thousand births" (Seyfried and Marcus 231). In the eighteen hundreds, the author suffered from postpartum depression and overcame it. Charlotte Perkins Gilman's "The Yellow Wallpaper" reflects her own personal experience through a woman who is descending into postpartum psychosis through hallucinations and delusions.Charlotte Perkins Gilman's short story "The Yellow Wallpaper" is inspired by actual events in her life. According to Amy

Endless Darkness: An Insight Into Night (An Essay About The Indifference Expressed In The Book, Night By Elie Wiesel)

809 words - 4 pages example of this corruption in Wiesel's book is on the second train ride towards Buchenwald towards the end of the book. On this train, during one of the stops, an SS officer tore off a piece of his bread and threw it into the carriage. Havoc then broke loose and the men all scrambled and fought each other for a single crumb. The situation was so bad that they had no consideration for each other's pain or even cared if they lived or died, they

Elements of Darkness in Apocalypse Now and Heart of Darkness

1284 words - 5 pages that nearly destroyed the set, budget problems, suicide threats from Coppola, and Martin Sheen having a heart attack were just a few things that were faced during the filming. The descent into madness that went along with making "Apocalypse Now" mirrored the film's own themes and also reflected the themes of "Heart of Darkness", the Conrad novella that the film is based on. The theme of a journey into human darkness is something shared by both

Heart Of Darkness Joseph Conrad:As A Journey Of Individuation, A Meeting With The Anima, An Encounter With The Shadow,And A Descent Into The Mythic Underworld

5887 words - 24 pages " and suggests that the it is also the "central myth of [Jung's] psychotherapy (1). Smith reveals that, like Jung, Conrad himself experienced a descent to the underworld (in Conrad's words "a taste of hell") in the mental breakdown he had preceding the composition of the Heart of Darkness between 1897 and 1898 (19). Frederick Karl writes of this period of Conrad's life as a descent "into his own kind of darkness" and observes that Conrad's creative

The Descent Into A Digital Culture

1061 words - 5 pages The Descent into a Digital Culture In this century our culture is changing rapidly. Just in the last 30 years alone our scientific understanding, technological achievements, and fragmentation of values has transformed faster than in the previous 100 years alone. With our express style culture change, one has to wonder what will be said about our culture another hundred years in the future. What is the one thing that has defined us as who we are

Into The Mind Of Darkness Essay

1181 words - 5 pages Into the Mind of Darkness "You cannot have [the] power for good without having [the] power for evil too. [And], even mother's milk nourishes murderers as well as heros, [besides what man was ever content with just one crime]." (Mitchell). In the past decade, an elusive creature has capture the attention of the American society as well as a few Eurpoean nations. In the twisted psychotic minds of the these

Journey Into The Heart Of Darkness

574 words - 2 pages and 4,000 tons) was off west-central Africa under orders from former Secretary of the Navy William Chandler, who in December had ordered the ship there. Not far away from Lancaster lay her squadron mate, the steam sloop-of-war USS Kearsarge, also moored in six or so fathoms of water above a sandy bottom. Lancaster had arrived off French Point several days earlier, steaming cautiously into the dark anchorage just before midnight on Monday, but