Moran Lit and Comp

LotF Fishbowl Discussions

Throughout the nineteenth century in Europe there arose lots of new

ideas about human nature and human society. For a number of reasons
(including the eclipse of religious belief, the failures of progressive
politics, and industrial capitalism’s disruption of traditional ways of life)
the second half of the nineteenth century had a particularly radical feel
to it. In Lord of the Flies, Golding explores many of the ideas espoused
in nineteenth century Europe.

For your fishbowl discussions, you will be assigned one of the four
quotations below. Each quotation is from a major nineteenth century
thinker (Freud actually worked well into the 20th). In preparation for
your discussion, I want you to think carefully about the quotation and
about how it relates to Lord of the Flies. Your purpose as a group is to
discuss:
a.How LotF explores this quotation and all that the quotation
implies. (Specific passages.)
b. Whether you think Golding would, on the whole, agree with
the quotation.
c.What you feel personally about the quotation, based on your
own reading and experience.

1. “The first human who hurled an insult instead of a stone was the
founder of civilization.”
-Sigmund Freud, Civilization and Its Discontents

2. “War is nothing more than the continuation of politics by other

means.”
-Carl von Clausewitz, On War

3. “The world itself is the will to power--and nothing else! And you yourself
are the will to power--and nothing else!” -Friedrich Nietzsche, The Will to
Power

4. “It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most
intelligent that survives. It is the one that is the most adaptable to change.”
-Charles Darwin, On the Origin of Species