As aromatic breezes blow
beaches beckon,
crystal cool.
Children cartwheel,
carefree, capricious -
choirboy castaways,
castoff clothes.
Coral dazzling,
days effulgent,
flowers, freedom,
freshest fruits.
Fishes golden,
greenest gardens,
hopeful innocence -
idyllic isle.
Juvenescent jollity,
keenest laughter,
lambent light,
lagoon legato,
mellifluous nature's opus.
Paradise.
Quintessential rhapsody,
radiant roundelay,
soaring strains.
Shimmering sunlight,
tropical tableau,
unconstrained,
uninhibited, unbound,
unbridled, uncaged.
Verdant, waif-like,
x-uberant youth-
zest.
____________________________________________
Alert! Alarm!
Anarchy approaches.
Assemblies breakdown -
bewilderment, blood.
Barbarity, brutality,
creeping chaos.
Civilization?
Confusion, death.
Democracy defeated,
evil empowered,
frenzied flies,
fearsome fire.
Guilty horrors,
hateful hunters,
humanity's hackled innocence.
Ignited jungle,
justice jilted.
Joie de vivre?
Judgment Day.
Jeopardy,
killing,
Kyrie eleison.
Laughter, levity, loyalty -
lost.
Littleun's murdered,
maelstrom, mayhem,
nature's outlaws
on parade.
Perfectibility?
Primitivism.
Power plays, panic -
paradise quashed.
Regression, rituals,
savagery, slaughter,
sanity slipping,
taboos uncontrolled.
Violence, weeping,
war-painted warriors,
x-istence x-tinguishing.
Youth yowling-
Zip.
|
Author Notes
Was Rousseau right? Is natural man's state preferable to life once society interferes and imposes an order that brings on injustice? Or do civilization and its social order curb man's baser instincts and provide restraints necessary for our coexistence? William Golding's novel, The Lord of the Flies, most definitely comes down on the side of arguing society is absolutely necessary.
In this classic tale, a plane crashes on a tropical isle as it attempts to airlift a school of English schoolboys away from the dangers of a war. The pilot and all teachers die, leaving the boys on their own. In my first A-Z listing, I have described their initial delight in a world of no rules and no adults. In the second listing, I chronicle what follows - the boys turn on each other. The weak are murdered, the strong rule out of control, making up barbaric rituals.
The story is far too complex to explain in a short essay - suffice it to say that nothing good comes of their being allowed to live wildly. Not everyone might agree with Golding's philosophy of human nature and society, but none can deny he paints a vivid picture in this compelling book.
|
|
