Sep. 12-16: LOTF Ch.1

Also on Monday as we began reading we began discussing about the introduction paragraph to Golding's novel, The Lord of the Flies and its diction.  Some phrases I took a not of was 'sand was think', 'heat hit him', 'ripped of each stockings and garters', 'kicked off his shoes', 'skull-like coconuts', 'forest sliding over his skin', 'snake-clasp', 'lugged off', 'dazzling beach', and 'green shadows'.  I wrote a lot of diction paragraphs about different novels because I was in Mr. Title's class which wasn't too insipid, so I can wrap my head around diction fairly well.  Then we discussed how Golding establishes his characters, Piggy and Ralph.




One way we discussed about how Golding established his characters by the two different personalities of two main characters.  Piggy is established by his friendliness and curiosity, but Ralph has a sort of gauche nonchalant  personality.  When Golding introduces Piggy's name, Piggy said he didn't want Ralph to call him Piggy, however since Ralph found it so funny about Piggy's name, the name Piggy stayed with Ralph even when Piggy had said he did not like it.  We, as readers, don't even get to know Piggy's real name.  Although Ralph laughs jokingly, Piggy is hurt.  In schools, children are teased, and those who tease, the bullies, feel name calling is just a joke.  However, some children are immensly hit with this name calling so much they are brought to depression and even suicide, and people still deal with it today.
Next in the story, Ralph had found a conch shell and had blown in it to see if there are others on the island.  Other children arrived, however the most peculiar was the introduction of Jack who in Golding's physical appearance description is nearly opposite to Ralph.  We wrote down some words Golding uses to describe Ralph and Jack.

Mr. Keating told us the six tools of characterization:

Appearance

Mannerisms

Speech

Socio-Economic Status

Motivation

Setting that Contextualizes Character

We described the characterization of the main characters we know so far.  Ralph, Piggy, Simon, and Jack.  Golding described Piggy as a boy that is plum and has glasses, from the middle to upper classes, he does not want to be called Piggy, but his motivation is how he takes after Ralph the leader.  He still talks like a boy in a sensitive way.  I described Simon as between Jack and Ralph as friends of both of them because Simon is in Jack's toon; however Ralph was nice to Simon when Jack coerced to Simon to keep going when he had fainted.  Golding described Jack as 'ugly', he is also mature but harsh and also leader-like such as Ralph.  All the characters are unique from one another because with their different personalities will have to team up together and be friends.  Golding's purpose is to use these different uniqueness of characters to draw conflicts among them, such as the part in the story when the three boys confront a pig, and felt jaundiced since there is danger on the island.