(A comparative essay between 1984 and Lord of The Flies for AP English 11)
             Janada walks to her slum near the railway station in the piercing cold weather. She tries to remember her childhood but only blank pages appear. She runs her hand through her pockets and pulls out a crumb of bread which she had stolen from a five-year old boy. She feels alienated by the surroundings and uncertain where she belongs. She recalls her elementary education that imbued her with lessons of loyalty to the government. She doesn't know her culture, her tradition, and most of all her family. Her instinct to be a follower makes her believe in everything that the government dictates. She wants to obey the conventions of her society, so that she will not be considered an outcast. However, to be a "conventional" person she has to sacrifice her own individuality.
             When our world is ruled by lawlessness, confusion, or fear we lose the focus of our life. Orwell and Golding predicted in their novels that each individual, like Janada, could face the same miserable outcomes under destructive governments. Nineteen Eighty-Four and Lord of the Flies contrast the two extreme forms of government, anarchy and oligarchy that consequently bring the same disastrous effects on the human society.
             In Lord of the Flies, Golding describes an anarchical government when Ralph's attempt for social order perishes. The first sign of disorder in the island society is the boys' intolerance toward Piggy's intellectual thinking. The boys' ignorance toward the spirited but rational Simon plunges them into superstition and shuns them from the civilized life. Anarchy grows to full scale when Jack creates a new tribe running like a military camp where the boys hunt pigs, dance savagely, and rally against the imaginary beast. The most horrifying illustrations of anarchy are when the boys get carried away by their fear and their frenzied dance that r...