Should Lord of the Flies Be Banned?
English Debate 2011-2012 Should Lord of the Flies Be Banned From Chisago Lakes High School? Argument #1 Peer Pressure By: Elizabeth Gornik We’re sitting here talking, in Mr. Scharnberg’s first hour English class at Chisago Lakes High School, about how this classic book “Lord of the Flies” by William Golding affects our everyday lives. Half of the room believes it’s a life lesson and should be continued in our education curriculum and the other half believes its sending a horrible message to our society and should be forever banned from our school.
I believe that it’s an educational book and should continue to be taught; it’s a great read and has changed my outlook on things in life. For the other half of you I understand where you guys are coming from, this book has sexual references, its violent and makes fun of disabled people; but you have to look past that and see the deep meaning in the gory paragraphs. In our lives we face many challenges; one of the big issues is peer pressure. We all face it in high school, drugs, sex, parties, alcohol, skipping school, etc. The dictionary definition of peer pressure is influence from members of one’s peer group.
Lord of the Flies is a perfect of example peer pressure; it shows how everyone cracks under pressure. Choices they make are determined by the manipulation and domination of their more powerful friends. The littl’uns are faced with pressure because they don’t exactly know what’s going on, they whole lives they’ve been supported by their families and didn’t have to worry about seeing tomorrow’s daylight. Now they have to depend on boys twice their age because everyone else is and they don’t know how to take care of themselves. Another situation is when ll the boys first met and everyone was making fun of Piggy and calling him “Fatty”, Ralph decided to be part of the fun and giggles and tell everyone Piggy’s secret nickname to feel part of the crowd. Later on in the book the more Ralph realizes that Piggy was his one, true friend. Towards the end of the book Samneric were pressured into joining Jack’s tribe by threatening them. They end up joining to save their lives. This book clearly shows that how they’re acting is influenced by the things that they have gone through, the surroundings is what influenced them, not a book.
Think about it, Jack became obsessed with hunting because that’s all he could do to entertain himself. When teens and children even adults are bored they tend to experiment things such as drugs, sex, alcohol. If you’re not keeping yourself busy and hanging around the wrong people, eventually you get influenced to do things you will regret doing in the future. Also, it shows that the consequences of our mistakes, it does not encourage us to do the same. If you actually thought deep about the text and not just surface through the offensive situations, you just might see what I see, a life lesson that each and every one of us need to learn.
