Lord Of The Flies Essays - English-language Films, Allegory

Lord Of The Flies Essays - English-language Films, Allegory Lord Of The Flies The Lord of the Flies is a picture of our society today. Discuss the statement and show the way the statement applies The Lord of the Flies is about a mini-society of boys formed by chance. Their isolation from adults forced reality upon them and so they had to think for themselves and work together. As a commentary of todays society it does well to explain some of todays issues like violence, laws, pride, greed, fear, religious power and the conflict between living in a civilized society or savagery. It is all about the choice the boys made when life became real. In the beginning their lives were controlled and protected by their parents, teachers and police officers. Jack cannot kill the pig even though he can eat meat because of the enormity of the knife descending and cutting into living flesh. (p 41). Roger cannot hit the boys with the stones even though he could if he wanted to because he has been conditioned by the society he used to live in. This is the type of society the children live in. Everything is a game until the beast. The beast signals the end of the games and start of reality. Lives are at stake in perspective of the boys and survival must occur in any form. Our society is much like this as todays society is also about survival and what choices we make to survive. The mini-society started off peaceful. The purpose was to set a signal fire and live off fruit until help came. The conflict came when the fire and hunting could not be committed to at the same time. As the fire was a 24 hour task and hunting needed the whole party, the party started to take sides. Ralphs fire would be the sensible thing to do to get rescued however hunting would lift the standard of living for all the boys and would also be a luxury, recreational event. The fire was hard work and immediate results were none even though long-term results would be better. The hunting side wins eventually. In Australia today we are spending beyond our ability to afford this spending. This means we have a great influx of goods and services but as a community we are cheating ourselves as this leads to a current account deficit and the cost of living in this deficit must be paid plus the deficit. In this books case, the deficit was their morals and the interest was paid in life. The conch was the symbol of power and it represented the order in the beginning of the book. It brought them together and provided laws for the society. The main law being whoever holds it has the right to speak without interjection or disrespect while he was speaking. It is much like a policemans badge or even the mace in our parliament. However, the beast held a greater power over the conch which was fear. It is used by Jack to gain power over the rest of the group. His promises and rallies to kill the beast eased the fear of the boys and hence he won over the group. The killing of Simon as the beast but saying the beast was still alive, showed Jack had used the beast to keep his power as leader of the tribe. In a way, it became a religion as Jacks ritual of killing pigs for their heads to keep the beast happy. This was his method of promoting hunting. Other examples of this in real society are the Vikings whose promise of Valhalla made them among the best warriors of all time in the world. In todays society, religions can give power and money to many people. Fear of gods or protection from all fears in society can make person donate to a religious unit material goods or loyalty. Even traditional religions like Catholicism can allow the leaders to lead a life of luxury. Violence in the book increases as it does in society today. At first, the intention of killing the first pig was there and then when a pig was finally killed, killing became easier. The restraint that deemed killing unacceptable in society was broken. Next

The Discovery of Fire in the Early Stone Age

The Discovery of Fire in the Early Stone Age The discovery of fire, or, more precisely, the controlled use of fire, was one of mankinds first great innovations. Fire allows us to produce light and heat, to cook plants and animals, to clear forests for planting, to heat-treat stone for making stone tools, to keep predator animals away, and to burn clay for ceramic objects. It has social purposes as well. Fires serve as gathering places, as beacons for those away from camp, and as spaces for special activities. The Progress of Fire Control The human control of fire likely required the cognitive ability to conceptualize the idea of fire, which itself has been recognized in chimpanzees; great apes have been known to prefer their foods cooked. The fact that experimentation with fire occurred during the early days of humanity should come as no surprise. Archaeologist J.A.J. Gowlett offers this general outline for the development of fire use:  opportunistic use of fire from natural occurrences (lightning strikes, meteor impacts, etc);  limited conservation of fires lit by natural occurrences; use of animal dung or other slow-burning substances to maintain fires in wet or cold seasons; and finally,  kindled fire. Early Evidence The controlled use of fire was likely an invention of our ancestor Homo erectus during the Early Stone Age (or Lower Paleolithic). The earliest evidence of fire associated with humans  comes from Oldowan hominid sites in the Lake Turkana region of Kenya. The site of Koobi Fora contained oxidized patches of earth to a depth of several centimeters, which some scholars interpret as evidence of fire control. The Australopithecine site of Chesowanja in central Kenya (about 1.4 million years old) also contained burned clay clasts  in small areas. Other Lower Paleolithic sites in Africa that contain possible evidence of fire include Gadeb in Ethiopia (burned rock), and Swartkrans (burned bones) and Wonderwerk Cave (burned ash and bone fragments), both in South Africa. The earliest evidence for controlled use of fire outside of Africa is at the Lower Paleolithic site of Gesher Benot Yaaqov in Israel, where charred wood and seeds were recovered from a site dated 790,000 years old. Other evidence has been found at Zhoukoudian, a Lower Paleolithic site in China, Beeches Pit in the U.K., and Qesem Cave in Israel. An Ongoing Discussion Archaeologists examined the available data for European sites and concluded that habitual use of fire wasnt part of the suite of human behaviors until about 300,000 to 400,000 years ago. They believe that the earlier sites are representative of the  opportunistic use of natural fires. Terrence Twomey published a comprehensive discussion of the early evidence for the  human control of fire at 400,000 to 800,000 years ago. Twomey believes that there is no direct evidence for domestic fires between 400,000 and 700,000 years ago, but he believes that other, indirect evidence supports the notion of the controlled use of fire. Indirect Evidence Twomeys argument is based on several lines of indirect evidence. First, he cites the metabolic demands of relatively big-brained Middle Pleistocene hunter-gatherers  and suggests that brain evolution required cooked food. Further, he argues that our distinctive sleep patterns (staying up after dark) are deeply rooted and that hominids began staying in seasonally or permanently cool places by 800,000 years ago. All of this, says Twomey, implies effective control of fire. Gowlett and Richard Wrangham argue that another piece of indirect evidence for the early use of fire is that our ancestors Homo  erectus evolved smaller mouths, teeth, and digestive systems, in striking contrast to earlier hominids. The benefits of having a smaller gut could not be realized until high-quality foods were available all year long. The adoption of cooking, which softens food and makes it easier to digest, could have led to these changes. Hearth Fire Construction A hearth is a deliberately constructed fireplace. The earliest examples were made by collecting stones to contain the fires, or simply by reusing the same location again and again and allowing the ash from previous fires to accumulate. Hearths from the Middle Paleolithic period (about 200,000 to 40,000 years ago) have been found at sites such as the Klasies River Caves in South Africa, Tabun Cave in Israel, and Bolomor Cave in Spain. Earth ovens, on the other hand, are hearths with banked and sometimes domed structures built of clay. These types of hearths were first used during the Upper Paleolithic period for cooking and heating and sometimes for burning clay figurines. The Gravettian Dolni Vestonice site in the modern Czech Republic has evidence of kiln construction, although construction details did not survive. The best information on Upper Paleolithic kilns is from the Aurignacian deposits of Klisoura Cave  in Greece. Fuels Relict wood was likely the fuel used for the earliest fires. Purposeful selection of wood came later: hardwood such as oak burns differently than softwood such as pine, since the moisture content and density of a wood all affect how hot or long it will burn. In places where wood was not available, alternative fuels such as peat, cut turf, animal dung, animal bone, seaweed, and straw were used to build fires. Animal dung was likely not consistently used until after animal domestication  led to the keeping of livestock, about 10,000 years ago. Sources Attwell L., Kovarovic K., and Kendal J.R. Fire in the Plio-Pleistocene: The Functions of Hominin Fire Use, and the Mechanistic, Developmental and Evolutionary Consequences. Journal of Anthropological Sciences, 2015.Bentsen S.E. Using Pyrotechnology: Fire-Related Features and Activities With a Focus on the African Middle Stone Age. Journal of Archaeological Research, 2014.Gowlett J.A.J. The Discovery of Fire by Humans: A Long and Convoluted Process. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 2016.Gowlett J.A.J., and Wrangham R.W. Earliest Fire in Africa: Towards the Convergence of Archaeological Evidence and the Cooking Hypothesis. Azania: Archaeological Research in Africa, 2013.Stahlschmidt M.C., Miller C.E., Ligouis B., Hambach U., Goldberg P., Berna F., Richter D., Urban B., Serangeli J., and Conard N.J. On the Evidence for Human Use and Control of Fire at Schà ¶ningen. Journal of Human Evolution, 2015.Twomey T. The Cognitive Implications of Controlled Fire Use by Early Humans. Cambridge Archaeological Journal, 2013.