When it comes to the novel, tone and perspective are very important as they can make story more effective. (According to the ‘Jamestown Literature, tone is the writer’s attitude toward a subject.) By tone and perspective, funny stories become funnier, scary stories become scarier, and touching stories become more touching. And in the novel ‘Lord of the Flies’, by using the 3rd person omniscient perspective and objective, scary tone, the writer William Golding emphasized the theme.
The perspective of ‘Lord of the Flies’ is the 3rd person omniscient perspective. According to the ‘Elements of Language’, when the perspective is 3rd person omniscient perspective, the narrator can present readers the thoughts and emotions of the characters directly, and tell readers thing that none of the characters could know. The narrator does not participate on the events in the story like the characters, but he just observes the situation. For example, in chapter six, when the boys were sleeping, the huge explosion or the small war happened. None of the characters know this fact, but only the narrator knows it and he tells this fact to the readers. He said, “There was a sudden bright explosion and corkscrew trail across the sky; then darkness again and stars. There was a speck above the island, a figure that hung with dangling limbs.” He describes the situation specifically which none of the characters know.
And the tone is very objective. The narrator neither tries to get into the story nor to express his opinion about the characters. He is just a mere observer. He describes literally everything by just showing readers the dialogues of the characters or the action of the characters. For example, the narrator shows Jack’s savagery itself in order to depict the character, rather than directly stating the narrator’s opinion about Jack. The sentences like “You cut a pig’s throat to let the blood out, otherwise you cannot eat the meat”(Jack’s line), ‘Jack held up the head and jammed the soft throat down on the pointed end of the stick which pierced through into the mouth’ shows the savagery of Jack. Another example can be the scene when Jack hit Piggy and Piggy’s spec was broken. The narrator just simply said ‘Ralph made a step forward and Jack smacked Piggy’s head. Piggy’s glasses flew off and tinkled on the rocks. Piggy cried out in terror.’ He didn’t express his opinion about Jack, just letting the readers to judge Jack by themselves. But it is certain that the readers would reach to the similar conclusion that Jack is mean.
Another tone of this story can be horror. As the story goes on, there appear numerous conflicts and they express the “lord of the flies” in children’s mind. The tone becomes darker and darker as the plot gets more elaborated. For example, the sentences “a flurry of wind made the palms talk and the noise seemed very loud now that darkness and silence made it so noticeable. Two grey trunks rubbed each other with an evil speaking that no one had noticed by day” show the darkness of the story. That ‘evil speaking’ or ‘darkness and silence’ makes readers have a slight feeling of horror. And another example can be the scene where Simon woke up after the meeting with ‘Lord of the Flies’. The sentences like ‘Nothing prospered but the flies who blackened their lord and made the spilt guts look like a heap of glistening coal’ or ‘The Lord of the Flies hung on his stick like a black ball’ also create the dark, scary atmosphere of the novel.
In ‘Lord of the Flies’, the writer William Golding depicted the theme very well by using the third person omniscient perspective and objective, scary tone. It was very effective and these are some factors that contributed to make ‘Lord of the Flies’ masterpiece.-This is the essay that I wrote related to Lord of the Flies
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