Castle Rock Essay

How is an Atmosphere of Fear and Evil Created in the Chapter ‘Castle Rock’? The infamous ‘Lord of the Flies’ chapter ‘Castle Rock’: By the time you reach the chapter â€Å"Castle Rock†, the children’s behaviour is deteriorating, as they turn into savages, and start attacking and stealing from each other to survive in the ghastly wilderness. It is here that they expect that nobody will travel to rescue and protect them from the malignity from the horrifying island. The author tries to manipulate and influence the reader. He portrays an image that every inhabitant on the island has turned savage; however this is not the case. In fact ‘Piggy’ and Ralph are still sane, although it totally destroys Ralph’s heart, that Roger massacred ‘Piggy’ with the up-most aggression. Hence everybody chased him with repugnance to murder him with bullet sharp wooden spears. All of this puts the readers’ mind into overdrive, and makes the reader petrified. Cleverly by writing, ‘Ralph protested out of the heart of civilisation’ Makes the reader feel sorry for Ralph in his desperation, for all that he desires, which is peace. Moreover, the reader even feels a little guilty, due to the fact that the reader cannot do anything to help Ralph in his ventures. The author says, ‘Awful things have been done on this island’. This insinuates that mysterious and violent transpirences occur day and night. Some are noticed, and some are left overlooked, almost as if it is the norm, or because it is top secret never to be whispered to any other human soul. This makes most of the children want to use its unknown terror to cause chaos. One example of language and punctuation used in the chapter ‘Castle Rock’ is devised to create an atmosphere of fear and evil is, ‘The shivering, silvery unreal laughter of the savages sprayed out and echoed away. A gust of rage shook Ralph! ’ When the author says ‘unreal laughter’ it hints at something sinister and the fact that something evil is in the atmosphere around them. The author makes it sound as if it is a normal and acceptable occurrence, because he doesn’t add any special punctuation to it to make it sound more bloodcurdling than the average day in ‘Castle Rock’. Furthermore, the punctuation used in this quote, ‘A gust of rage shook Ralph! ’ shows how furious Ralph is, by adding an exclamation mark for emphasis. This makes the reader feel the fear of what Ralph might do. In other parts of the chapter, the author creates confusion, which makes the reader think of the multiple directions that a specific part of the chapter can lead to. The author uses his genius skill to manipulate his description to have more than one meaning. One of the meanings is to incite fear, and the other is to bring hope into the hearts of the readers. Another example of language and punctuation used is the quote, ‘Then there was, there was†¦ that’s his fault too. ’ When the author writes ‘There was, there was’, the words ‘there was’ are repeated to show the anxiety of the children who are saying these words. As well as that, the author says ‘†¦ that was his fault too’ the ellipses used shows that what the children had to say was too gruesome to pronounce. The language used shows that someone has committed something so appalling that it cannot be mentioned and that it is something that terrifies the living daylights out of them. In due course, I think that the fear and evil has consumed the island, because it makes most of the children resort to slaughtering pigs just for fun, because they have lost their innocence and conscience. This is mainly down to the fact that there is no law, there is nobody to tell them right from wrong; they think that they have the right to do anything that they desire, there is no concept of crime and punishment. This makes it almost impossible for anybody to live in peace or harmony. Another reason is because secretly they are all scared stiff of Jack, because he is the eldest and biggest, physically, and he has a powerful ally to fight for him and to protect him, known as Roger, however his biggest ally of all is fear itself. Ultimately, Jack wants to have all of his enemies to live in fear, so they slowly turn to him, because when they are fearful of him, they know that the longer they stay with Jacks number one enemy, the worse their punishment would be if he were to capture them. So they eventually turn to him for guidance and protection. Thus, this makes him the ‘king’ of the island in a violent and brutal way.