Lord Of The Flies and Robinson Crusoe – A Comparison

There are a lot of differences between these two books. For example, when the boys in L.O.T.F arrive on the island they don’t thank God for saving their lives or anything like that, whereas in Robinson Crusoe he thanks God, which implies that he is quite spiritual. As you read on, all the boys want to do is hunt, get food and play. Jack and ‘Piggy’ are the only boys who want to build huts and places to sleep. You may call this trying to be civilised in a way, but Ralf’s ‘clan’ wanted to hunt and kill. Robinson Crusoe wanted to build a nice house and a place to grow food, find water and sort out what he needed and where he could find it. In my opinion, the only thing that formed organisation for the boys was the conch shell because when Jack blew it all the boys came running, and it was agreed at the first meeting that this should be the sign for when a meeting would start, that was the only civilised move on the island. With R.C he was civilised all the way through and used all the materials off the shipwreck to try and improve his standard of living.

However, when the cannibals came, he had to defend himself, using the guns and gunpowder he had also salvaged from the wreck. There is a similarity here because the boys had to defend their island from the beast but didn’t have any guns, so made spears from wood they found. After a while this got a bit out of hand and the tribe broke off into two, Jack and Piggy, who had his glasses which were the only source of fire on the island, and Ralf’s clan who wanted to get them. If you think about it Robinson Crusoe was more mature than the boys because he knew what he need to do to survive and did it. The boys, who were younger, knew what to do but were distracted by the pecking order and even finding the food turned into a game, but from a game it got out of hand and Simon was killed. This was caused by the boys being young and impressionable and easily led astray.