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Analysis Of ' Lord Of The Flies '

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Sathyapriya Saravanan
Wilkinson
English 10 Honors; Period 1
4 November 2016
Everyone Wears One: Masks in Lord of the Flies
“We all have a social mask, right? We put it on, we go out, put our best foot forward, our best image. But behind that social mask is a personal truth, what we really, really believe about who we are and what we 're capable of” (Phil McGraw) one once said. In Lord of the Flies the characters wear a social mask that opposes their true feelings. Written by William Golding, the story revolves around a group of boys who become stranded on an island and must depend on themselves to survive. They elect a chief, a boy named Ralph. However, as the story progresses, the group become influenced by Jack, an arrogant choir chapter boy. Intriguingly, although they desire to be with Jack and join his tribe, the boys remain with Ralph for most of the story. The rhetorical triangle, which analyzes a speaker or writer based on three ideas- ethos, pathos, and logos-, helps many to better understand the children’s actions and mentality; ethos focuses on the credibility and ethics of the speaker while pathos concerns how the speaker appeals to the emotions of the audience and logos is about the speaker’s use of evidence to appeal to the audience’s sense of reason. The boys stay with Ralph because of Ralph’s use of ethos but prefer to be with Jack because of Jack’s use of pathos and ethos which shows Golding’s message- humans were masks.
Ralph’s use ethos influences the

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