Isolation Lord of the Flies and Heart of Darkness

novels.  Throughout Lord of the Flies and Heart of Darkness  the importance of restraint

is greatly stressed.  This being the restraint to remain human and maintain sanity.  In Heart

of Darkness, Marlow was able to remain his restriant despite how difficult it was for him.

He was always surrounded by cannibals and constant chaos.  On the other hand, Kurtz

was unable to keep his restriant, as a result he lost his humanity and sanity, and eventually

died because of it. 

In Lord of the Flies, Ralph is able to restrain restrain, and he therefore

remains human.  He found it difficult though, because there was only one other person

who was able to do the same- Piggy.  Ralph was determined to maintain order, and he was

very alone because of it.  Jack on the other hand, gave in to the temptationof simply

hunting and playing, and lost his humanity in the process.  He became a savage - not a

human being, but a savage with a painted body and strange barbaric ways.  In contrast, the

cannibals in Heart of Darkness, (who are starving) could have easily had many satisfying

meals.  After all, they outnumbered the whites thirty to five, but they still had necessary

restraint to refrain from savagely feasting on some of the easily accessible seamen.

Towards the end of the novel, Marlow becomes becomes very close to losing his sanity,

but also has the necessary restraint to maintain it. He confuses the beat of a drum (the call

to man's primative side) with his own heartbeat, but is still able to restrain from slipping

over the edge as Kurt did.  Ralph in Lord of the Flies is constantly faced with temptation

to join Jack and all of the other boys, especially when Piggy dies and he is all alone.  This

makes it even more difficult to restrain from giving in to Jack and his animalistic tribe.

Therefore, it is evident how important restrain is in these two novels.  The ability to do so

may be the difference between life and death, and the one who can restrain himself teh

most is the one who prevails in the end.

In conclusion, it is evident that the authors of these two novels wrote about their

own life experiences because they were able to draw emotion form things that actually

haopened to them.  Also, through Lord of the Flies and Heart of Darkness, Golding and

Conrad were able to express the isolation that some of the characters were forced to

endure, and the importance of restraint in dealing with one's humanity.  These compelling

novels leave the reader with two possible questions.  Would I be able to cope with the

intense isolation?  And, do I have the necessary restriant to maintain the humanity which

so many people take for granted?  finally, the reader would be left with a better

understanding of the darkness, which Golding and Conrad believed, each and every one of

us possess somewhere, deep down inside.