Open Journal of Humanities (Aug 2021)
L’internalizzazione dell’Alterità come strategia di protezione identitaria. Il Caso Di Lord Of The Flies [The internalization of Otherness as an identity protection strategy. The Case Of Lord Of The Flies]
Abstract
Specific positioning strategies in William Golding’s Lord of the flies are applied in relation to the anthropocentric epistemological paradigm, typical of Western culture. The plot aims at exploring the answer to the following question: what could happen to a group of British educated boys, if they landed on a desert island and had to survive far away from civilization? The outcome turns out to be negative: after an initial situation of balance, the boys perform a series of violent actions which culminate with murder; this is the starting point for a reflection on human nature which seems inherently evil and free to emerge in the absence of social rules. This paper aims at problematizing the position of the text to human nature. At first, the opposing categories of ‘white Western man’ and ‘black savage man’ will be outlined; thanks to the analysis of the meanings of the concept of ‘human’, we will show the conservative vision underlying the text that does not undermine the anthropocentrism or the trust in human nature. The opposition between white Western man and black savage man is connected to two opposing social models, one stemmed from the other after a crisis: a group of rebels, in fact, violently split up from the society based on the Western model. In conclusion, we can affirm that the struggle between civilization and barbarism shifted in the text from an external to an inner dimension, where evil is inborn the cultural subject (Westerners turn into savages). Lastly, such transformation is a defence strategy, to protect the concept of ‘human’ and, specifically, of ‘white Western man’, who is not simply criticized because of his nature but because of his degeneration towards other identities, which are discriminated due to stereotypes.
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