The Hope displayed in Lord of the Flies and Castaway
Both main characters in the book Lord of the Flies and the movie Castaway display an incredible amount of hope in getting back home. In Both the book lord of the flies and the movies castaway there is a strong sense of hope in the characters, in both stories they hope that they will be rescued and hope that they will see their families again. In the book Lord of the Flies the spirit of hope is expressed in a more verbal sense opposed to the way it is expressed in the movie Castaway that was expressed in a more physical sense.
In the book Lord of the Flies the theme of hope is very much incorporated into the book. It is introduced in to the book in the very beginning. Ralph seems to be the person who is administering the hope to everyone else, and in a sense he is keeping them going. " I could swim when i was five. Daddy taught me. He's a commander in the Navy. When he gets leave he'll come and rescue your father?"(Golding 13) this is when Ralph is giving Piggy hope that someone is going to come and save them. The theme of hope is very relevant in this book it keeps the boys motivated. It helps them get through the days. The boys slowly stray away from hope and it's clear in the book when the boys separate into two distinct groups, but i still think they all have hope. Hope is very important in the theme of this book. The fact that it is displayed in this book adds great things to the storyline and makes the book all the more interesting. It keeps readers at bay with human kind. It showed that boys were still just little kids. Even though the were kept away from all forms of humanity for quite a while the theme of hope in this book was a great deal of what kept them going.
In the movie Castaway the main character Chuck Noland expressed hope in a more physical way. He displays hope in a way that it is different from Golding's interpretation of hope in Lord of the Flies. Hope was displayed when the main character Chuck Noland was calculating the vicinity in which the search teams should be searching for the people from the plane crash and how long it should take them to search the whole area. When this occurs it shows the characters hope and persistence in even thought the island is slowly getting to him. Hope was also displayed when the sheet of plastic from the plane came floating up to the island. This displays hope because something out there wanted chuck to get home and the sheet of plastic gave him hope that he could get home and he wasn't just stuck on this island forever. He was going to get home and this was a sign of hope. Another account of hope in this movie would be when Chuck Noland starts to make the raft it shows the hope and determination he still has even though being on the island for four years. He was away from everything that kept him sane for four years and he still managed to function. He had to survive he made it this far for a reason and so he found other thing to rely on. Even though this was a challenge chuck still kept hope. And it was perfectly perceived when he was building the raft. In the movie we can slowly see his sanity slipping away while he was talking to Wilson the volleyball, but we can still see that inch of humanity in him. In this movie the theme of hope was again incorporated very well into the storyline and had great affects on viewers, even though it was based in a more inferring type of way.
The book Lord of the Flies and the movie Castaway have both included a strong theme of hope into their very different yet similar storylines. Both Golding and the screen writers of the movie Castaway had very similar understanding of the theme of hope and were both clearly displayed in the film and the classic book. They both gave their main characters in the idea of hope to keep them going on the right track to lead them to the light in the tunnel. Even though the stories differ in plot they both come to the same conclusion. In both Lord of the Flies and the movie Castaway they both get off theses horrid islands, no matter if they had been there for a matter of weeks or if they had been there for four years they both came out alive. The stories may have been written for different purposes and may have a different way of expressing hope but in the end the fact that they both displayed hope shows how similar they really are and why they can be so closely related. The boys in Lord of the Flies were hopeful to get back and in the end they did, Chuck Noland was determined to live to tell the late of this disastrous even t that occurred to him and he did .They both displayed Hope no matter what stresses were going on around them forgetting all their feelings and just hoping and letting that hope help them get trough this. The theme of hope was strongly represented and it never wavered.
In conclusion in the book Lord of the Flies and in the movie Castaway they both express the theme of hope. In a physical way Castaway displayed through the character of Chuck Noland and in a verbal way in Lord of the Flies expressed trough Ralphs character,even though these two stories have to different storylines they both display the theme of hope. And their characters fictional or not never lose this hope! They are similar in many ways and I never would have guessed that the classic Lord of the Flies could be related to the recent movie Castaway, in such a away like this. Related by hope. Bonded together by the theme of hope.
Works Cited
Golding, William. Lord of the Flies
New York: Berkley Pub. , 1954
Castaway. Dir. Robert Zemeckis
ImageMovers Playtone, 2000. Film.