Gryphon 1962 - Adm.monash.edu

LORD OF THE FLIES
Life is sacred; to kill is evil: th is is a natural
instinct in all of us. We are carnivorous animals,
hence we must kill to appease o ur Iust for m eat.
These two instincts must , as is normally the cas e,
a-surue their co rr ect proportions in each man's
mind for it is dangerous to the preservation of
the human ra ce if they d o not.
The act of ca us ing the destruction of a li ving
creature is abhorrent to our n ature, we are filled
with shame if on taking a life we think of the
act. Only he who resorts to camouflage JJlay
by-pass shame. The first blood drawn is the
hardest, for the m imi learns to live with the
consc ience.
The war-paint, ma sk of the savage, is an
exa m ple of cam oufl age . He ma y tear a beast to
pieces yet feel no sin, for he blames the mask, 1I0t
the soul. The tribal dance, the re-enactment o f
th e crime, r elieves any pt'essure on the con science,
th e mind is o ver po wered by hysteria. H owever,
d eep d own w.ithin the mind guilt will continue
to exist.
The mind is te rrorised by the mysteries of darkness.
I t feels it self under the ob servation of an
unknown being which can easily d estroy it . During
daylight the " be ast" is hunted down, but to no
ava il. Only darkness reveals its quarry but th e
With day­
courage returns. Their lust for the
of th e immortal be ast soon dies and
a respect for their foe develops. The
up as a " God", and a part of their
hunters lose their courage and run.
light their
destruction
in its pl ace
beast is set
" Ki lls" is left as a n offering to satisfy the beast ,
a sacrifice.
What is the beast No material being, it is a
part of all of us . It is the ca use of the hidden
guilt, the fear that a part of US is ev il. An yone
wh o tries to stop the fear is cut down by the
beast. Once human blood is spilt others will fall ,
the beast will crave for more bl ood , devising
excuses to kill o r torture; nothing may st and in its
way . The civilised become barbarians turning on
any opposers or non-followers, unmercifully hunting
them down and exterminating th em.
Many civilizations have been destroyed in the
history of our world. Our society, too , is not in ­
vincible, and, as with the past, its d estruction will
be due to itself . In t im es of cri ses, with th e scientific
weapons now under our command, we could
easily destroy not only ou rselves but a lso all other
existing life on ou r planet.
These points are, I believe, what William Golding
in his book, " Lord o f the Fli es", is trying
to m a ke. These points a re con tained within the
sto ry about a group of schoolboys aged from six
to twelve years who are the only survivors of an
aeroplane crash on a coral island. At first they
trea t the situatio n with enth us iasm, trying to act
as they think adults would in the same situation;
however , th eir inner natures get the better of
th em . The de cline of the civilised to the sa vage
is depicted vividly before OUr eyes. a situa tio n
which may in the future be applied to our own
socie ty.
G. Ride. 7C .
KAOS IN CE KLASRUM
You must often have thought English spelli ng
is unnecessarily difficult. Just look at words like
cough, plough, rough, through and thorough. T he
great writer , Bernard Shaw, wanted us to ch a nge
our alphabet, an d someone worked o u t this way
of doing it.
In th e first year, for ex am ple , we would su ggest
using's' instead of soft 'c'. Sertai nly all students
in a ll sities of the land would reseivc this news
with joy. Then th e hard 'c' would be replaced by
'k', sinse both letters are pronounsed a like. :0< a t
on ly would this klear up the konfusion in the
m ind s of spe llers, but typewriters kould be all
built with on e less letter.
There would be gr eat exsiteme n t when it was
at last announsed that the troublesome 'ph' would
he nsefort h be w r itten T. This would make words
lik e Fotograf twenty p er sent sh or ter in print.
I n the third yea r puhlik intere st m a new
alfabet kan be expekted to have reatshed a point
wh ere more komplikated ch an ges a re necessary.
'We would su ggest rem oving double letters whitsh
have always ben a nuis anse and a deterent to
akurate speJin g.
W e would al agre that th e horible mes of silent
"e's" in our language is disgra seful , Therfor, we
kould drop thes and kontinu to read and writ
merily along as though we wer in an atomik age of
ed uka tion, Sins by this time it would be four
years sins an ywun had used the leter 'c', we
would then suggest substituting 'c' for ' rh',
Kontinuing cis p roses yea r after yea r, we would
even tual! have a real e sensib l writen lan guag.
Aft er twenti years we ventyur t u sa eel' wud bi
no mol' uv ces ter.ibl trublsum di fikultis. Even mr
ya w wi beliv wud be hupi in ce noleg cat his
drims finali karn tru.
Fr om 'Astounding Stories', by Dolton Edwards.
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