lordoftheflies

Assessment task

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Lord of the Flies Portfolio

Task One: GETTING TO KNOW THE CHARACTERS (50 marks)

a. Complete the character delineation chart quiz (15 marks)

http://resources.mhs.vic.edu.au/lordflies/task01.htm

b. Knowledge of the novel (25 marks)

Complete a multiple choice quiz (in class task)

c. Personal Response to Lord of the Flies (10 marks)

Write 300 words commenting on aspects of the novel you found positive, and aspects you found negative, and something you found interesting. You should use evidence from the text to support opinions.

Task Two: GOOD VS EVIL (20 marks)

The nature of good and evil in people (the “heart of darkness”) and the effects of these opposing qualities on their social behaviour is a favourite theme of writers. Look at the following list of titles below. How many of these have you read?

The Outsider Albert Camus

Animal Farm George Orwell

Heart of Darkness Joseph Conrad

Nineteen Eighty-Four George Orwell

Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde Robert Louis Stevenson

Dracula Bram Stoker

The Picture of Dorian Gray Oscar Wilde

The Rime of the Ancient Mariner Samuel Taylor Coleridge

If you have read any of these texts, you will have seen how each writer is concerned with exploring the “dark side” of humanity.

1. List other texts (including film) that explore the idea of good and evil.

How do these texts show humans to be either inherently good or evil?

2. In an interview in 1963, William Golding said of Lord of the Flies :

“I learned during World War II just how brutal people can be to each other. Not just Germans or Japanese, but everyone. I tried to point that out . . . some have said that the brutality of the novel is impossible. It's not. Look at any newspaper . . .”

Your task is to defend or refute Golding's viewpoint.

It is important that you have a clear understanding and can define and discuss the nature of “evil” and the nature of “good”. To help you think about this very philosophical and contentious issue, you may wish to research definitions of “evil” and “good”.

Secondly, you are to collect recent articles from newspapers that discuss, explore, or report on humans' capacity for good and evil. From your collection, select two articles that show the evil side and two that show the good side in humanity. (It is important that your selection covers different types of good and evil – don't simply select articles on the same subject (e.g. war).

Write 400-500 word argument which expresses your opinion on whether or not people are inherently evil.

Task Three: SURVIVAL (10 marks)

You are a member of a Human Resources Department in Canberra at a time when a world war has broken out. You receive a desperate call for help from an isolated group of people who are housed in a fall out shelter and are rapidly running out of food, oxygen and water. They only have enough resources for six people to survive for three months, which is the amount of time they safely estimate that they can stay down there. Unfortunately there are ten people trapped and so four must be eliminated. They understand, given human nature, that they will fight while trying to reach a decision about who should leave the shelter. So, they have called your department and will leave the decision to you.

They will abide by your decision.

You have been given a brief profile of each of the ten people, upon which you should base your decision. Using these you need to select four people to eliminate and outline the reasoning behind your decision.

Profiles

1. A 15 year old high school student. She is top of her class and is pregnant. She is very rebellious, and has formed an anarchist group at school.

2. A 36 year old doctor. She is unable to have children and has racist tendencies. She is Australian and has written a number of articles in support of capital punishment.

3. An armed policeman, who refuses to give up his weapon. He is 45 years old and is physically fit. At present he is suspended from the force because of an incident of police brutality involving this man and two teenage youths.

4. A 35 year old male violinist. He is a recovering drug addict who recently released after serving a seven year sentence for supplying school students with heroin.

5. A 39 year old mother of two. She is a divorcee whose children are being raised by their grandparents after she failed to take adequate care of them.

6. A 24 year old, female law student from England . She suffers from a congenital heart problem.

7. The law student's 26 year old husband. He has spent the last 18 months in a psychiatric hospital receiving treatment for a multiple personality disorder. Before his condition incapacitated him he was a town planner.

** Both husband and wife refuse to be separated.

8. A 75 year old Anglican minister. This man has spent all of his life in services to humanity. He has recently been awarded an International Peace prize for the work he did in India in recent times.

9. A 65 year old female historian. She has written a large number of well renowned books about the beginnings of civilisation and is recognised as the world authority on this subject. She is a widow with seven grandchildren.

10. A 29 year old Syrian architect, who is a practising Muslim. He is a recent arrival in Australia , having gained political asylum in this country.

Having read the profiles you are to select six people who are eligible to remain in the fall out shelter. You are to write a detailed account explaining your decision.

Were your decisions based on your own prejudices?

Were you objective?

Once you have done this you are to move into groups of three to compare your decision. Your task then is to reach consensus on who should remain in the fall out shelter and write down the group's reasoning. When the group has completed their deliberations, the scribe is to complete the following document (download):

Fall-Out ShelterDecisionStatement.doc