Comparative Essay Example: The Joker and The Lord of The Flies

“Maybe there is a beast… maybe it's only us.” (Lord of The Flies), as can be interpreted through the quote perhaps the beast that we are trying to kill is really within ourselves and it is truly just our self vs self. The debut novel, Lord of the Flies is set on an island where a group of boys must live separate from their society and learn to survive with nothing but themselves and each other. As for the hit film,  The Joker is set in Gotham, a run-down city that is full of crime and prejudice toward the poor and lower class. Both the film “The Joker” and the book, “The Lord of The Flies” have several similarities that lead to both works having common themes such as the effect of social isolation and survival making people animalistic. Both works provide an excellent demonstration of as mentioned themes, but in spite of this very argumentative essay, the Joker provides a better representation of the themes discussed. In the film Joker, it is shown repeatedly that Arthur is being isolated from society. In the introduction, Arthur is mugged and beat down by pre-pubescent teenagers, and he eventually comes to realize that he has been imagining his only friend all along and it was just a mirage. These scenes depict Arthur's sanity deteriorating and he is losing his grip on whether society really deserves to be saved. Arthur being beaten down by children just justifies his point that even children have been brought down to such poverty that they must mug a clown to survive, showing how desperate people are getting. This is being compared to the fact that the boys are also being isolated from their society and just like Arthur they are losing their grip on their sanity. The boys are coming to realize that they must do whatever they can to survive through their unlikely circumstances which lead to the warping of their determination of what is right and wrong. The boys, especially Jack, realize that they must hunt pigs for food which is nothing a 12-year-old should be able to do, the boys also come to the realization that they have to work together to survive which Arthur didn’t have the satisfaction of doing where he was all alone trying to survive. The boys did manage to accomplish teamwork and cooperation for a short period of time but then their group collapsed and caved in on itself, unlike Arthur who had to go through his situation alone, unfortunately.

Another theme between the works that is shared is that both of the plots lead to murder and overall defilement of human life. Arthur in one case murders three men on Wall Street because he “had enough” of being beat down and always treated “like trash”. In the  “Lord of The Flies”, Jack’s gang acts like animals and desecrates Simon, through assumed paranoia and sudden loss of sanity. After being secluded from society for so long, Arthur finally hit a point and burst out by brutally shooting three men on the subway. The effect of social isolation has a huge impact on the human psyche even leading some to manslaughter, Arthur who is already established as being incredibly depressed and lonely is a perfect example of what happens to a man who has nobody there for them. However in “Lord of The Flies”, there are a group of boys who have to survive on their own separate from society, they at least have each other to depend on and even still the boys turned rampant and they severely got out of hand. In Arthur’s case, he was dissociated from society; Arthur was made fun of and not a part of the “group” at his job working as a clown, Arthur also attended a comedy club and nobody seemed to understand Arthur’s humor in his jokes which consequently led to him being ridiculed on live television by a popular T.V. host. In Lord of The Flies, Jack especially wished to be the leader of the group but was turned down and replaced by Ralph, which led to a never-ending rivalry between the two resulting in Jack isolating himself from the group and overall going commando and murdering Simon and Piggy. Through the similarities between the two, it can only be concluded that through isolation from society will eventually turn brutal and cause an outlash of behavior specifically towards the group that caused it. 

The two incredibly captivating pieces of literature/film both make outstanding representations of the themes of the effects of social isolation and the fight for survival making people animalistic. The Joker, however, did a much more excellent job as it focused on mainly one person's point of view and was quite a subtle isolation from society whereas Lord of the Flies was more literal toward the isolation, making them stranded on an island. The Joker had scenes where you can see how truly far from sanity he really was including mortifying scenes where Arthur was performing stand-up comedy and nobody was enjoying his jokes at all, Arthur also had psychological problems leading him to conceptualize an entire person who he believed was his friend, and finally, Arthur snapped and murdered five people; his foster mother, three men on the subway, and a television host. In Lord of the Flies, there are a group of boys who must fight for their survival and depend on each other, it illustrates the themes through the overall isolation of the boys from society by being trapped on an island in the middle of nowhere, through the conceptualization of the beast where the boys are fundamentally afraid of an over-exaggeration and truly nothing.