Stephanie Vallecillo
ENC 1102
T 11:15-12:30
Professor Lamazares
Lord of The Flies
Lord of the Flies, written by William Golding, shows how children would act if placed in an environment without any rules or guidance. It conveys that laws are needed to provide guidance and provide a systematic way of life. Without laws, society would crumble and mass destruction would occur like in the book. The human mind is made of up two instincts that constantly have conflict: the instinct to live by society’s rules and the instinct to live by your own rules. Our civilized will has been to live morally by law and order, and our savage will has been to act out for our own selfish needs. We each choose to live by one or the other depending on how we feel is the correct way to live. The children in the Lord of the Flies represent two opposing sides in the format of the peaceful, intelligent and "sane" against the wild, rough and insane children. The major theme presented in Lord of the Flies by William Golding, is the battle between civilization vs savagery, shown through Ralph, who represents law and order, and Jack, who represents savagery and violence. A contemporary issue that is currently ongoing would be the constant wars in the world that are focused on gaining power or religion, yet we still claim to be a civilized society.
Lord of the Flies has remained a very controversial novel to this day with its startling, brutal, and truthful picture of the human nature. In the beginning, human influence was starting to affect this uninhabited “Garden of Eden”. Ralph, the charismatic and newly elected leader of the young boys’ parliament, is absolutely committed to civilization and morality, and is determined to make sure the boys survive and be rescued. At first, everyone is excited about living on such a fantastic island filled with flowers, fruit, and swimming pools. It is apparent that Ralph adores the island when, “…he laughed delightedly again and stood on his head” (Golding, 4). However, he had to make sure they all stayed on task. Jack, who was the leader of the hunter group, convinced the rest of the group to join this civilized manner. The boys soon develop into a daily pattern of life, where the little boys spend most of the day searching for food and the rest hunt. Fights begun to erupt as duties are not being completed. They're afraid of a "beast" somewhere on the island, and then they decide to build a signal fire using the glasses of a boy named Piggy. Jack decides the boys should devote their energies to hunting food instead of maintaining the fire. The longer they're on the island, the more savage he becomes. Meanwhile, a wise and philosophical boy named Simon, works with Ralph to build shelters. Also occurring, the boys who are supposed to be tending the fire skip out on their duties to kill a pig. While they were out hunting, they realize that the fire went out and a ship passed by without noticing them. Jack has also managed to punch Piggy in the face and break one lens of his glasses. Throughout the same period of time, a dead man attached to a parachute lands on the island. The man is mistaken for the beast, and the boys begin a massive hunt to kill it. Only Simon is skeptical, believing instead they're really just afraid of themselves. He goes off into the woods to contemplate the situation while Jack and Ralph try to find the beast but don't stick around long enough to see that it is in fact only a dead man.
Back in the group, Jack decides Ralph shouldn't be chief anymore. He decides to separate and invites whoever wants to come with him and kill. Most of the older kids go with him, and Simon, hiding, watches Jack and his new crew hunt a pig. They decide to slaughter the pig and cut off her head, and jam it onto a stick in the ground. Simon stares at the head, which he calls "the Lord of the Flies" as it tells him that it is the beast and that it is part of him. Simon passes out, gets a bloody nose, and wakes up covered in sweat and blood. Despite all this, he decides to continue up the mountain to face the “beast”. At this point in the story, Ralph and Piggy are attending a feast that Jack planned. Simon shows up to the feast, still covered in blood, and tries to tell them about the beast, but he is unrecognizable and the boys stab him until he's dead. They throw Simon’s body into the ocean, while Ralph and Piggy convince themselves that they didn't murder Simon. Soon after, Jack's crew attacks Ralph and Piggy and steals Piggy's eyeglasses to make fire on their own. When Ralph and Piggy decide they want to calmly discuss the situation with the hunters, Roger pushes a huge boulder off a cliff, killing Piggy. Ralph ends up running for his life, finds out that they’re planning on killing him as well, and makes it to the shore of the island where he runs into an officer of the British Navy. The boys are rescued, but were left with the image of someone from an actual war.
Through this plot summary, it can be seen the war of wanting to be civilized but temptation winning. When Ralph wanted to build an organized system, representing civilization. Throughout the story, there are various examples of the presence of law and order before it is diminished by the violent side of the story. When Ralph and Piggy arrive to the island, they acknowledge that there are different young men on the island other than themselves and choose to gather the boys by blowing through a conch that they find. When the boys come together, Ralph reveals to them that they require a boss to govern over them. Some suspected that they needed an adult to take over and asked, "Aren't there any adults?" (Golding 20). Once they realized there were no adults on the island with them, they were not exactly sure what to do. The boys decide to still stick by the guidelines and previous behavior. They decide they want a leader when they say, "Vote for a chief!" (Golding 22). This shows that the boys had faith in constituting a leader, whether it was an adult or simply someone they can look up to. Once Ralph was ruled as chief, they decided to to make the conch that Jack used as a tool to call meetings to order. The conch plays a very important role throughout the story. The conch helps gather meetings and also allows the person holding it to speak. The conch governs the group of boys more than Ralph does. The symbolism of a circle, meaning their gatherings, shows a dual meaning. In the argument of civilization versus savagery, the circle, according to John Callon who wrote “Circular Thinking: An Original Analysis of Lord of the Flies”, “The circle gives them a forum to express their ideas and share their deepest fears. It gives them an illusion of civilization and order, as well as a sense that they are not alone” (Callon 2). The circle gives them comfort and allows them to see a sense of authority and guidelines. The circle is a perfect example of civilization and with Ralph being the leader, he represents security to the group.
Throughout the whole story Ralph symbolizes order until he refused to join Jack’s hunting group, who is the opposite of him. Jack wants the boys to follow his word but it is taken away when Ralph is voted chief. Jack’s violent side is shown when he starts hunting pigs and uses the idea of the "beast." The idea of a beast causes the boys to feel fear. Jack’s savageness eventually rubs off on the other boys. The beast also represents that hidden creature within ourselves that we all have can be triggered at any moment, even if we do believe in a civilized nature. The influence of Jack causes the boys to find pleasure in killing animals such as pigs. Jack manages to manipulate the boys to the level that they chant, " Kill the beast! Cut his throat! Spill his blood!" (Golding 152) They become so violent that the boys actually end up killing other boys in a game of role play, the boy representing a pig. "It was dark. There was that – that bloody dance. There was lightning and thunder and rain. We was scared!" (Golding 156) shows the killings occurring was just a game for the boys and was taken very lightly. Their savagery represents the evil that has been hidden inside them all along. There has been drastic change in the behavior of the boys since the beginning of the story. In “The main themes in Lord of the Flies”, Alaa Lateef Alnajam states that “Golding is a realist, and he finds that both the grown-up and the children contained evil qualities as well as good, but evil is always prominent.” Evil is something that evident among everyone. That quality is hidden in all of us and sometimes the beast will come out of us. The observation of evil presiding in children may be shocking to many like Ralph at the end of story when he is baffled at the thought that children can also be evil.
Civilization versus Savagery is present throughout the world today. With all of the political issues going on in the world, many are rebelling against their government and fighting for their rights. Some presidents claim that they are for the people but decide to go against their requests. This often causes a stir in the population leading to riots. An example of this situation would be the conflict going on in Nicaragua. According to CNN “The unrest, mostly led by students, started when President Daniel Ortega tried to change the country's social security system. He implemented a controversial pension reform resolution intended to halt the growing deficit. The changes increased contributions by workers and employers and reduced retired workers' pensions.” In this case, President Ortega is the chief and is in charge of setting guidelines and providing order to the population. As citizens, they se expected to obey and abide by the rules. When President Ortega provided the country with a set of rules that many did not agree with, many decided that enough was enough and took the streets to riot.
The riots in Nicaragua became intense with a death toll being filed, similar to how the boys were killing each other in The Lord of the Flies. In a report by CNN, “The Nicaraguan Center for Human Rights, based in the capital city of Managua, reported 42 deaths on Sunday.” This quote displays the level of savagery that was unleashed in Nicaraguans. They felt betrayed by their own President which caused them to act irrational and aggressive. It wasn’t a typical event that happened in Nicaragua.In the article previously mentioned “The deaths came amid the largest street protests the country has seen since the civil war ended in 1990.” The disappointment of their presidents rule caused citizens to rebel against them in an explicit way that has not been seen in the country in a very long time. Most of the rioters were actually students, relating to the point made in the book that savagery and evilness is prevalent in the minds of young people. The students in Nicaragua were peacefully protesting while others were acting violent. This shows the duality of civilization and savagery. Both sides of the students wanted change to occur but they had different ideas on how to achieve that. Unfortunately, the protests were causing people their lives.
In Lord of the Flies, civilization represents good and savagery represents evil. When the boys had the freedom of not having adult around, the itch for savagery appeared. This shows that evil does dwell within us but it is our choice whether to control it or not. The boys did have rules to follow but there was no one there to truly enforce it. Civilization has rules and Presidents and other government workers to enforce it, but not everyone will agree, as shown in the conflict in Nicaragua. The book shows the importance of civilization and how rules are important in order to keep our behavior under control. As shown in the drastic change of the boys behaviors, one can choose to be civil or they can let the evil take over like the boys in the story.
Work Cited
Alaa Lateef Alnajm. "The main themes in Lord of the Flies." International Journal of English and Literature 6.6 (2015): 98 – 102.
Callon, J. (2015). Circular Thinking: An Original Analysis of Lord of the Flies, Best Integrated Writing, 2.
Chavez, Nicole. “More than 40 People Were Killed in Unrest in Nicaragua, Rights Groups Say.” CNN, Cable News Network, 20 Apr. 2018, www.cnn.com/2018/04/27/americas/nicaragua-unrest/index.html.
Golding, William, and Edmund L. Epstein. Lord of the Flies: A Novel. New York: Perigee, 1954.