preview

Lord Of The Flies Power

Decent Essays

With Great Power Throughout history, the way humans think has fascinated philosophers. One of the many recurring themes in human thinking is in regards to power: how we govern ourselves. Ideas of where this power should be placed vary from concepts such as Democracy to Republicanism to Socialism. However, the ‘where’ and ‘how’ of government has many opinions surrounding it, and these varying opinions often cause discontent and conflict. When humans are crossed with a conflict over the source of power in society, it is not out of the ordinary for a war or split to occur. The Lord of the Flies is not an exception to this rule of thumb. Written by William Golding, the book explores what occurs when a group of boys is left unsupervised to create …show more content…

Jack’s split from the group confirms the impossibility to both be rescued and have fun at the same time. From this point on, each group has its own source of power: Ralph’s group with the conch, and Jack’s group with the Lord of the Flies: the insatiable desire to kill. Each of these symbols of the island can be traced to one of two parts of the human psyche: the Superego: reason and logic, or the Id: impulse and pleasure. Where the conch is present, order can exist and the superego dominates. “‘I’ll give the conch to the next person to speak. He can hold it when he’s speaking.’” (33) The conch governs the boy’s behavior and acts as a moderator during discussion. But on the flipside, the Lord of the Flies and the desire to kill show the Id taking over and pushing disorder to the forefront and reason out of the boy’s minds. “Now out of the terror rose another desire, thick, urgent, blind. ‘Kill the beast! Cut his throat! Spill his blood!’”(152) By this point in the book, the transition of power from the superego to the Id has been fully undergone. The majority of the boys are no longer listening to sources of wisdom and knowledge such as the conch and Piggy’s glasses, but they hail only the Lord of the Flies, the Primordial urge to kill and …show more content…

When the boys first arrive on the island, the island is an oasis apart from the world. However, the boys immediately start attempting to destroy from the very beginning. When the boys are on top of the island’s mountain, they find a large rock and push it into the foliage below. “The great rock loitered, poised on one toe, decided not to return, moved through the air, fell struck, turned over, leapt droning through the air, and smashed a deep hole in the canopy of the forest.” (28) “The island is presented like Eden, the biblical garden of paradise, and the the first thing the boys do is roll a rock down ("like a bomb") ; the first act in paradise is destruction. Golding uses this to show how it is in the boys' nature to destroy.” (Shaurya Gaur) However, the island remains a parallel to the world as a whole: humans as a race will forever have the insatiable desire for destruction and

Get Access