Who Is The Savagery In Lord Of The Flies

Civilization was created to contain social structure. However, in utmost circumstances, it is possible for instinct to triumph over civility. Lord of the Flies, by William Golding, is a plane evacuating a group of British schoolboys that crashes over a tropical deserted island. Once they crash on the island, they pick Ralph, the protagonist of the novel, to be their leader, and Ralph chooses Jack, the antagonist of the novel, to be the leader of the hunters, establishing somewhat of a civilization. Then when Jack comes upon a mother boar and kills it, that’s when their makeshift civilization slowly diminishes and the boys become savages. In addition, loss of social structure within a society can lead to the absolute destruction of the civilization. The author of Lord of the Flies, William Golding, uses man vs man and man vs nature conflicts to develop the theme of loss of social structure leads to savagery. Golding reveals this theme by exploring the conflicts of

Shortly after Jack’s rebellion and the forming of a new tribe, his violence transitions from insults to murder. Instantly, After the death and murder of Piggy and the destruction of the conch, Jack tells Ralph, “there isn’t a tribe for [him] any more” and proceeds to claim that “[he’s] chief”. Jack’s reaction to another individual's deaths shows the evil that resides within him as he no longer cares about human life, only power. He wanted to break the conch, because that’s what inforced the rules and was like magnet pulling the boys to Ralph’s tribe. Jack would do anything to get rid of it, even at the life of another. Piggy’s death signified the things Jack

As Jack is unable to lead the boys, he bullies them and grows fear in them of the beastie, so they follow his orders, showing characteristics of an outlaw archetype. “We’ve got to have rules and obey them. After all, we’re not savages. We’re English, and the English are best at everything (p. 42).” said Jack at the start of the novel; the irony is that he goes against Ralph and creates commotion. Throughout the novel his opinion changes as he reveals a more violent side of human nature and how the disruption of order can change a person.

The struggle between humanity and savagery portrayed through the events of William Golding’s Lord of the Flies demonstrates how simple it is for one to succumb to the mannerisms of depravity. This is impossible with the implementation of structure and order, as such concepts provide boundaries and keep man sane and behaved. Once the boys arrive on the island, isolated and expelled from society, they look to a shell to relieve them of this hardship, and to institute a form of government that will keep them from acting out. Despite the trust they put in the shell, it fails to hold them from corruption, only adding to the growing tension between all of the boys inhabiting the mysterious island. Through the escalating tension surrounding the

Men, without rules, can be led towards destruction. Lord of the Flies depicts at first a group of boys trying to maintain order, and a later descent into savagery. One of the most direct, apparent examples of this is through Roger. Through the contrast of the self-restraint Roger has at the beginning of the novel and the murder he absentmindedly commits at the end, Golding illustrates how man’s desire for savagery is restrained only by the enforced civilization of society.

This begins to explain one of the main themes throughout the novel Lord of the Flies. For one to be uncivilized is to be barbaric and inhuman, without having a sense of culture and social development. When innocence or civilization is lost, levels of economic, social, technological, political, and cultural evolution differentiates from that of the normal, because ideas, values, institutions, and achievements of a particular society is changed. The boys in Lord of the Flies find themselves in a situation where their only option was to learn to grow up and learn to do it fast on their own. They have to learn how to survive and fend for themselves without the presence of any adult figures, and create a prosperous society for their own. They

Despite its negative connotations, “savagery” is returning to the natural human state. It is a part of everyone which is repressed through centuries of societal pressures. Savagery is an innate part of every human. It was what humans needed to have to survive in ancient times: the thirst for blood and will to live. Golding explores the return to savagery through

When the boys divide themselves into the two tribes, Ralph struggles with maintaining power because the boys in Jack’s tribe refuse to listen to anybody who doesn’t share their murderous inclinations. Ralph’s idea of hope and rescue, the signal fire, is opposed by the boys who do not understand, “without the smoke signal they’ll die here” (Golding, 139). Jack and his tribe become so invested in the spirit of killing, they lose their sense of what is important on the island, which Ralph continuously tries to emphasize amongst the boys. What the boys do not realize is that, when they resist Ralph’s voice of reason, they begin to hurt themselves as well. The boys’ virtues and ethical sensibilities slowly deteriorate as their desire for hunting increases. Even when the boys are slipping further into savagery, Ralph persists with his logic on the signal fire, “who is defeated by the silence and the painted anonymity of the group.” (Golding, 178). Jack and his tribe, due to their collective vicious psyche, become impervious to Ralph’s appeals for logic and harmony, therefore losing any righteous justification for their

The dark nature of humans that William Golding explored in Lord of the Flies is a complex topic, not only diving into the true evil of human nature but its causes and effects. Golding uses these boys who are stranded on an island to show the state of evil that one can be at. Set in WW2, the isolation that the boys are having from the world creates a little world for themselves. At the start of the novel, they make rules and regulations to make a democratic civilization just like how it is in the outside world. However, just like in the outside world, things begin to fall apart as defects of society are revealed.

As said by Lance Conrad, “There is an undercurrent of savagery in the human psyche. Anyone who forgets about this and doesn’t guard against it, risks being swept away by it.”This quote, amongst many others, represents the overall idea that savagery is within all of us. In pieces of literature, subjects such as savagery are often shown through symbols. Symbols are consistently used throughout our daily lives as well as pieces of literature. For example, colors generally represent different moods/things. Black represents evil, white stands for purity, red symbolizes danger, and blue represents calmness. Other general objects include roses that stand for romance, doves for peace, hearts for romance, and eagles for freedom. In Lord of the Flies by William Golding, the author utilizes a conch shell to symbolically show the loss of civilization throughout a period of time. At first, the conch shell united the group of boys, maintaining civility, but once it was destroyed, so was civility. Jack’s Mask symbolically represented savagery throughout all parts of the story. In the beginning, it allowed Jack to murder the pig without feeling guilty, towards the middle, it gave him further confidence to maintain and rule, and in the end, it liberated the boys into savagery.

Lord of the Flies, is a story of adventure through nature and the human conscious. A group of boys, stranded on an island, become savage instead of working together and start fighting each other. Golding’s use of the war allegory shows how children can become as ruthless as adults when put in the right setting. While on the island, personality traits surfaced, such as their savageness, their carelessness, their fear, their hunger power, and their childish pride. Golding uses a war allegory to show than man will naturally conflicts with others because of a thirst for power, fear of the unknown, and pride.

Lord of the Flies by William Golding attempts to trace the inadequacies within society back to the defects of human nature. Driven by Golding’s pessimistic examination of humanity, critics claim that Golding’s main theme is that there is no hope, due to the manifestations of evil within mankind which prevents civility. Upon closer inspection, the novel stresses the complexity of human life, addressed through the copious references to the allegorical significance throughout the book. The novel itself ends with Ralph grieving for the loss of innocence and the marks of evil which had tainted the boys. Golding used children as his characters and had magnified the issues at hand to make a point about human nature.

In our society we have our system for power set up making the understanding of who is in charge easy; However, when the boys are stranded on an island they are forced to come up with their own system, causing rivalries and corrupting rights and values. Before being stranded on an island Jack was an innocent, well-behaved child, however, when thrown into a foreign place with no society and no system of power it is very easy to destroy all of your innocence when obtaining most power. Jack was a hunter and was in charge of all the hunter, he eventually made his own tribe and almost everyone followed him, giving him a mass amount of control. Golding shows that Jack uses his power in ways only beneficial to him, easily seen when the remainder of Ralphs tribe approach Jacks and see him, “ painted up and wearing garland around his neck” (54). Jack uses his power to idolize himself and make the other

When everyone splits up and Piggy is trying to find a peaceful ground, he does something humanity finds unforgivable. He throws a rock at Piggy then, “The rock bounded twice and was lost in the forest. Piggy fell forty feet and landed on his back across the square red rock in the sea. His head opened and stuff came out and turned red. Piggy's arms and legs twitched a bit, like a pig's after it has been killed” (Golding 181). Roger had individually killed someone now. After this event occurred he felt nothing different, he felt more authority then he had in the entire novel. This ruthless act caused the spiraling of the novel to occur. Following this, the great hunt occurs which was mainly caused by Roger torturing the twins to give up Ralph's hiding place. The ringleader of everyone, Jack is the one who started the falling

The Lord of the Flies by William Golding is an allegory that explores the instinctual evil humans possess and how this evil manifests into our societies. The book demonstrates this through young boys who are stranded on an island due to a plane crash. Despite their best efforts, the lack of adult guidance inhibits the boys from maintaining an orderly society. The boys turn to their survival instincts, many of which are evil. The lack of order exposes the internal savagery within the boys, resulting in an understanding of the flaws within all humanity. The Lord of the Flies uses the innocence of young boys to show the societal impact of human errors through their lack of adult supervision, the desire to inflict violence, and the need for authority over others.