Human Nature In Lord Of The Flies Quote Analysis

In the book, Lord of The Flies by William Golding, human nature is very heavily observed and scrutinized. The way it is interpreted becomes evil and very literally symbolized by the name of the novel, a nickname for the Satan. Satan is an absolute evil in the religion of Christianity. However, this would be implying that the events in the book, which we perceive as evil and immorality, were unnatural. In reality, the behaviour noted in the book is not evil or unjust, because absolute morality is a construct of humanity and nothing more. The rules and morality we bind ourselves to are social constructs used to stabilize modern civilization. Without them we collapse to primitive times and become nothing more than apes and monkeys; “savages”.

However social normalities that are built in more strongly (such as, “don’t kill each other”) are deeper and will take longer to decay. This is also why after being hungry for an extreme amount of time, people will resort to cannibalism. This breakdown of society is what happens without rules and punishment, which is why law is such a basic fundamental of any civilization. Imagine for example, murder is legalized in New York. Absolute chaos would ensue, though due to the large amount of people, this would happen a lot faster than it would with the small group of people we find in Lord of The Flies. The novel emphasizes this topic and depicts, I think accurately, what would happen if a group of male pre-teens were thrust onto a barren island left to their own emotions. Their miniature immature society would crumble under the wants of all children their age as realized by this quote, “If I blow the conch and they don’t come back; then we’ve had it. We shan’t keep the fire going. We’ll be like animals. We’ll never be rescued.”(92). That signifies the beginning of the end in the