Mob Mentality In Lord Of The Flies

“A river is easier to channel than to stop” (Sanderson). This quote from the book Mistborn: Shadows of Self demonstrates the idea of mob mentality. The Psychology of the Mob Mentality is a social psychology that involves people participating in certain behaviors influenced by their peers. When people participate in mob- like behaviors, it is often difficult to stop those actions depending on the situation. Identity and acceptability are two main causes of mob mentality in both Lord of the Flies and Mean Girls.
In the 19th century, Gabriel Tarde and Gustave Le Bon put forth the idea of herd or mob mentality. Mob mentality is caused by several things, one of these causes being deindividuation. Deindividuation, “when people are part of a group,

In Lord of the Flies, Jack and his group of hunters, the Choir, demonstrated the concept of identity with their masks. Jack and the Choir go from one person to another in the matter of a couple of seconds with just a little bit of clay on their faces. This is further explained in this quote, “Jack planned his new face… A rounded patch of sunlight fell on his face and a brightness appeared in the depths of the water. He looked in astonishment, no longer at himself but at an awesome stranger“ (Golding 63-64). First, in this quote it says ‘Jack planned his new face’. This clearly shows that he is planning a completely new persona. In the second sentence of the quote, it is inferred that the new ‘brightness’ is his new found self. Once he saw himself with the sunlight and his reflection in the water, he saw ‘an awesome stranger’. This is perceived as Jack seeing someone that he doesn’t recognize at all, but still sees this sense of delight or awesomeness within them. In the beginning of the story, Jack was often rude and made rude comments. However, he was also a shameful, self- conscious boy with strong morals. Although, right in the moment of putting on the mask, he becomes a ‘bloodthirsty’

Often times when watching a movie or reading a book, people don’t always pay attention to parts involving different psychologies or real world events. From comparing both a movie and a piece of text, people see how different their analysis of things could be. When watching a movie, people may pay more attention because the director can draw them in using sounds and objects that stand out. With books and novels, there aren’t always those sights and sounds to pull in the reader's attention. Therefore, people don’t always pay attention to fine details within the text that could help understand what is going on. When comparing the two pieces of literature together, it is easy to notice those little details that are skipped over after analysing the texts better. Authors and directors try and incorporate different events or scenes within their work to try and show how something could play out in real life. People, in one point of their life, could be stranded on an island with a bunch of strangers and be forced to try and survive. Or they could come from Africa and be forced to survive public high school for the first time in your