The Malfunctioning Society

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Recommended: Society analysis in lord of the flies

William Golding’s 1954 novel, Lord of the Flies, explores and analyzes human nature. The novel follows a group of boys stranded on an island without any adult supervision after a plane crash. In the beginning, the boys elect another boy, Ralph, as chief. Ralph is at odds with another boy named Jack, who leads the designated hunters among them. The boys gradually descend from civility to savagery. Jack is leading some boys into violent savagery, leaving Ralph trying to salvage the notion of a functioning civilization. By the end of the novel, Jack leads most of the boys in their savage nature and leaves Ralph in danger. Throughout the novel, Golding brings the themes of the abuse of power, the fear of the unknown, and the need for civilization to the surface.

To begin, power is abused everyday by people ranging from children picking teams to Kim Jong-Il. While most people control the want to use their power for their specific needs, some do not and they simply abuse their power. In Lord of the Flies, that abuse of power is obvious and the most prominent with Jack. For instance, he takes advantage of his status of leader of the hunters, who were formerly the choirboys, by demanding Samneric to hunt pig with him while they were supposed to be tending the signal fire (65). In that instance, hunting rather than tending the fire causes a passing ship to think the island is uninhabited (68).

After Jack breaks away from Ralph’s group, he creates his own tribe of hunters (127) and his abuse of power worsens. With his newfound power, he allows violence to run rampant. The violence begins with his psychopathic tying up and beating of his follower, Wilfred, for no expressed reason (159). Jack’s power abuse does not end with...

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...ithout civilization. Overall, I enjoyed the novel because William Golding wrote in such a true-to-life manner when the boys would talk, but contrasted it quickly with passages filled with elegant words that described the feelings of the boys and the setting so beautifully. I believed Golding wrote and developed the characters very well. In addition, I appreciated the fact that he critiqued society where it needed to be. Though I enjoyed all of that, I did not like the use of face painting and chanting to symbolize savagery. I think it is reminiscent of racism against indigenous people of the Americas who dance and wear face paint with religious connotations, but are called savages because their functioning civilizations are not set up the same way the civilizations in the Old World were. Despite that, I truly enjoyed Lord of the Flies.

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Lord of the Flies

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