Destruction of Society and Creation of a New Society through Persecution in The Lord of the Flies
One common interpretation of Lord of the Flies is that it focuses on the breakdown of civilization and the underlying savagery in each individual human being, always ultimately reverting back to an evil nature with a focus on the survival of the individual. Without rules and norms to guide people, communities will fall into disarray. "Civilization is the shield that mankind uses to cloak itself from its savage, animalistic ways." (Wheaton). However, their society doesn't fall apart, they simply are forced to change that community to better suit their environment. The book may in fact be a focus not on the individual or the break down of society, but on the bonding together of a community through collective dispelling of perceived evil through scape goating. The focus should not be on the fact that the boys are inherently evil, but the fact that they are part of a community where scape goating is an elemental form of cleansing. The boys aren't evil in nature, they are communal in nature. It is not that they are in a situation where each individual gives way to his own evil nature. It is, however, that the community gives way to its shared desire to focus attention on something or someone to blame. Through this blame, the society is held together in a common bond of violence. Rene' Girard writes,
"...By collective persecutions I mean acts of violence committed directly by a mob of murderers...The persecutions in which we are interested generally take place in times of crisis, which weaken normal institutions and favor mob formation. Such spontaneous gatherings of people can exert a decisive influence on institution...
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...: the Lord of the Flies.
New York: Abrahams-Dutton, 1962.
In class notes taken January 27, February 1, 3, and 8; 2000. Sacrificing Ritual in Literature
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How do we, as humans, define civilization? What is it that exemplifies our commonality as a species and sets us apart from the common beast? Is it art, science, literature, technological advances, or the philosophical mind? In the Lord of the Flies, Golding successfully unravels our delicate perceptions about what makes us human through a series of haunting and powerfully constructed symbols; among the most integral are the beast, the Lord of the Flies itself, and the fire. Through his narrative, illumination is cast upon the evil inherent in human nature, and society is revealed as a weak and easily penetrable façade. Furthermore, our level of refinement is given light as an instrument for incomparable malevolence, enhancing our powers of destruction beyond that of any of our primal ancestors.
In the novel The Lord of the flies, William Golding illustrates the decline from innocence to savagery through a group of young boys. In the early chapters of The Lord of the Flies, the boys strive to maintain order. Throughout the book however, the organized civilization Ralph, Piggy, and Simon work diligently towards rapidly crumbles into pure, unadulterated, savagery. The book emphasized the idea that all humans have the potential for savagery, even the seemingly pure children of the book. The decline of all civilized behavior in these boys represents how easily all order can dissolve into chaos. The book’s antagonist, Jack, is the epitome of the evil present in us all. Conversely, the book’s protagonist, Ralph, and his only true ally, Piggy, both struggle to stifle their inner
When placed on a deserted island, a group of strangers banded together to try to survive. They decided on a leader, problem-solved, fought off a beast, and formed their own society, even if it was somewhat flawed. This was the situation in the famous TV show, Lost. The Lord of the Flies and Lost are similar in these many different ways, with the exception that the show featured a tribe of adults instead of children. That just proves how difficult it is to maintain order in a society; even the adults struggled with keeping it peaceful and civilized. In Lord of the Flies, William Golding presents a broken society of savage boys fighting one another to suggest that man’s capacity for evil is brought out by the need for power and control.
The Lord of the Flies is a representation of what is still alive and well in today’s society throughout the world. While the obvious solution to avoiding a dystopian nature would be to coexist in a proper and civil society, there are too many variables in human nature to achieve such a utopia. They “wept for the end of innocence, the darkness of man’s heart, and the fall through the air.” (Golding) One can only hope that a perfect society can be reached in their lifetime.
...religious allegory. He depicts a story in which the boys are stranded on an island and need to fend for themselves. However, instead of focusing on rescue and building a fire, the boys ultimately shift their priorities to hunting and killing. They turn a once beautiful and majestic island into a place of terror and evil. Additionally, they maul and kill their only hope of ever changing, Simon. Lord of the Flies is reminiscent of the television series “Lost.” Just like in Golding’s world, “Lost” is staged on a remote far away island after a plane crash. However, these people are not children. They are adults, which makes the story even more chilling. These adults eventually succumb to murderous acts and violence, further proving the point Golding sets out to make. Humans are inherently evil, and without any system to keep them in line, they will destroy the world.
William Golding’s novel, Lord of the Flies, is the perfect allegory to man’s inherent evilness. A group of boys, British students, comprised of children who are approximately in their middle childhood gets marooned on a desert island somewhere in a remote area of the Pacific Ocean after their plane crashed. The boys are the only survivors. Except for a musical choir, led by a certain Jack Merridew, the boys have never met each other and have no established leadership. “The book portrays their descent into savagery; left to themselves in a paradisiacal country, far from modern civilization, the well-educated children regress to a primitive state” (Lord of the Flies).
In most societies, adults play a lead role in maintaining civilization. In William Golding’s novel, Lord of the Flies, there is no adult guidance which drives the children to spiral out of control. No authority means there are no consequences for bad behavior; therefore the children were not afraid of getting in trouble for the things that they were doing. When fear of “The Beast” takes over the island, it begins to possess the boys and motivates them to do whatever they need to feel empowered and accepted. The boys’ fear of a higher power and lack of adult supervision urges them to kill two of the smartest and most innocent children on the island in search of respect from the other boys. In order to remain alive on the island the boys must compete for their lives. The innocent are bullied, and do not survive. The savagery that Golding presents his readers with in Lord of the Flies is still present in modern day society. Children lacking parental guidance tend to act out of their normal human nature as seen in Golding’s Lord of the Flies and, the Columbine Shootings.
The Lord of the Flies by William Golding is a novel about human nature and the functions of society. One of the main characters in this novel is Ralph, who is chosen to be the leader of a group of boys. He assigns tasks to the boys and tries to keep them accountable for it. However, the boys begin to slack because they can no longer see the point of these tasks and rules. As a result of the constant slacking the boys soon turned into savages. Ralph’s struggle to maintain order amongst the boys shows how without rules it is human nature to descend into savagery due to the avoidance of authority.
William Golding’s novel ‘The Lord of The flies’ presents us with a group of English boys who are isolated on a desert island, left to try and retain a civilised society. In this novel Golding manages to display the boys slow descent into savagery as democracy on the island diminishes.
In the Lord of the Flies, William Golding uses a variety of symbols to represent ideas, or abstract notions or conceptions about people, places, and things. A symbol, according to the Webster's Dictionary, is an object that stands for something in addition to its literal meaning. In the book, there is a continual breakdown of society and civilization on the island. During this breakdown, Golding uses symbolism to further explain the process. Some of the things he symbolizes in the novel are the island itself, the conch, the boys clothing, and the violence.
Look at the basis of civilization, what is the one terminal thing every society possesses? Malliciousness, since the beginning of time there has been one constant attribute of all humans, the ability to be destructive. Human beings are innately evil, the environment they are put in determines if the act on the evil inside of them. In the novel Lord of The Flies the atrocious behavior of the boys on the island exemplifies the concept of humans and heinous behavior. The stanford prison experiment conducted in August of 1971, recognizes the possessiveness of power in the absence of society, identifying the underlying autogenous behavior of humans. Religion is domesticated in both of these instances which dictates why there is as an absence of classic integrity. Ethology is displayed abundantly within the lord of the flies novel and the society it constitutes. Societies are created by
Throughout the novel several different characters are introduced to the reader, such as Ralph, Jack, Simon and Piggy. With all these characters presented to the reader, one can get to see into their minds-eye, which allows the reader to analyze their character. In this case one could examine their basic morals and distinguish between the person’s natural instinct to rely on civilization or savagery to solve their problems. The author of the novel, William Golding, had a “first-hand experience of battle line action during World War II” which caused him to realize, “[that] The war alone was not what appalled him, but what he had learnt of the natural - and original- sinfulness of mankind did. It was the evil seen daily as commonplace and repeated by events it was possible to read in any newspaper which, he asserted, were the matter of Lord of the Flies” (Foster, 7-10). This being said by Golding leads one to the central problem in the novel the Lord of the Flies, which can be regarded as the distinction between civility and savagery. This can be seen through the characters that are presented in the novel, and how these boys go from a disciplined lifestyle, to now having to adapt to an unstructured and barbaric one in the jungle.
At the beginning of Lord of the Flies, the boys create a democratic government. As the story progresses, the initial democracy on the island is ignored, and a dictatorship rises in its place. This dictatorship fails to keep the boys in order. The author, William Golding, shows that without the institution of a strong government and set of rules people will become impulsive and seek instant gratification. In the absence of order, people tend not to become disciplined of their own accord, but rather dissolve into destructive chaos.
Neighbors, Ryan. "individual and society in Lord of the Flies." Bloom's Literature. Facts lllllOn File, Inc. Web. 16 Mar. 2014 lllll.
In the book Lord of the Flies by William Golding, a group of young boys from England are evacuated out of their country due to a war. The plane is then shot down and results into a plane crash on a deserted island. The boys are left all alone with no adults, no supplies, and no one to come and rescue them. They are all on their own and have to establish a new “society”. The boys have to choose someone to govern them and that person ends up being Ralph, who had an internal struggle between what is right and wrong closer to the end of the novel. The boys turn into savages, killing each other, and showing their evil inside each of them. According to, William Golding man is inherently evil, evil is in all of us, but it is oppressed by society, and comes out when there is not anything to hold us back, civilization is what holds back evil from coming out, or it is what triggers evil inside of man.