Lord of the Flies

Lord of the Flie

Lord of the flies is a story that begins in the aftermath of a plane

crash in the Pacific Ocean during an unnamed war in which a group of

English schoolboys are isolated on what they assume to be an island,

under no adult supervision they are left to 'fend for themselves'

create their own friendships and fight their own battles. As the story

unfolds the boys develop a miniature society in which they try to

include rules and order, but, each with their own ideas of right and

wrong and sometimes totally different priorities, difficulties

inevitably arise, their little community collapses and the boys are

thrown into a world of hurt and fear.

Because of the intensity of the problems each of these boys have to

face in this novel at such an early age you could say that each one

is, in his own way, a hero but you could also say that, because of its

tragic storyline this novel holds no heroes. In this essay I hope to

find out why or why not the characters in this story are heroes.

Before I start this essay I feel it is necessary to define a 'hero'.

The Collins dictionary defines a hero as "one greatly regarded for

achievements or qualities" but I don't believe that this is

necessarily true, in my opinion a hero is someone who does something

unusually brave to their own standards, someone who puts themselves

out in order to do something for someone else. A hero is someone who

thinks of others before themselves and does what he or she thinks is

right.

One of the first characters we encounter in this novel is a young,

fair-haired boy of twelve-named Ralph. Golding idealizes Ralph from

the beginning, lavishing praise on his physical beauty. In the island

sun he immediately achieves a golden hue, a physical manifestation of

his inward qualities. Ralph immediately gains status from his

possession of the conch shell, which gives him the authority to speak

when the boys come together. He, I believe is a natural leader and

tries to instill a sense of order into the boys, he realizes, like all

the other boys that a world without adults means that they could do as

they pleased but unlike the others he immediately realizes the need

for rules and organization,

“Stay round here wait and not go away. Three of us -if we take more

we'd get mixed up"

Ralph's rules keep the boys attached to some semblance of society, but

without these rules there will be disastrous consequences,

"The rules are the only thing we've got!"