Who Are The Savages In Lord Of The Flies

When civilization is removed from a population, one can see that they are originally savages due to the fact that humans inherit those characteristics. The novel Lord of the Flies, by William Golding, starts with a group of British schoolboys crashing into an uninhabited island after their pilot died. Once on the island, a chubby adolescent called Piggy and a fair boy named Ralph encounter one another and realize that there is no adult supervision. As the story unfolds, they gather other children on the island using a conch and decide that in order to get rescued, they have to create a fire so passing ships will be able to see the smoke. Later on, another adolescent called Jack disagrees with this notion causing disruption among the people.

As the group of boys realize that there might be a beast on the island, their fear causes them to begin to behave like vicious hunters, stopping at no cost to kill the beast. Jack believed that the only way to survive on the island was to hunt, and since his idea contradicted with Ralph’s, he left the group and created his own. A majority of the older kids and younger children agreed with him so they joined him and established tribal-like characteristics. One day, Ralph and Piggy decided to check up on Jack’s group, but things begin to turn around when Jack and his group think they see the beast, “‘Him! Him!’ …’Kill the beast! Cut his throat! Spill his blood! Do him in!’ ...At once the crowd surged after it, poured down the rock, leapt on the beast, screamed, struck, bit, tore. There were no words, and no movements but the tearing of the teeth and claws’” (Golding 152-153). The scene starts off with the boys believing that they see the beast, and so their natural instinct was to corner the beast. They got caught up acting like savages that they did not notice that it was Simon that they proclaimed as the beast. After they cornered the beast, they begin to attack the beast like they were animals. In the beginning of the novel, the boys acted civilized in ways where they discussed with one another about something suspicious or confusing on the island. But since they were so caught in the moment, they begin to chant like savages. When the boys begin to chant, they act like they are in some sort of tribe, which is the opposite of what civilized group is. As the group of boys attack the beast, imagery is shown to describe the animalistic characteristics they have obtained. Animals such as lions tend to leap on top of their prey and maul them to death, the imagery demonstrated emphasizes the savage like behavior the boys acquired. This type of act