Lord of the Flies is an extraordinarily well-written novel that teaches one how to live life. When asked about the philosophy of the book, the author, William Golding, replied, "The theme is an attempt to trace the defects of society back to the defects of human nature. The moral is that the shape of a society must depend on the ethical nature of the individual and not on any political system however apparently logical or respectful." This completely exemplifies the theme of the novel. Lord of the Flies truly shows that it is not the government that determines survival, it is the sheer human nature in all of us that proves whether a society can function. A person's personality will always trump another person's because of difference in strength and passion. All of the main characters' personalities determined the outcome in the novel, due to their evils and to some extent their goodness. Lord of the Flies is a magnificently written novel that truly proves the notion that a society relies on ethics and human nature rather than as one united, equal body.
First of all, it is strongly agreed upon in that the theme is an attempt to trace the defects of society back to the defects of human nature. This is the complete and utter truth in the novel. There are most certainly defects in the boys? society, which is showcased in the fact that they kill (however much of an accident), and turn into complete savages. The defects in their society, however, cannot be placed on the society as a whole. Specific characters made the society fall apart. It was not due to the structure of the society, rather, it has to do with the characters and their roots. In plainer terms, it has to do with the people that the boys were before they cam...
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...r he had his glasses stolen from him, he was a useless character. Roger had to pull the lever to let the rock come tumbling down because otherwise he wouldn?t have had a place in the book, and wouldn?t have been able to have been used to demonstrate the transition from good into evil. The novel had to end this way to leave the message of the story in tact and truly teach a lesson.
Hence, William Golding?s philosophy had to lead to this end to the story. His entire philosophy centered on the theme of the story, and how a person?s ethics and forms of evil determine how a society works. This novel was staggering in its relation to our world today, and taught an incredible life lesson that a person of any age can benefit from. The incredible novel, Lord of the Flies, could not have ended in any other way according to Golding?s philosophy on the theme of the book.
Nobel Laureate Sir William Golding’s Lord of the Flies(1953) has become a compulsory stop on the route of any surveyor of the English novel published in the second half of the twentieth century. During an atomic war, an aeroplane carrying a group of young English school boys is shot down and the party is marooned on an island in the Pacific. The boys, with no elders around, initially try to organize themselves by laying down rules and calling assemblies by means of a conch. Their leader at this stage is Ralph, symbolizing the good, helped by an obese, asthmatic Piggy, symbolizing practical commonsense. But the group slowly regresses to savagery led by the hot-blooded choir leader Jack Merridew, symbolizing evil. There ensues a spate of killings by Jack and his hunters who have let loose a reign of terror and work on fear psychosis. Just at the moment when Ralph is about to be killed by Jack, a naval officer arrives on a rescue ship and escorts the boys back to civilization. However, the Edenic island is on fire and in this realistic novel, Golding shows symbolically the fall of man; democracy is made to bow down before dictatorship; evil wins at the expense of good; and civilization loses at the hands of barbarism.
The dark heart of savagery is within all human beings. Savagery of humans is one of the most important theme in the novel Lord of the Flies by William Golding. However some people would say that humans can be pure while others would say deep inside all humans are evil. It is probably true that most human have savagery inside them. In Lord of the Files, Golding proves human’s brutality by showing the destruction in humanity for a pack of innocent young British boys. This thesis is proven when the Lord of the Flies when Simon states that the beast is just the violence in their hearts.
' I believe that man suffers from an appalling ignorance of his own nature '.
Lord of the Flies, by William Golding, at first glance, is an incredibly dark read. However, that trait evaporates after one's first cursory read. Once it's text is more thoroughly perused, a pattern of optimism erupts between passages. If one dares to dive deeper into the meaning behind the book, many reasons surface. For example, the story, all in all, had a happy ending. Also, the themes were only represented among a very small pool of data. Lastly, the representation of evil in the book insinuates even greater things of goodness.
The book Lord of the Flies Jack the leader of the savages wasn't always bad. William Goldberg the author says that everyone is capable of becoming evil, where philosophers like Jean- Jacques Rousseau who implied that it was our environment that shapes us. While Golding has some good points on his theory I have to agree With Rousseau because of many of his beliefs.
The Lord of the Flies by William Golding is tale of a group of young boys who become stranded on a deserted island after their plane crashes. Intertwined in this classic novel are many themes, most that relate to the inherent evil that exists in all human beings and the malicious nature of mankind. In The Lord of the Flies, Golding shows the boys' gradual transformation from being civilized, well-mannered people to savage, ritualistic beasts.
Most people understand that there is a class system even if it is unspoken. William Golding believed that all humans were savage and evil deep down. This idea was the one mostly portrayed in the novel Lord of the Flies, but also shown in the novel is a deep allegorical comparison between boys on the island and classes they would fall into in everyday society. Little’uns, big’uns and Jack and his hunters all represent different classes of people.
One of the main themes in William Golding's 1954 novel Lord of the Flies is that without civilization, there is no law and order. The expression of Golding's unorthodox and complex views are embodied in the many varied characters in the novel. One of Golding's unorthodox views is that only one aspect of the modern world keeps people from reverting back to savagery and that is society. Golding shows the extreme situations of what could possibly happen in a society composed of people taken from a structured society then put into a structureless society in the blink of an eye. First there is a need for order until the people on the island realize that there are no rules to dictate their lives and take Daveers into their own hands. Golding is also a master of contrasting characterization. This can be seen in the conflicts between the characters of Jack, the savage; Simon, the savior; and Piggy, the one with all the ideas.
of Louis XIV was that he thought human nature would always be the same. The
Over millions of years, man has transformed from a savage, simple creature to a highly developed, complex, and civil being. In Lord of the Flies, the author William Golding shows how under certain circumstances, man can become savage. During nuclear war, a group of British schoolboys crash land on an uninhabited island to escape. Ralph the elected leader, along with Piggy and Simon, tries to maintain civilization, while Jack and his group of choir boys turned hunters slowly become savages obsessed with killing. Through characters’ action and dialogue, Golding illustrates the transformation of civil schoolboys into bloodthirsty savages.
William Golding’s Lord of the Flies is a sordid tale about a group of kids who are stranded on a deserted island after their plane crashes. The story is set during the Atomic War and plenty of references are made to the fact. However, the real key to the story lies in the role of Beelzebub, Lord of the Flies. Beelzebub has a central role in the story as he represents the Beast, or evil, that dwells within all humans. The Beast cannot be hunted and since it dwells within all humans, humans are all guilty because mankind is sick. The destruction of mankind is a point that Golding makes apparent often in this novel. He establishes early on that Beelzebub is a force within all humans that drives them to destroy and maim. In the story the central emblem of the story lies in the dead airman. The boys mistake him for Beelzebub and basically begin to worship him.
In Lord of the Flies, William Golding expresses the idea that humans are naturally immoral, and that people are moral only because of the pressures of civilization. He does this by writing about a group of boys, and their story of survival on an island. The civilized society they form quickly deteriorates into a savage tribe, showing that away from civilization and adults, the boys quickly deteriorate into the state man was millions of years ago. This tendency is shown most in Jack, who has an animalistic love of power, and Roger, who loves to kill for pleasure. Even the most civilized boys, Ralph and Piggy, show that they have a savage side too as they watch Simon get murdered without trying to save him. Simon, the only one who seems to have a truly good spirit, is killed, symbolizing how rare truly good people are, and how quickly those personalities become corrupted.
Lord of the Flies provides one with a clear understanding of Golding's view of human nature. Whether this view is right or wrong is a point to be debated. This image Golding paints for the reader, that of humans being inherently bad, is a perspective not all people share. Lord of the Flies is but an abstract tool of Golding's to construct the idea of the inherent evil of human nature in the minds of his readers. To construct this idea of the inherent evil, Golding employs the symbolism of Simon, Ralph, the hunt and the island.
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.
William Golding wrote of his novel "Lord of the Flies" that the theme was an attempt to explore how the defects society are based largely on human nature rather than the structure of civilization. Golding used "Lord of the Flies" to allegorically explain that the architecture of a society depends on the morality of the individual rather than a social or political construction, regardless of its inherent merit or esteem.