Lord Of The Flies Character Analysis

In Lord of the Flies by William Golding, a group of schoolboys become stranded on an peaceful island during World War II without any grownups. They have to fight the evil from within themselves to survive, stay alive, and to be rescued, however, some of the boys cannot control their inner evil which then results in many difficult moral decisions that they need to make. All of the boys are being morally tested with decisions that can potentially cause extremely dangerous outcomes as well with good outcomes. Golding uses the character’s actions and decisions to expand the idea that people are evil from birth; however, an organized society can either develop/encourage or control those evil impulses. In the beginning of the story, Golding uses

Ralph always wanted to do the right thing for the boys as a group and for himself as well: “‘The fire is the most important thing on the island. How can we ever be rescued except by luck, if we don’t keep a fire going? Is a fire too much for us to make?’” (Golding 80). The boys that were watching the fire let it burn out, so when a ship passed by the island they did not have any black smoke to signal the ship that there were people on the island. Ralph was extremely frustrated with everyone because many of the boys did not care that the fire went out. Ralph realizes that fire is one of the most important things since that is the thing that is supposed to get them rescued off of the island. The boys, besides Ralph, are showing their evil by not caring that this happened to them instead they just brush it off like it is no big deal but in reality it is a huge deal for their survival. The way that Ralph was brought up in his society shows that he can control his evil reactions in tense situations since he does not want to lash out at somebody. Even though Ralph is from a controlled society, he was very eager to join the society that was taking place which leads to the killing of Simon: “The beast was on its knees in the center,...leapt on to the beast, screamed struck, bit, tore...they could see

Once all the boys decided that they needed fire to get rescued, Jack was on board with it until he lost his innocence: “‘Rescue? Yes, of course! All the same, I’d like to catch a pig first-” He snatched up his spear and dashed it into the ground. The opaque, mad look came into his eyes again.” (Golding 53). Once jack losses his innocence that is when pretty much all of the chaos starts to happen. Jack begins to not care about the main goal, which is being rescued. He instead just wants to hunt and kill pigs. With Jack being very influential to most of the boys, he controls much of what they decide to do. Most of the boys follow Jack’s lead because they probably do not want to get on his bad side; however. they need to what Jack wants so they do not get potentially killed by him. Ever since Jack lost his innocence, his evil impulses control a lot of what he is doing: “‘They hate you, Ralph. They’re going to do you.” “They’re going to hunt you tomorrow.’” (Golding 188). Jack’s innocence is completely lost when he decides that he wants to kill Jack for no good reason. The evil from within him is encouraging him to do immoral things like to hurt other by physical abuse and killing of animals and human beings. Once Jack decided