The Lord of the Flies written by William Golding is a popular novel that deals with many themes. The theme I will talk about is how humans and human nature can easily be corrupted by surrounding influences and themselves. Simon is corrupted by the natural environment and the nature of people around him. In contrast, there is Jack who was only corrupted by his obsessions. Also, Ralph became morally corrupted after a combination of spending time with Jack’s group and being by himself. The Lord of the Flies shows that anyone can be corrupted by circumstance especially if left alone.
Simon is corrupted by uncontrollable forces like nature and the actions of the people around him. In the beginning of The Lord of the Flies, Simon is the positive and helpful character: “Simon found for [the litteuns] the fruit they could not reach, pulled off the choicest from up in the foliage, passed them back down to the endless, outstretched hands” (Golding, 57). In this quote, Simon helps out the littleuns which none of the other biguns on the island do showing his kindness and compassion. However, later in the novel, that kindness and compassion is eroded when he is laughed at for his honest suggestion: “Simon’s effort fell about him in ruins; the laughter beat him cruelly and he shrank away defenseless to his seat” (96). Shortly after he is laughed at and mocked by the assembly, he embarks on a journey that would change the island forever. This is when he discovers “the Lord of the Flies hung on his stick” (152). He also imagines a conversation:
‘You are a silly little boy,’ said the Lord of the Flies, ‘just an ignorant, silly little boy.’ … ‘Don’t you agree?’ said the Lord of the Flies. ‘Aren’t you just a silly little boy?’ … ‘Well then,’ said...
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... refusing to acknowledge his former allies by name. By the end of the novel, Ralph became morally corrupted after spending too much time with Jack’s group and himself.
Lord of the Flies shows how anyone, children in particular, can be corrupted by extreme circumstance when everyone splits up. After Simon split from the group, he experienced the most corruption with an imaginary Lord of the Flies. Jack was the physical form of the Lord of the Flies, after his obsession with hunting leads him to become the most corrupted on the island. After spending too much time hunting with Jack, Ralph started to slide down a slippery slope culminating with a brutal assault. In conclusion, The Lord of the Flies shows that the world of children is not as innocent as it seems.
Works Cited
Golding, William. The Lord of the Flies. London: Faber and Faber Limited, 1954. Print
As Jack hunts his “frustration seemed bolting and nearly mad” which shines in his slowly deranging eyes (Golding 67). In Lord Of The Flies by William Golding, stranded boys struggle to find order and civilization on an island with no other humans. After their plane crash lands, a few boys, such as Ralph and Piggy, are quick to set up standard rules. But, not everyone agrees that rules and rescue are what is most important. Jack, a boy who cares more about hunting, disrupts the goodness and order that remains in the boys. When a simulated hunting influenced and led by Jack goes awry, the boys kill Simon. The now deceased Simon is the purest and kindest of the boys. Jack leads the elimination of the only good left on their island. Whether it is his intention to kill him or not, Jack should be held responsible for Simon’s demise because he leads the group to kill him, regardless of his age.
He blows the conch and summons the deserted children together” (Li & Wu 1). While all the boys are interested mainly in playing and setting out to satisfy their own needs, Ralph is focused on building shelter and keeping a fire going to facilitate their rescue. As one can see, Ralph is “the representative of civilization and democracy, lives by rules, acts peacefully, and follows moral commands and values the good of the group, who dramatically reveals the condition of civilization and democracy in Golding’s time” (Li & Wu
In the novel, Lord of the Flies, all the characters have an significant role and each individual shows a different impact than others in the society. Simon’s innocence through the novel impacts his behavior and the way he treats the littluns with care. He is a flat, static character who has an active role and gives his full support in everything he does. Simon does not give up hope on being rescued and becomes the light of the island as he does everything he can throughout each situation. As the characters and plot develop, the boys begin to change as each character loses their innocence because of their freedom. Simon shows the most purity and compassion as problems increase through the boys as he tries to not let any of the causes affect him. In Lord of the Flies, Simon represents the goodness of the island as he helps the littluns, supports the boys and does everything in his power to make the best of the situation on the island.
The reason the Lord of the Flies threatens Simon is because Simon knows that the beast is not a tangible creature that lives in the forest which is dangerous information. In reality, the beast is simply the innate evil that resides in every man. Simon knows this because he realizes that all the information the boys know about the beast does not add up and that such a creature cannot exist so it must be something impalpable but powerful, something that is making them so afraid that it is changing them from the inside out. He questions this “beast with claws that scratched, that sat on a mountaintop, that left no tracks and yet was not fast enough to catch Samneric” and grasps the concept that the more they fear the beast, the more they change (112).
Simon is the morally good boy. His selflessness and goodness comes from within. He is kind to the little boys, and helps the outcasts. For example, when none of the boys want to give Piggy meat from the first pig, Simon steps up and takes him meat. "Simon…wiped his mouth and shoved his piece of meat over the rocks to Piggy…"(p.74) While everyone else is cruel to the young ones, he helps the "lil'uns" grab meat from the trees when they can't reach. "Simon found for them the fruit they could not reach, pulled off the choicest…passed them back to the endless, outstretched hands." (p.56) Simon helps those whom no one else is kind to, perhaps remembering that he was looked down upon once. He realizes what it's like to be scorned and to be the "little one", so he tries to make it less miserable for the outcasts by being kind to them. He wants to always help others, so when he discovers the beast is inside of everyone, not external, as they had imagined, he instantly runs down the mountain to tell him. He helps others even to the point of death.
The lord of the flies is a book about a group of boys stranded on a tropical island to illustrate the evil characters of mankind. Lord of the Flies dealt with changes that the boys go through as they gradually got use to the stranded freedom from the outside world. Three main characters pictured different effects on the other boys. Jack Merridew began as the bossy and arrogant leader of a choir. The freedom of the island allowed him to further develop the darker side of his personality as the Chief of a savage tribe. Ralph started as a self-assured boy whose confidence in him came from the approval of the others. He was kind as he was willing to listen to Piggy. He became increasingly dependent on Piggy's wisdom and became lost in the confusion around him. Towards the end of the story when he was kicked out of the savage boys he was forced to live without Piggy and live by himself. Piggy was an educated boy that was more mature than the others, that was used to being picked on. His experiences on the island were a reality check of how extreme people can be with their words.
As Ralph is trying to hide from them overnight, he wonders, “Might it not be possible to walk boldly into the fort… pretend they were still boys, schoolboys who had said, ‘Sir, yes, sir’- and worn caps? Daylight might have answered yes; but darkness and the horrors of death said no” (186). No matter how hard Ralph tries, he cannot discard his new knowledge of Jack and his tribe’s potential for evil and corruption. For a long time Ralph seems to be in denial; like many others, he seems to want to stay true to his belief in the overall goodness of the human heart. Ralph’s expectations for human kindness are finally challenged to the point of irreversibility when Jack attacks him and tries to pursue him on a vicious manhunt. When Ralph collapses on the beach and a naval officer arrives, “With filthy body, matted hair, and unwiped nose, Ralph wept for the end of innocence, [and] the darkness of man’s heart...” (202). One might think it strange that rather than rejoicing over rescue, Ralph and the rest of the boys cry out in grief. The young schoolboys come to understand the enormity of human greed and evil, and unfortunately it is a lesson that they will not be able to ignore or forget. They witness and play a role in their own loss of innocence, and the time they spend on the island teaches them what
The author, William Golding uses the main characters of Ralph, Jack, and Simon in The Lord of the Flies to portray how their desire for leadership, combined with lack of compromise leads to the fall of their society. This desire for leadership and compromise led to the fall of their society just like multiple countries during times of wars.
The novel, Lord of the Flies, deals a lot with characterization. The character that stood out the most was Ralph, who was excellently developed by Golding as a leader.
In William Golding's Lord of the Flies a group of kids who are fleeing a war, plane crashes and they are stranded on a deserted island without Adult supervision. The first thing all the kids do is vote for a chief and Ralph, who is more responsible, wins over Jack. They are the choices because Ralph is the Colonel of the whole group and Jack is the oldest out of all the boys. As the story goes on and when Jack starts his own group all of the kids lose sight of their main goal, to be rescued. They're all having too much fun when they switch over to Jack's group hunting and killing for food. In the story there are four main characters that are in a sense the leaders of the crew. There's Piggy and a quiet Simon who do not possess the scrappiness that Ralph and Jack do. These strengths are what help Ralph and Jack survive. Piggy is always talking about how his Auntie would not let him do this or that and Simon was just a quiet, reserved kid who is regarded as weird just due to the fact that he is calm.
Ralph is the novel’s protagonist and tries to maintain the sense of civility and order as the boys run wild. Ralph represents the good in mankind by treating and caring for all equally, which is completely opposite of Jack’s savage nature. Jack is the antagonist in the novel and provokes the most internal evil of all the boys. Jack is seen at first as a great and innocent leader but he becomes t...
The book Lord of the Flies by William Golding is an exhilarating novel that is full of courage, bravery, and manhood. It is a book that constantly displays the clash between two platoons of savage juveniles mostly between Jack and Ralph who are the main characters of the book. The Kids become stranded on an island with no adults for miles. The youngsters bring their past knowledge from the civilized world to the Island and create a set of rules along with assigned jobs like building shelters or gathering more wood for the fire. As time went on and days past some of the kids including Jack started to veer off the rules path and begin doing there own thing. The transformation of Jack from temperately rebellious to exceptionally
Lord of the Flies by William Golding is a novel that represents a microcosm of society in a tale about children stranded on an island. Of the group of young boys there are two who want to lead for the duration of their stay, Jack and Ralph. Through the opposing characters of Jack and Ralph, Golding reveals the gradual process from democracy to dictatorship from Ralph's democratic election to his lack of law enforcement to Jack's strict rule and his violent law enforcement.
The most influential saying in the lord of the flies is the fact that the symbolism represents the many statistics in the communal world which is relatively amazing for a book to possibly recreate. The way that William Golding showed his audience in this book how the negativity of the world and the wickedness in a man’s heart is beyond belief. This can be shown through the development of the children who progressively become more and more malevolence as the days pass. It can be made known through the items that represent the civilized world or ‘the adult’ society. It’s reasonably scary when we are exposed to the evilness sinfulness people have, even those that we perceive as innocent can be deceiving.
In Lord of the Flies, many key characters and symbols represent the almost civilized impulse. Some examples are Ralph, Piggy, and the ‘conch shell’ the boys use to call meetings. These are signs of order and control in a place full of fear and mental pressure. Simon is an example of how humans slowly evolve and adjust in their surroundings because he takes control of the situation. Simon acts morally on the island, he behaves kindly to the younger children, and he is the first to realize the problem posed by the beast and the Lord of the Flies. The problem that there is no external monster, but rather that a monster lurks within each human being.