Lord of the Flies
In Lord of the Flies the author, William Golding, argues the nature of man being inherently evil. One of the themes of this novel is man's need for civilization. It is the laws and rules of society that keep our evil nature from overtaking us. In the story, the boys are dropped on an uninhabited island and find themselves for the first time without adults and their authority, rules. In the beginning they try to run themselves as the adults would in democratic fashion. Each kid has the chance to speak, with the conch. The conch is a symbol of order and civilization, which is later smashed to bits. In the boys' early meetings they decide they need rules to follow, such as only the one with the conch speaks. Soon the rules are slipped away simply because the boys want to play, but later the rules are blatantly defied, as in Jack's and the other boys' murder of the pig. Their sense of having a set of rules to obey dissipate with the past memory of ordered society, the world of adults. They lose their names along with their identity with their former world. Their play turns deadly as the evil in the boys has free reign without the rules they once knew. In this natural state they are evil. Their disconnection with civilized life turns them to savagery and allows them to murder Simon and Piggy, and they look for more blood hunting Ralph.
The author shows the deterioration from being guided by ordered government into evil in the boys' rabid destruction of Simon. From page 168: " 'Kill the beast! Cut his throat! Spill his blood! Do him in!' The sticks fell and the mouth of the new circle crunched and screamed. The beast was on its knees in the centre, its arms folded over its face. It was crying out against the abominable noise something about a body on the hill. The beast struggled forward, broke the ring and fell over the steep edge of the rock to the sand by the water. At once the crowd surged after it, poured down the rock, leapt on to the beast, screamed, struck, bit, tore. There were no words, and no movements but the tearing of teeth and claws."
William Golding recognizes in this book that evil is in man's heart; put in a natural setting, this is our true selves.
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