Conflicting Characters In William Golding's The Lord Of The Flies

A recurring theme among leaders in many societies today is that “absolute power corrupts absolutely” (John Acton, a 1700’s English Catholic historian, politician, and writer). In William Golding’s Lord of the Flies, this idea of leadership, power, and corruption is put in the spotlight. Jack, one of the boys on the island, forces his way into the leadership position without actually earning it. It is clear that Jack has become corrupt as he turns into a person who is intimidating, egotistical, and selfish. Ralph, on the other hand, is a quality leader under most conditions as he appeals to the boys’ sophisticated side and has a

Lord of the Flies by William Golding is a classic. A tale of thirty schoolboys whose plane crashes, leaving them stranded on a tropical island. All the boys are forced to adapt to their new surroundings. During their time on the island, many of the boys change dramatically or show their true colors. Ralph, in particular, changes dramatically.

wrote this after publishing Lord of the Flies. It is our world, in the form of a story. The two leaders in the story are Ralph and Jack. Ralph starts off a comfortable leader of the boys, but by the end of the book, Ralph and his companion Piggy are alone facing Jack and the rest of the boys. As the novel progresses and the society on the island starts to change, so does Ralph. He begins thinking he has all the answers, but comes to realize that without Piggy he would have never gotten this far. By the end of the book, Ralph and Jack are complete opposites. Jack is about savagery and fun while Ralph is holding on to society, rules, and civilization. Appearing to be a weak leader due to defection of his followers, Ralph is actually dedicated and insightful, only loosing his followers because he could not compete with one category that attracts nearly everyone in the world: fun.

Lord of the Flies by William Golding is a story that questions humanity as a whole through the perspective of a group of young boys. The situation that these young boys end up in is not something that commonly happens to people, and so one would think everything that the boys go through would be unrelatable; especially for me. I am a teenage girl who lives in a completely different country almost a century after this story takes place. However, all of the boys in this story make relationships with each other and therefore experience the drama that causes. Relationships are something almost every human on this planet experiences. Everyone has friends, family, and rivals (whether by blood or by love). Even within the fictional situation, the group of boys splits into people who think alike. Ralph befriends Piggy, Simon, Sam, and Eric while Jack befriends Roger and older boys from the choir. Divides between people because of personality and general wants and wishes happens all over the world between all types of people. Even within my own class here at Ellis people hang out in certain groups over others. Humans build bonds and prefer to strengthen and cherish some bonds over others. However, they also experience their relationships changing after the turn of the book when Jack takes power over almost all of the tribe. All of the younger boys, who once upon a time so faithfully followed Ralph’s leadership, join Jack’s tribe and forget all loyalty to Ralph. People change in

We fell out of the sky today. I don’t know where we crashed. Other boys were on the plane so they had to be around here somewhere, but there are no grownups—that’s what Ralph said. Ralph thinks we’re on an island and he’s been calling me “Piggy.” I don’t want him to call me that; that’s what the boys at school call me. He’s been making fun of my asthma too. Anyways, he said his dad is in the Navy and he’s going to come rescue us. Ralph spotted a shell in the water—I told him it was a conch—and I remember someone that had one and would blow into it and his mum would come. Ralph blew into it (it took a couple of tries), and then children started appearing. There were a bunch. There were these twins, Sam ‘n Eric and Jack Merridew and his choir.

It may have taken millions of years for humans to evolve enough to create the sprawling civilizations known today, but it only takes a few months for a group of civil, educated boys to regress back into savagery. In his novel Lord of the Flies, author William Golding depicts a group of young British boys getting stranded on a deserted island sans adults. The boys must look out for themselves, forming a basic governing system and trying to survive. But the challenge soon proves too much to handle, and order deteriorates. William Golding conveys the universal theme of civilization vs. savagery in his novel Lord of the Flies using the literary elements of plot, setting, and characterization.

Though “The Lord of the Flies” never describes a “Man vs. Self” conflict, there is indeed a definite enemy among the islanders; haplessly being themselves. Moreover, the retrenchment of the refined attitudes of the islanders being amended into that of irrational savages is culpable for the tragedies conducted by the islanders throughout the story. This sort of ancillary and visceral enemy that the islanders impinge upon is thus apposite to the Man vs. Self conflict style.

For a character to be morally ambiguous the reader cannot determine whether the character is purely evil or purely good. Readers must take into account everything such as actions, dialogue, descriptions, and interactions with other characters, weighing each as good or evil. William Golding’s Lord of the Flies portrays Ralph as a morally ambiguous character struggling to repulse the innate beast within him and the boys. Ralph’s morals are undetermined as the leader on the island, the role he plays in Simon’s death, and the civility he tries to maintain.

I was adopted by parents who could barely afford to keep me. It was probably best that I was on the island.”

We meet people everyday that change for many different reasons. People change due to the people they are around, the places they live or simply age and surroundings. Just like people change in life, characters can change in movies and books. As a matter of fact the “Lord Of The Flies” by William Golding shows us many ways of characters changing due to their surroundings and people around them. “Lord Of The Flies” is a book about boys crashing on an island and getting trapped. The pilot of the plan is killed, but many of the boys survive the crash, boys soon realize there is no adult supervision. Soon the boys start to find each other on the island. In the book “Lord Of The Flies” the main character is Ralph and throughout the book he changes a lot. He changes from being a very young mature and civil kid to someone who is “savage” and doesn't have awareness in what he is doing. Ralph represents order, civilization and morality in the book and on the island.

      In the novel, Lord of the Flies, William Golding tells the story of a group of boys on an island left out to self survive. The time was World War II when the plane the boys were in was shot down leaving young survivals on a deserted island without any adults. The whole story is about what happens during their stay on the island representing metaphoric ideas of humanity in each incident as Golding describes. Golding has reportedly said that he wrote the novel in response to his personal war experiences. “ (The war)… taught us not fighting, politics or the follies of nationalism, but about the given nature of man.” (Golding) By looking at Lord of the Flies, it is clear that Golding’s view of

“Kill the pig. Cut her throat. Spill her blood.” We, my men and I, were all shouting proudly. I think it was the first time in this island, in more than a year, a smile came out my face. I have finally got this pig I so waited for. No one knows how important this is to me. Now, the other boys will finally realize how much better I am than Ralph. I’ll have power, and things will start to work out in this island.

Compromise has proven to set back our society by being to delicate of personal relationships. Instead we should be able to recognize when we believe a certain situation can better a civilization and stick to our ethics in order to further advance our world as we’ve done for centuries. Compromise can be useful in building personal relationships however, when we abandon our ideas and leave them astray we are proving a weak link in the basic principles that has helped us as a community thrive until this point. Too much willingness to compromise has caused our world to be too focused on our feelings rather than advancing our society to better our needs (Schneider, pg. 1).

Not only does Ralph have a way of strategically gaining power over the rest of the boys but so does Jack. When he is first introduced on the island Jack uses the same power gaining technique as Ralph by telling Piggy “Shut up Fatty”(Golding 21). Jack automatically gets the attention of the other boys and Ralph because of calling Piggy Fatty. Ralph adds to the embarrassment of piggy by telling the other boys “ his real name’s Piggy”(22). Jack, the leader of the choir, tells the other choir boys “ choir stand still!” showing his dominance over the boys and gaining power (20). Ralph notices this trait in Jack and makes him head of all of the other hunters. In doing this Jack automatically gets a ton of power over the other boys except Ralph.

By Sigmund Freud's words, every human's psyche is made up of 3 components. Two of these such components are the id and the ego. While the id is the instinctual part of the human psyche, the ego is the more realistic and civilized part. At times, these traits overpower the other component, which is seen in William Golding’s novels. In William Golding's Lord of the Flies, we see how the island plays a role in expressing these traits by letting the id consume the ego.