Cruelty In Lord Of The Flies By William Golding

In the novel “Lord of the Flies” written by William Golding the novels main theme was civility versus savagery. The novel is about school boys who get stranded in an island because the airplane the boys were in was shot down. The only adult who was the pilot died so the boys had to learn how to survive without any adults. The schoolboys were aged ranged from 6 to 12 and since there is no adult supervision the boys vote for a leader which causes conflict with two boys. Things begin to get out of hand because they are free from any rules resulting in them acting like savages and forgetting about civilization. The conflict between the two boys named Ralph and Jack represents civility versus savagery because Ralph becomes leader and uses his

William Golding explores the theme of violence throughout his novel ‘Lord of the Flies’. He believed that every individual has the potential to bring out their inner evil, and that every human being is flawed in their nature. Hence, he wrote a novel with

Throughout many parts of the United States, there is a time of the year known as “fire season.” Because of a lack of water during this time, dead plant matter littered across the forest floor start to shrivel up, until they’re practically begging to be lit on fire. During this season, a single ember can ignite a wildfire capable of searing through hundreds of acres of forest. Just like this powerful, heat-ridden ember, a single act of cruelty can ignite even worse, more pitiless acts. In Lord of the Flies, William Golding demonstrates how cruelty gives power to perpetrators and victimizes the weak, He shows that cruelty lies in the heart of every person and child and that it is most prevalent in a society that lacks a penalty system.

In William Golding’s The Lord of the Flies, Jack and others use their acts of cruelty towards the other boys to show a sense of power and role on the island higher than everyone else’s. In the book, Jack and his choir are obsessed and driven to find and kill a pig. While killing the pig they chant, “Kill the pig! Cut its throat! Kill the pig! Spill her blood!”. These words are evidently an act of cruelty because they could have simply killed the pig quietly and civilly. However, by chanting and frolicing about, they were given the power they had desired through cruelty. After successfully killing a quantity of pigs, the author states, “The Compulsion to track down and kill was swallowing him up”, meaning that he desires to kill because

In our society, people are often cruel to one another in the want for personal gain, but this is restrained to mere social interactions and online in our industrial world. However, when we are separated from civilized society and the pressures that it places upon us, we are quick to turn to savage, cruel behavior to survive. Golding understood this idea, that we are only civilized when others are watching, and showed the possibility for even the purest to become affected by societal pressures in his novel, the Lord of the Flies. In order to show the role of cruelty in shaping the novel Lord of the Flies, Golding uses character archetypes, the idea of cosmic irony, and extended symbolism to highlight the inherent flaws of human nature and the potential for even the purest individuals to turn to cruel ways due to societal pressures.

Cruelty can be defined as pleasure in causing pain and suffering to others. Synonyms include, savagery, inhumanity, barbarity, and sadism all of which were mentioned on the test or websites pertaining to the novel Lord of the Flies. Throughout this book William Golding uses cruelty to support the themes of fear and the loss of innocence.

Lord of the Flies is a marvelous non-fiction paradigm of the contrast of civility and savagery in human nature. In the novel, the author, William Golding, masterfully tells of how one characteristic taints the other, and eventually takes possession of its host. Throughout the novel, multiple results of these two attributes, along with many other situations, are portrayed using objects and characters, conveying the overall message

    Despite the progression of civilization and society's attempts to suppress man's darker side, moral depravity proves both indestructible and inescapable; contrary to culturally embraced views of humanistic tendencies towards goodness, each individual is susceptible to his base, innate instincts. In William Golding's Lord of the Flies, seemingly innocent schoolboys evolve into bloodthirsty savages as the latent evil within them emerges. Their regression into savagery is ironically paralleled by an intensifying fear of evil, and it culminates in several brutal slays as well as a frenzied manhunt. The graphic consequence of the boys' unrestrained barbarity, emphasized by the

In William Golding’s The Lord of the Flies, Jack and Roger use their acts of cruelty towards the other boys to show a sense of power on the island. The acts of insidious cruelty in the novel reveal how power hungry Jack and Roger tend to be.

In the novel The Lord of the Flies, there are many themes that range from leadership and civilization to savagery and cruelty. Cruelty is first introduced into the novel when the boys on the island break the laws of civilization and choose sides of the civilized and savages; this proves to be important when it changes the overall behavior of the boys. The first manifestation of cruelty is depicted when Roger and Maurice run through and kick over the sand castles of the Littleun’s. While Maurice feels guilty, Roger has the urge to physically harm the littleun’s, but is held back by the instinct of civilization that still lays inside of him. Though a particular littlun follows suit of Roger and throws sand in another littleun’s eye. This shows

Savagery and evil is present in the world in our everyday lives. From young children to the elderly, the same amount of evil is still present amongst them. The young boys in the novel, Lord of the Flies, written by William Golding become stranded on an island with no adults. The twelve year old boys must fight for their basic survival on the island. Through their battle, the boys display “mankind’s essential illness.”(golding 96). William Golding refers to this as a weakness in our inner mind that appears with the exclusion of law and order. William golding uses the character’s immense love of torture, mob mentality and possession of power, to demonstrate mankind's essential illness which is the inner state mankind possess and directs to in absence of civilization.

On the other hand, Golding showed that people express their deeper evilness as time goes on if they are left in the same nerve-racking situation. As time went on in the island, the true colors of almost all the boys came out. Jack, a selfish boy who just wanted to get meat had made all the boy's life miserable on the island even though no one really told him what he was doing was wrong. He separated the island into two groups and he believed getting meat is more important than getting rescued. He went hunting with his group and they kill a pig and had a feast. Jack even invited Ralph’s tribe to join them for the feast and when asked about how they killed the pig, the kids dance and chant, "_Kill the beast! Cut his throat! Spill his blood!_"(Golding 118).

William Golding’s Lord of the Flies displays that when human beings are left without structure, or displaced from society that they do in fact revert into impulsive animals, wanting to do anything in order to satisfy a hunger for immediate satisfaction. As a slightly depressed and hungry Ralph and Piggy begrudgingly make their way over to Jack’s tribe’s feast to indulge in whatever food is offered to them, later on in the feast, a terrible tragedy occurs as the boys transform into complete savages after chanting breaks out and adrenaline starts to rush. The terrible tragedy that does indeed occur is when, “The sticks fell and the mouth of the new circle crunched and screamed. The beast was on its knees in the center, its arms folded over its

In an ideal world, people would always be civilized and orderly, and that what is learned from parents and adults to be good people would carry over to the rest of our lives. However, opening the bleak news headlines or suffering through awkward interactions with strangers, friends and family can sometimes suggest more negative aspects of human beings. William Golding’s alarming novel Lord of the Flies, in which British schoolboys are stranded on a desert island during the Cold War, shares the author’s bleak view of human nature -- that the principles taught to children means nothing, and humans are inherently animalistic and bad, allowing themselves to behave savagely for the means of self-preservation. The book begins with the boys attempting to establish order once they realize that their entire world has shattered. As they start to discover the island more, the children slowly come to the realization that they must survive without adults and have little hope of rescue. However, the boys quickly devolve to savagery once the power-hungry Jack defies the elected chief Ralph and become obsessed with murdering pigs. This violence turns into the murder of the two most innocent characters, Simon and Piggy, and the boys burn down the entire island as they attempt to hunt down Ralph. Throughout the novel, William Golding uses different symbols such as fire, face paint, and the conch to highlight the depressive pitfalls rife in human existence.

One of the most crucial components of a storyline is the theme. It is the central message of the story. In the novel Lord of The Flies by William Golding, the message is that even the purest of hearts contain an innate animalistic behaviour. As suggested in the story, savagery is inherent in all beings because true evil lies within one’s genetics, personality, and their surroundings.