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Identity In Lord Of The Flies

Decent Essays

Power Dictates Identity Developmental psychologist Erik Erikson stated, “in the social jungle of human existence, there is no feeling of being alive without a sense of identity.” It is important to note that Erikson is trying to emphasize the influence and vitality identity has on the human mind. The identity people have dictated the status they hold and what they can and cannot do. William Golding suggests the power identity has over a civilization and a single person in his novel Lord of The Flies. Golding develops his novel in describing how people prioritize power and authority to which this desire alters their identity to change over time through exposure to possessing higher authority over others. This new identity is stripped from …show more content…

When wearing a police uniform that resembles a greater being, such as a soldier, they act as if they are one. The situation before them becomes one a soldier would deal with, not just a police officer. The power they already established through being an officer wasn’t enough for them it seemed, so they desired more authority through this new identity. This status seemed to justify their brutal actions simply because their original identity was being concealed through this uniform and taking on a different identification. This use of uniforms dictating identities for the police officers help Golding’s argument become clear with the use of the hunters in his novel the Lord of the Flies. The hunters choose to paint their faces with blood and dirt from the island to cover their faces. Alone on the island with camps splitting off into hunters and intellects, the boys proceed to paint each other before hunting around the island and “Eric made a detaining gesture, ‘But they’ll be painted! [the boys] know how it is.’ The others nodded. They understood only too well the liberation into savagery that the concealing paint brought,” (Golding 172). When a hunter is threatened with the reasoning from the civilization still left in Ralph, he …show more content…

When their identity is changed because of the driving influence of the desire for authority their perception for choosing right from wrong becomes unclear, similar to power influenced perception that takes over Jack. In the article “Torture at Abu Ghraib” Seymour M. Hersh addresses the issue behind the female “commander in the war zone, was an experienced operation and intelligence officer who had served with the special forces and in the 1991 gulf war, but she had never run a prison system. … had no training in handling prisoners,” (Torture at Abu Ghraib). Power was given to a person with valid responsibility in the workforce but the magnitude of that power altered their decision making massively. A certain amount of authority over others such as being a police officer was tolerated and could be handled appropriately, but when told she was a higher authority, a prison guard, her rational decision making was altered. The power she possessed posed a different identity to her, covering the old like a mask. Once this old identity was replaced with the new, she abused her authority and was held accountable for breaking chemical lights, followed by powering water on naked detainees and threatening them with rape. This rise to power from officer to prison guard manipulated her mind into dehumanizing prisoners and

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