Lord Of The Flies Character Analysis

In the novel Lord of the Flies, the author, William Golding, portrays a story about children that are stranded on an island with no adults to take charge and leadership; therefore, the children have to create their own system of government so they can survive. Throughout the story, there is a development of characters and each character represents various personalities and specific aspects of philosophies. Jack, Simon, and Ralph are the main focus throughout the book and their way of thinking is quite different from one another resulting in constant arguments.

Lord of the Flies is often claimed to be an allegory of modern society. While this is true, Golding’s intentions in writing this novel are much deeper. William Golding’s Lord of the Flies provides an enlightening insight into the true nature of human beings; along with why people refrain from acting upon the evil that resides within them. He presents these ideas through symbolism within the novel and it proves effective in many ways. Through symbolism, Golding can unfold the excellent plot of his novel, while subsequently sharing his ideas on the relationship of mankind and society. Golding uses the beast, the conch shell, and Piggy’s glasses to symbolize the human impulse towards ‘savagery’ and the social constructs put in place to prevent it.

Piggy, Ralph, Jack, and Roger were all crucial characters throughout the novel, Lord of the Flies, written by William Golding. All these characters made questionable decisions that when combined, contributed to Piggy’s necessary demise. Although some character’s decisions had a greater impact than others, they were all responsible in some way. Piggy’s stubborn behavior, Ralph’s lack of leadership, Jack’s power hungry and irresponsible behavior, and Roger’s unstable mental state all contributed towards Piggy’s passing. All this contributed to Piggy’s death and were necessary to the survival of everyone on the island.

In the novel, Lord of the Flies, a plane carrying a group of young boys crashes onto a deserted island. The adults on the plane do not survive, so the kids have no one to tell them what to do while on the island. Because of the lack of adults, the kids are forced to decide over if being rescued or surviving is more important. Three boys named Jack, Piggy, and Ralph step up as the main leaders of the group helping make the tough decisions for what they each think is the best for the group. The author of Lord of the Flies, William Golding writes, “The boys found themselves eager to take place in this deserted island but partly secure society.” Although the boys might be doing what they believe is right, each of them possesses flaws that damage their ability to lead the group.

There are times in the world where it is evident that humans are innately evil and driven to savage ways. In William Golding’s Lord of the Flies, boys are abandoned on an island with no supervision due to a plane crash. The boys become divided by savagery, and the last bits of ordered civilization they had first created falls apart. The innate evil the boys express results in their descent into a savage lifestyle depicted in the way they act, the way they lead the island society, and the way they are perceived by the outside world. When left to function without proper order and civilization, humans are innately evil beings.

We as people hold ourselves to a high standard and obey rules set by other people. Laws and rules may be taken for granted by us, but once they’re gone, people realize that it’s much more difficult to stay sane without them. In Lord of the Flies, the boys start out doing great on the island and see it as more of an opportunity for adventure rather than a predicament. At the beginning of the story, one of the boys exclaims quite enthusiastically “No grownups!”(Golding 8) which shows his anticipation for having a fun time on the island without anyone telling them what to do. However, once their rules system falls apart, they give in to a savage side of themselves that they may not have known they had.

In the book Lord of the Flies, we follow a group of boys who are stranded on an abandoned island. We are introduced to Ralph who is a natural born leader and Piggy who is a sharp-witted, shy boy. Later we get introduced to Jack and the choir boys. Jack is obsessed with power and like Ralph, he is a natural born leader. When the boys get on this island they think of it being all fun and games. When the boys are in this state of denial, Piggy is the only boy who seems to understand that this is serious, and that they need to act. The essence of fear comes into play when the boys hear rumors of a beast on this island. Simon concludes that the boys are truly the monster and gets over looked. The boys turn to violence when Jack becomes obsessed with killing a pig after being criticized by Ralph. The boys begin on the island with the thrill of adventure and a desire to conquer and then develop fear which is shaped in the form of a beast which drives them to total savagery.

In William Golding’s Lord of the Flies, the many sides of good and evil in man is shown within a group of young boys deserted on an island. Two boys, Ralph and Jack, both desire to be chief of the other boys which creates a conflict. This feeling of jealousy and even hatred between the boys is shown throughout the whole novel. When there are two sides of anything, people will take and choose a side. This is what causes a struggle for power between the boys because when there is two sides, Ralph and Jack both want the more dominant side. The others chose between Ralph and Jack which separated the island and the group of boys into two. The boys are cooperative when together but when Jack leaves the tribe due to a loss of power, the boys split and turn to their savage ways which suggests that man is good until one desires more than the other.

When a group of little kids get together with no rules to harness them, someone always gets hurt. Without rules, there is no order. No one is able to take control of the situation. When rules are not followed, democracy falls to anarchy. In the novel Lord of the Flies, William Golding explores how a group of school boys are able to adapt to an isolated environment after being shot down from the sky. They are forced to create and abide by their own rules. Through his characters, Golding demonstrates that rules are necessary for a society to function.

Human beings are usually separated by two fields of personality, the good and the evil. But, I don’t agree with this idea, I believe each person has a little bit of both in the them, it just depends on which emotion they decide to express.William Golding explores this idea of good and evil by using many diverse characters in his novel Lord of the Flies. Throughout the novel each boy begins to struggle with balancing the two harmonies, and many fail in doing so.

The human mind consists of two completely different instincts: the instinct to live by society’s rules and the instinct to live by your own. A civilized person lives morally by law and order and a savage acts out to their own selfish needs. Similarly, in the novel The Lord of the Flies, by William Golding, a group of confused, British boys struggle to determine what’s right and what’s wrong. As they are forced to chose between good and evil, conflicts begin to rise on the island. However, this is only the beginning of their disastrous adventure led by Jack. Jack is an egomaniacal boy who lives by his own rules and tries to get everyone else to obey them too. Hence, Jack is the predominant cause for savagery on the island and rendered it inevitable that the castaways would descend into chaos due to his aggression, entitlement, and lust for power.

There are distinctive personalities within each character from Lord of the Flies that compare to each person individually, and I found myself to be an ENFP, an idealist and arguably most comparable to Simon. An ENFP is a person in which displays characteristics of being extroverted, intuitive, feeling and perceiving, things that correlate to my personality. However, there are many ways that I describe myself as a human being, but these are most prevalent to Simon.

In the novel Lord Of The Flies by William Golding the three boys, Ralph, Jack, and Simon show the reader the two sides of humans. One side of the human being the calm, civilized, and organized. The other side being savage, selfish, and careless. During the entire novel the audience sees these two sides being in conflict with one another. The fact that the two sides of the humans on the island are in conflict throughout the novel shows the reader that all humans have a form of savagery in them and that they do not develop it, they revert to their primitive ways. No human has full control over himself, after a certain amount of time humans will revert to their old ways of life and can not stay civilized forever. At the beginning of the novel Ralph is a very civilized young boy, but he slowly reverts to a savage way of living. Jack starts off like Ralph does, but everts quicker. Simon is initially a polite little boy and stays civilized, but if he were alive for a longer period of time, he would have reverted to a savage form.

To reveal the true colors of their ice cold hearts a small handful of well rounded civilized boys thankfully strike an island nearby. Ralph, the leader who overthrew the first nomination, gave an effort to become the strong structure for a union of tamed boys to depend on. In similar remarks, Piggy plays the role of Ralph’s trustworthy lieutenant who retains logical and scientific reasonings behind his pure words. Relaxed and careless these gentle schoolboys have been overthrown with a slim chance of survival and will evolve into monstrous savages influenced by the nature of evil.

Lord of the Flies is able to display the shared defect of evil that all people have. Multiple conflicts throughout the novel bring out the evil characteristics of all the boys on the island. William Golding portrays the boys as a symbol of youth and innocence when they land on the island, then he shows that they progressively lose their innocence as the evil is brought out in all of them. As Jack and Ralph have a constant struggle for power, they influence the other boys in their loss of youth by dividing and fighting. Through the conflicts between Jack and Ralph, Golding shows that evil is an inevitable defect found in all human beings.