Lord Of The Flies Critical Analysis

In Lord of the Flies by John Steinback a group of young boys are stranded on an island. To survive the boys decided to vote who should be their leader, Ralph or Jack. Piggy is a smart, fat boy who is not respected by the boys. Ralph is the face of leadership but not the best for the job compared to Piggy. Piggy is the brains behind Ralph who gives the essential idea to further progress the island.

William Golding’s novel, Lord of the Flies, contributes many pessimistic events that overrule the good, but there are some optimistic inputs that are added to the story. Ralph, Jack and all the other boys have been trapped on an island with very little resources, and are basically doomed from the beginning, but they all have hope including Ralph. Golding has included hope into bad situations such as Ralphs defiance to Jack’s tribe, Sam and Eric's refusal to betray Ralph, and Ralph's rescue. The boys spend some time on the island, and eventually forget how to act civilized and start acting like wild savages. Many readers say that Golding's writing is all pessimistic, but there is good in all his writing

“In a 2005 survey about gay bullying statistics, teens reported that the number two reason they are bullied is because of their actual or perceived sexual orientation or gender expression”, according to bullyingstatistics.org. It has also been shown that those who are bullied themselves often go on to bully others because it is all they know, or that bullying covers up their own shames. The character Jack Merridew in Lord of the Flies is not evil like many would argue, but rather is ashamed of the fact that he is gay and closeted. This is supported by the hunter’s casting off of religion and government, Jack’s inability to hunt unless in front of other boys, and the beast as a symbol.

“When you see corruption being rewarded and honesty becoming a self-sacrifice–you may know that your society is doomed”(Rand). This was stated by Russian-American novelist Ayn Rand; the extract relates to the novel William Golding wrote called Lord of the Flies. Golding wrote about a group of schoolboys trapped on an island from a plane crash. The boys had to figure out how to survive without grownups. Trying to survive was difficult because they had to have common sense and order. They lose those traits throughout the book which resulted in selfishness and corrupt behaviors.

What went wrong in the Lord of the Flies? Some may say Jack and some may say Roger, but what are the real reasons for the downfall of the boys? They are, the loss of hope, the loss of order, and the passing of time.

“We all have a social mask, right? We put it on, we go out, put our best foot forward, our best image. But behind that social mask is a personal truth, what we really, really believe about who we are and what we 're capable of” (Phil McGraw) one once said. In Lord of the Flies the characters wear a social mask that opposes their true feelings. Written by William Golding, the story revolves around a group of boys who become stranded on an island and must depend on themselves to survive. They elect a chief, a boy named Ralph. However, as the story progresses, the group become influenced by Jack, an arrogant choir chapter boy. Intriguingly, although they desire to be with Jack and join his tribe, the boys remain with Ralph for most of the story. The rhetorical triangle, which analyzes a speaker or writer based on three ideas- ethos, pathos, and logos-, helps many to better understand the children’s actions and mentality; ethos focuses on the credibility and ethics of the speaker while pathos concerns how the speaker appeals to the emotions of the audience and logos is about the speaker’s use of evidence to appeal to the audience’s sense of reason. The boys stay with Ralph because of Ralph’s use of ethos but prefer to be with Jack because of Jack’s use of pathos and ethos which shows Golding’s message- humans were masks.

Following a traumatic plane crash on a small island in the Pacific, a group of young British schoolboys are left to fend for themselves. Food and water are never an issue, but desires for meat, order, and rescue leave the boys divided between savagery and civilization. The ensuing novel is William Golding’s Lord of the Flies. Out of the older boys, leaders emerge and focus on the issues of the island, eventually creating a devastating divide. Two of the older boys, Piggy and Simon, are both benevolent, important characters, symbolic of the positive aspects and achievements of man; they must die to reinforce a social hierarchy of human instinct and demonstrate how savagery and contempt

Humans develop in societies with rules, order and government, but humans are not perfect, they have many deficiencies so do the societies they live in. When a group of schoolboys land on a tropical island, Ralph takes on the role of leader by bringing all of the boys together and organizing them. He first explains “There aren’t any grownups. We shall have to look after ourselves.”(p.33), this brings up the question if the boys will have prosperity or will they succumb to the evil on the island. At first the young boys start being successful and civilized, but chaos soon overruns them and evil starts to lurk over the island.The fictional story of the group of British schoolboys stranded on an island and the decisions they make, relates back

A saying that is used throughout the Norton Marching Band is “everybody all of the time,” which is to say if one person messes up once that causes more problems than just their own one mistake. If one was to miss one day of rehearsal there would be a hole and another individual would miss their dots because they had no one to guide off of. Golding believed that “everybody all of the time” was true in the sense of society. In his novel Lord Of The Flies Piggy, Ralph, and Jack have failures during the novel that cause other mistakes to be more significant. Proving that society fails due to the failure of the individual.

William Golding’s Lord of the Flies depicts a society of young schoolboys who are stranded on an island. Order is kept for very short period, and as the story progresses we see the boys revert to savagery. The true nature of man is then revealed as the reader sees the darkness in the boys as soon as order ceases. It’s now clear to see how man is naturally evil, with this darkness tamed only with authority and order.

In Lord of the Flies, William Golding engages in a deep and complex study of human nature, and explores the capacity of human beings to commit acts of evil. Golding explores the conflict between civilization versus savagery through characterization. To learn further in this conflict, I will examine the characters of Ralph, Jack, Piggy, Simon and even Roger.

William Golding uses literary elements perfectly to describe characters and scenes in the novel. Focusing on the choir, we can see that Golding introduces the choir by calling them associating them as “creatures”. As they approach Ralph and the rest of the boys Golding writes “the sweating march along the blazing beach had given them the complexion if newly washed plums” (Golding 19). This metaphor compares the sweaty boys to a washed plum; they both are dripping of water/ sweat from the heat. Golding also uses a lot of imagery to describe the characters. “He was tall, thin, and bony; and his hair was red underneath … His face was crumpled and ugly”. (Golding 20). This quote by Golding illustrates Jacks looks. Golding tends to repeat the

“Isolation is a dream killer” (Barbara Sher). In the novel Lord of the Flies written by William Golding, kids stranded on an island must figure out how to survive. By hunting pigs and building shelters the kids tried to subsist on the island. Through the process of hunting, the kids became cruel, evolving to the point of being barbaric. Thus, through the barbaric actions of the boys and the outside world, Golding shows that savagery exists in all people.

While the Id is the instinctual side of the human psyche, the Ego remains the more organized and realistic side of the human psyche. William Golding demonstrates this idea in his book, Lord of the Flies, by using his protagonists, Jack and Ralph, as the incarnations of the Id and Ego. While Jack embodies the Id, Ralph embodies the Ego. Golding explains that because these two aspects of the human psyche lie on two opposite sides of the spectrum, they cannot coexist. In Lord of the Flies, by William Golding, Jack and Ralph’s contrasting personalities cause conflict and heavy tension between the two characters over time.

Sir William Golding’s 1954 novel, Lord of the Flies, written during the aftermath of the Second World War, is more than just words on paper. It is a satire that reflects what would happen if society did not have civilization, what would happen if our government systems and rules did not exist. His novel expresses his view on the world after personally experiencing a war, seeing the peril of society, witnessing the horrors of the events that took place at Juno Beach and living in a war.