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Essay about Lord of the Flies: Civilization vs Savagery

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The human mind is made of up two instincts that constantly have conflict: the instinct to live by society’s rules and the instinct to live by your own rules. Our civilized will has been to live morally by law and order, and our savage will has been to act out for our own selfish needs. We each choose to live by one or the other depending on how we feel is the correct way to live. In this allegorical novel, William Golding represents the transformation from civilization to savagery in the conflict between two of the main characters: Ralph who represents law and order and Jack who represents savagery and violence. Lord of the Flies has remained a very controversial novel to this day with its startling, brutal, and truthful picture of the …show more content…

After several failed attempts, he finally accomplishes his goal, but with a price; he ruins the boys chances of being rescued by letting the signal fire go out and not taking it as seriously as he should. He continuously claims that, “We can light the fire again” (58); his will to be rescued is waning slowly. Ralph addresses these issues with his group expecting them to be re-motivated, but the boys have surprisingly ignored him and resumed playing. Instead of caring about being rescued, the boys start caring more about hunting and doing an interpretive dance inspired by hunting pigs, including one time with Robert “…screaming and struggling with the strength of frenzy”(101). With progressing events, the boys are becoming more and more irresponsible, and their chance of going back to civilization is fading quickly. Soon, a deadly turn of events will ignite their carelessness into something more dangerous and completely unexpected.
The downward spiral towards the boys’ strategy actually started in the beginning of the book. To hunt successfully, Jack decided to use clay and charcoal for camouflage against the pigs’ awareness; this later becomes a trend for his hunters especially when “the mask compelled them” to kill (53). A new and frightening advancement to the clay paint is the pig’s blood, which
Smith 3 shows how increasingly comfortable Jack’s tribe is becoming with hunting and savagery. As soon as Jack creates his own tribe, he

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