Optimism In William Golding's 'The Island'

The book is filled with dark, gruesome moments. Moments that leave the reader with a destroyed faith in humanity. At surface value this is all true, but after looking deeper into the book many values are present. These value pertain to societal change and conformity. In the book, Piggy is the stereotypical fat boy with the glasses. The book portrays Piggy to be the victim of the society the boys have established on their small island. Despite what he has been through, Piggy makes an effort to contribute to the society the boys have built. The book says, “Piggy was … so full of pride in his contribution to the good of society … that he helped to fetch wood.” (Golding 186). The book also contains values of conformity for the better. The book tells of Jack who became upset with the tribe. He decides that he will break away from the tribe and invites everyone but Ralph to join him. One by one all the boys follow Jack to restart their society; leaving Ralph behind. The boys in the new tribe began to succeed more while Ralph begins to struggle. If Jack did not break away, then that success would have been

After Piggy's death the boys on the island could not be more divided. The boys had split into two groups, Jack and his tribe and Ralph who is now alone due to Piggy's death. “Dark, darker my light, and darker my desire,” (Stanza 3), as said by Roethke. The boys are only falling into deeper chaos on the island, and are continuing to become more savage. Jack’s desires, in particular, are becoming darker because he proceeds to throw spears and hunt down Ralph after he had witnessed Piggy's death. This is a great representation of how the boys are becoming more barbaric with the actions that they are taking. At first the boys desires were to get rescued. However, now Jack is coming to the realization that they will probably not be rescued and he wants to hunt down and kill Ralph. Jack starts reinstating to the boys on the island that he is their leader.

Ralph represents order and discipline, while Jack represents an unhealthy drive for power and savagery. In the beginning of the novel, Ralph is voted the leader of the group and attempts to make life on the island disciplined and civilized, like their life in England. However, throughout the novel Jack rivals Ralph’s leadership role, attempting to overthrow him. As the boys’ savage impulses increase, more of them begin to side with Jack instead of going with Ralph. As Ralph loses his hold over the boys, almost all of them begin to act violently and barbaric. An example of this is when the children of the island murder Simon for no justifiable reason. Even Piggy and Ralph partake in the murder, showing that the violent human impulse is in

The boys’ beginning on the island starts with a very positive and playful atmosphere. To begin, Ralph and Piggy find a conch shell that they think will help call

The book also shows a lot about the survival of the fittest, which can be seen when looking at the character Piggy. I think Piggy was shown as the smartest boy on the island, he had good ideas and he was very level headed and because of the he should have been the leader. He knew what had to be done to survive and to get them rescued, but because of his physical appearance he was looked down on. This can be seen right at the beginning of the book where he offers to go with Jack and Ralph to explore the island, but Jack turns him down saying “You’re no good for a job like this” as he was overweight and has asthma. Although there are no famous examples showing this, it is common thing that I’ve come across and I think that most others have as well.

William Golding wrote Lord of the Flies in 1954. It tells the story of a group of young boys who are stranded on a previously uninhabited island with no adults around to save them. Golding used the idea of an island as a blank canvas backdrop in several ways which greatly enhance the effectiveness of the story.

Early into the book, we are introduce to a plethora of characters who all seem to differ but are all very young, it starts with Ralph and Piggy, as they explore piggy brings up that they might be there forever: “ ‘We may stay here till we die’ with that word the heat seemed to increase till it became a threatening weight and the lagoon attacked them with a blinding engulfence.”(Golding, 14) The blinding engulfing simple refers to what they fear, the unknowing. Later into chapter one, a child brings up the thought at the first meeting of a beast roaming the island: “ ‘Beastie?’ ‘A snake-like thing. Ever so big. He saw it.’ “ Golding 35,36). After this was said the others went silent solely because of that idea and they don’t know what is on this uninhabited island they’ve crashed on.

The boys start out civilized but lack of discipline causes them to lose civilized traits. The first time inner evil shows is during Ralph and Piggy’s first conversation. Ralph tells Piggy his name but does not care enough to ask for Piggy’s name. When Ralph realizes he should learn everybody's name, he starts with Piggy; Piggy was fine with any name “so long as they don’t call [him] by what they used to call [him] at school” (Golding 11). The fat boy revealed he used to be Piggy, but pleads that Ralph does not “tell the others” (11). During a meeting, in front of all the boys on the island, Ralph tells everyone “his real name’s piggy” (21). Ralph is not becoming a savage or being controlled by his inner evil in this example, but it shows how the boys started off civilized but had a slow descent into savagery. Piggy begs Ralph to not tell the other boys the name he was made fun of with in school. Jokingly, he tells everyone that Piggy was called Piggy knowing that Piggy will lose respect, even from the smallest of kids. While the other boys were resting, Roger was “hidden behind a great palm [tree]” watching Henry play in the sand (60).

Having such a divers array of people living in such close proximity, and not being able to escape one another also influenced the attitudes, and actions of the boys. In normal circumstances, when two people don’t get along it is relatively easy to not be around them, and hang around with others in which your more compatible with. However due to the fact that they are on a rather small island, and that their society only consists of a few people, it is not so easy for rare intellectual to escape people with ideals opposite to their own. Therefore often suffers defeat. This is very true in the case of Piggy.

In William Golding’s Lord of the Flies, a plane escaping Britain in the midst of the next World War crash lands on a desert island. The surviving group of schoolboys begins to fend for themselves without adult supervision. Immediately, a boy named Ralph rises as the leader when he gathers the children with a conch shell. The other children draw toward his charisma and mature age. However, not everyone agrees with this institution of leadership, namely Jack Merridew. The island corrupts as Jack gains a foothold of power. Because of this corruption, two children--Simon and Piggy--die. Throughout this story, these crises are blamed on man’s inner evil prevailing with a lack of civilization and become evident through Jack’s interactions with Ralph,

First off, the kids themselves show how they have been corrupted by society on the island. The children learn things from society, for example they form a leadership amongst themselves and create a community. There were many arguments about the leadership and what the final decision should be. Ralph thinks he is the final say and he shows this when Piggy says, “You said you wanted things done. So as we could be rescued.” Ralph fires back at Piggy “Oh, shut up!” (65). This shows how Ralph has been corrupted by society because he thinks he can boss everyone around and tell people what to do. He probably learned this from other leaders he knows or researched about. Also, kids learn many things from grown ups and people of higher authority. Being stranded on an island is very scary but these kids apply what they have learned in society. Especially Piggy who is by far the most educated of all of them. He explains to the others how, “Grown ups know things, they ain’t afraid of the dark. They’d meet up and have tea and discuss. Then things ‘ud be all right” (95). Piggy knows what adults do in society and is just

Loss of innocence is a major theme in the novel due to WWII. These boys had to give up their innocence and childhood to go to a military to school teaching them how to fight and protect themselves in battle. As young boys, they were given guns and other weapons to learn how to use in case they were ever drafted into

the story to describe these kids and one of the ways he does this is through the theme war leads to destruction showing the true inner evil even in the most innocent things in life.He uses the idea of war as his main plot point and the perfect medium to connect the crashing of the plane to being rescued by a naval officer. When the boys crash on the island due to being attacked, they were ironically rescued by a naval officer preparing to go back

<br>Piggy often says that they act like "a crowd of kids". He says to Ralph that "grownups know things. They ain't afraid of the dark. They'd meet and have tea and discuss. Then things ‘ud be all right". This is perhaps the best example of irony in the novel. It is because the adults could not get together and discuss their problems that they were stranded on the island in the first place. If they had been able to meet and discuss they boys would have never fleed their school and would have never been shot down, therefore avoiding ever being on the island.

When they first arrive at the island, Jack and the rest of the boys wears the same mask of innocence as every other human being, but it soon begins to slip. Throughout a massacre of pigs, Jack and the other boys releases their animal nature. Initially, the boys try to set up an island society that mimics the English society, with discipline and authority. The behavior of the boys is the same as they showed at school back home, but the need to be the survival of the fittest pushes the boys’ past their humanized nature. The children want to have familiar rules. Piggy says, “We’ll have rules!” he cried excitedly. “Lots of rules! Then when anyone breaks ‘em--” (Golding 25). Everyone follows the rules in the beginning, hoping that it will lead their rescue. But when their hopes dwindle, they soon fall out of order, becoming two independent and opposed groups. To become superior to the others, Jack kills pigs and humans and earns the place of a tribe leader. His actions show that humans act to