To What Extent Does a Marxist Reading of Lord of the Flies Lead to a Fuller Understanding of the Novel?

When reading a novel, have you ever realized the importance of power, money, or class to the story? This is called a Marxist perspective. Many books can be viewed with the Marxist perspective; Lord of the Flies is a great example of how differences in power impact the story. In Lord of the Flies, a plane carrying a group of English schoolboys is shot down and crashes onto an uninhabited island. With the pilot dead, the boys are left to fend for themselves. They are forced to hunt for food, build shelters, and create their own civilization. Lord of the Flies, on the surface, may resemble any other adventure story; however, with a Marxist approach, this story revolves around a struggle for power within the group of boys.

In the novel ‘Lord of the Flies’, Golding uses the theme of violence surfacing throughout the text. One reason for this was, Golding believed that every individual has the potential for evil and that the flawed human nature is seen in ‘mankind’s essential sickness’. His belief in this arrived through his time spent in war, so his aim was to challenge Ballantyne’s novel ‘Coral Island’, and in which Golding’s book the truth would be shown about his own thoughts of the darkness of mankind. As the theme of violence is in the heart of the novel, another reason of this is due to the quick breakdown of civilisation on the island. Through the breakdown, an ideal situation of

Throughout Lord of the Flies, Golding shows his views of the inherent evil of humans. He shows how humans can be in such a savage state, practically mimicking the way of life of their prehistoric ancestors. He exemplifies this with acts of carnage carried on by the young stranded children. It all started with a slight urge to hunt down a pig and then continued on to murdering another human being. Golding shows his views best at the end of the book with the boys being rescued by a Navy crew, which would go on to war it self.

In Lord Of The Flies by William Golding, Golding claims that no matter how civilized or innocent all human beings are, the surrounding environment can change how people interact with each other and turn them from civilized beings into savages. He uses Jack to show that when human nature does not have any restraints, it will slowly evolve into savagery. Jack at first is a respectful, civilized person that is willing to communicate and cooperate with Ralph, but when confronting with the act of killing a pig makes him lose all sense of shame and conscience, he starts acting evil and wanting to hunt Ralph. By the end of the novel, Golding ultimately shows that everyone is capable of being evil and it is only society’s rules that keep most individuals from acting out evil.

The Lord of the Flies by William Golding is tale of a group of young boys who become stranded on a deserted island after their plane crashes. Intertwined in this classic novel are many themes, most that relate to the inherent evil that exists in all human beings and the malicious nature of mankind. In The Lord of the Flies, Golding shows the boys' gradual transformation from being civilized, well-mannered people to savage, ritualistic beasts.

In the Lord of the Flies by William Golding, he uses the idea of good and evil throughout

This story shows that the evil around us can sometimes deceive us into wrongdoing if we do not trust our moral instincts or trust those in higher positions than us. William Golding, the author of Lord of the Flies, used his work to show the public that fear can lead people to destruction and evil ways if we do not attempt to control the beast within us. The way that Golding showed his audience this, was by carefully and thoughtfully placing symbolism throughout the novel and in each and every character.

Evil is at in the center of anyone’s soul, and that’s what Golding shows in Lord of the Flies. The book is about a plane crashing onto an abandoned island, and a large group of boys is stranded without any adults. They let their animalistic sides slowly take over throughout the book, becoming practically different people. Golding shows this evil throughout the book with early signs of evil, characters with evil intentions, and clear signs of evil at work. The beginning of the book is about the boys meeting up with each other and establishing rules for their group.

In the novel, Lord of the Flies, William Golding is able to use his outstanding writing abilities utilizing metaphors, symbolism, and other literary devices to establish a hidden message throughout the novel. The hidden message that Golding builds on is that there is a natural evil inside every human being, which is suppressed in an organized society through laws, rules, and punishment. The young boys in the novel are on an island all by themselves. There is no punishment for their actions, therefore allowing that evil to come out of most of the boys. All humans have an innate evil within them and that evil is brought out when there is a lack of civilization and consequence as seen in Simon’s murder,

Knowing William Golding took part of World War II, we as readers can understand why Golding wrote Lord of the Flies and other survival-fiction novels. When the story was released in 1954, Golding described his book as "an attempt to trace the defects of society back to the defects of human nature." It is unmistakably obvious to anyone who reads this book that Golding is trying to exaggerate the good and evil in the boys on the island. Throughout the book, we learn that people, including children, are not pure goodness. Deep inside there is an evil constantly trying to rise to the surface of our minds. Golding proves that eventually the evil within us will destroy us. Golding saw in World War II what

Lord of the flies is a novel written by William Golding. At first glance, it seem like a simple adventure of story of some boys getting trapped on a desert island. The go far beyond just telling a story. In the novel, Golding suggest that evil exist in all human being and when civilization break down and when they are left alone, human will revert to savagery, cruelty, and brutality instead of trying to act civilized. William Holding asserts that man is inherently evil in his novel Lord of the Files by using the symbols: huts, hair, and pig's head.

However, their sense of identity slowly fades away into the abyss. The outlook on looking down upon someone weaker than themselves creates a desire for violence and bloodshed. In the novel Lord of the Flies, by William Golding, evil is inherent in human nature shown through by the lack of authority and supervision among

William Golding writes that human nature is evil. He suggests that evil is an inborn characteristic and man is given it. In his writing, the reader can infer that most of the characters in “The Lord of the Flies” represent savagery and wrong-doing. Golding tells readers through his writing that human nature is malicious and villainous. A quote from the book, "'Kill the pig!

In the words of the philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau, “Our greatest evils flow from ourselves.” In other words, humans harbor an ever present looming evil nature within themselves. Evil is the force in nature that governs and gives rise to wickedness and sin, or the wicked or immoral part of someone. This concept of inner evil rising to the surface permeates William Golding’s dystopian novel Lord of the Flies, that evil exists in every human, proven through the characterization of the marooned boys. There is foreshadowing of the dangers of the boys’ inner immorality from one of the boys, Simon. As the novel progresses, evil starts asserts itself as the boys cast off their innocence and humanity, and turning against each other. Even the

Thomas Hobbes once said, “Hereby it is a manifest, that during the time man live without a common power to keep them all in awe, they are in that condition which is called war . . .” (Hobbes 64). Thomas Hobbes, an enlightenment thinker, believes that humans are born evil, and without a good leader, everything will turn into chaos. William Golding’s Lord of the Flies rightly gives examples on Hobbes’ viewpoint. Throughout the story, it shows the process in which the boys slowly loses their civilized self and turn into savages, how the boys would do anything just for survival or just purely entertainment. William Golding shows the innate evilness within humans by employing religious allegory as by using events, characters, and settings that