We Are Our Environment : Lord Of The Flies

The Lord of the Flies starts with a group of good little British boys who slowly morph into savages who commit acts that would scar an adult, and do it for fun. In the beginning of the book, when the boys are first stranded on the island, after Ralph has been elected chief, Jack starts talking about rules. “’We’ll have rules!’ he cried excitedly. “’Lots of rules! Then when anyone breaks ‘em- ‘” (Golding 29). The irony in this is not hard to find. When the boys were still innocent and civilized, they wanted rules. But, as life on the island grew more and more

In the Lord of the Flies, we encounter a group of boys who have been stranded on an uninhabited island after a plane crash. They are English school boys who have been taught proper manners and understand what it means to be under authority. They demonstrate this by their initial election of a chief and the establishment of a certain degree of rules and order. However, this falls apart very quickly and the boys’ sense of right and wrong are abandoned. What was the driving force behind the savagery and chaos that developed as the structure they established deteriorated? Was it the environmental factors they were cast into, or was it an innate biological instinct that drove them to the edge?

In William Golding’s Lord of the Flies, a group of young British boys are left stranded on an island after a fatal plane crash in the midst of a World War. With no communication to the outer world and no presence or influence of adults on the island, Ralph, Jack Merridew, and Piggy are forced to take initiative if the group of hopeless boys want to survive. The group of boys experience a drastic change throughout their time on the island, a change that no one would ever expect to occur to a young group of primed British boys. The leader of the stranded choirists on the island, Jack Merridew, shows such a change that he soon persuades other boys to follow his savage actions as the novel progresses. Though the changes to Jack’s mental and physical characteristics advance slowly at first, the final personality of Jack is instantly taken over at the climax of the novel to a dehumanized savage. Jack’s innocence is corrupted by his inability to withstand a society without rules proving man's good essential nature is altered by the evil within society.

In the Lord of the Flies when the British school boys are sent away and their plane crashes they’re stranded on an island without an adult. This leads them to do horrible things to each other. These boys who were stranded, lost every sense of innocence they used to have and that island took it from them. Some terrible things that the boys did was murder each other and slaughter a defenseless mama pig.

William Golding’s Lord of the Flies is an extremely popular book to all ages. This novel takes place in a nuclear war in an unspecified place. Some of these characters have normal personalities and home life situations, but others definitely do not. In the beginning of the novel, most of the boys are normal but getting stranded on a deserted island can really change a person, emotionally and mentally. An example of them being changed is, towards the end of the book, when they start getting crazy they all eat Simon and start to kill one another off of starvation. In this novel, it is pretty obvious that a person really can not trust anyone under these circumstances. Thus, there is a savage in all humans.Throughout

Due to the weak mental and physical states of many of the prisoners of war, they are easily controlled and persuaded; however, Edgar Derby and the British prisoners attempt to remind the American prisoners of their values, morals, and hygiene. Like Edgar Derby and the other American prisoners of war, the boys in Lord of the Flies are stranded with no way to return to civilization. As the boys, specifically Piggy and Ralph, find out that they are stranded on the island with no adults, Piggy says, “They’re all dead… an’ this is an island. Nobody don’t know we’re here. Your dad don’t know, nobody don’t know” (Golding 14). The island holds the boys, including Simon, captive while the reef serves as a barrier between them and the “dark blue of the sea”, enabling savagery and allowing them to witness and even participate in murder (Golding 14). While the description of the world beyond the reef sounds pleasant, the world war that is taking place in the adult world encourages the boys to fight over leadership positions, behave primitively, and even murder each other. The island and the reef “set up the right conditions for an ‘experiment’. Here, in other words, representative humanity (or at least

Chase Nelson HSE 3 5/14/18 Mrs. Cavanagh Lord of the Flies Essay “You have to hurt in order to know. Fall in order to grow. Lose in order to gain. Because most of life’s lessons are learned in pain.”

How does a group of young, innocent boys become ruthless savages? In the Lord of the Flies by William Goulding, a group of adolescents are left stranded on an island after a plane crash. They are without any influence of adults, a situation that leaves no doubt that the community will quickly lose control. Humans’ craving for power is the cause of all viciousness in the world.

In the novel The Lord of the Flies, by William Golding survival is seen to outway the built in need to behave as though one might usually and in some cases abandon their innocence in return for their life. The boys in the novel that are stuck on the island are forced to do things they wouldn’t even think of doing if they were under different circumstances. These actions may prove to be the end of this individual’s innocence as a child and turn them into something else. This is seen with Jack’s murder of the first pig, the brutal killing of Simon, and Sam and Eric betraying Ralph in order to not be harmed themselves.

In the Novel lord of the flies, it is evident that the stranded school boys attempt to build a civilization. Throughout the building of this new civilization the most challenging factor is leading the school boys and keeping the young boys on track, which is hard enough let alone being on an island with no adults. This making their civilization fragile. A constant fear is looming around the boys, which in the end is what breaks this fragile society. A fear of many factors including; Being stranded forever possibly, A beast and starvation. These fears divide the group of school boys and blinds the boys from the most important goal, surviving till their rescue.

Some have wondered if the beast inside human beings was put there by their environment, or if they all were born with it. Humans’ behavior all stems from their environment or the situation that they are in at the time. In the book Lord of the Flies by William Golding, a plane full of boys crashes on a deserted island with no adults to help them get by. Towards the end of the book the boys start to get wild like savages and start killing one another. The reason the boys started to act this way was because, of the environment and situation that they were forced to live in.

How drastically does your environment influence your behavior? In Lord of the Flies by William Golding, British boys are stranded on an island without rules. There is no parental supervision. And there is no civility. The boys went insane.

Thesis Statement: The novel Lord of the Flies by William Golding portrays the theme that regardless of each person’s different background and characteristics, every individual has the ability to commit brutal acts. While this book depicts Ralph and Piggy as the most civilized characters, and Jack and his hunters as young English choir boys, their actions reveal that they all have the capability to act violently.

Children are generally regarded as the symbol of innocence and purity throughout literature, media and in real life. However, this is not the case in the Lord of the Flies. At first in this novel, all of the children were innocent as they had just arrived from ordinary civilization. This is evident when Jack hesitates to kill a pig at the very beginning. However, as the story progresses, savagery becomes apparent in children; they perform vicious acts and they lose their innocence as a result of adaptability. Even though most of the children lose their innocence, not all of them do; the little uns in particular do not perform any savage acts, they just play on their own and do not participate in any violent murders.

Lord of the flies is a novel which is inevitably pointing to a racist view of society on how that british boys from a private school will often depict to a savage type of society and resort to violence and barbaric manors in the way they do things - if left alone unattended on an island that is.