William Golding 's Lord Of The Flies

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Friedrich Nietzsche’s Genealogy of Morals offers an account of the historical development of morals and values from their earliest origin in the basic forms of human social interaction. More specifically, Nietzsche’s account theorizes about the origins of power and ethics and their implications on society. William Golding’s Lord of Flies exemplifies Nietzsche’s fundamental beliefs concerning power and ethics through the distinct characters and their power struggles on the island. In an absence of civilization and social controls, true nature is revealed through the characters in the novel and the power struggles that develop on the island. Similarly to Nietzsche’s beliefs, Golding uses the plot of Lord of the Flies as “an attempt to trace…show more content…
Furthermore, Nietzsche argues that anything that has existed for any length of time has been given different meanings and interpretations by different powers that master and subdue it. For this reason, if something has a purpose, it is a sign that a “will to power” is acting upon it. Concepts do not have an inherent purpose, but rather different forces construct their purpose through the intrinsic drive to dominate. More specifically, “the cause of the origin of a thing and its eventual utility, its actual employment and place in a system of purposes, lie worlds apart; whatever exists, having somehow come into being, is again and again reinterpreted to new ends, taken over, transformed, and redirected by some power superior to it”(Nietzsche 77). Nietzsche’s claim is that the will to power is the fundamental drive that influences all things. This idea is exemplified through the concept of punishment and Nietzsche contends, “Thus one also imagined that punishment was devised for punishing. But purposes and utilities are only signs that a will to power has become a master of something less powerful and imposed upon it the character of a function; and the entire history of a “thing,” an organ, a custom can in this way be a continuous sign-chain of ever new interpretations and adaptations whose causes do not even have to be related to one another”(Nietzsche 77). This example illustrates that while the act of punishing has always been
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