Continuing, the unintentional murder of Simon demonstrates the boys’ chaotic and careless behaviours. Each boy played a role in the murder of Simon. They were all very eager to kill the “beast” and were chanting, “Kill the beast! Cut his throat! Spill his blood!
- The boys split into two tribes , one civilized and the other uncivilized. - They killed Simon and didn’t feel guilty about murdering him. - Jack had the power over the boys , and that let him tell them what to do. - Jack was the one that went savage first, then all the boys followed. - The boys are also chanting things like “Kill the pig.
After all, we're not savages,” (Golding, 1954, pg. 34). Ironically, Jack is the one that becomes the most uncivilized. Jack branches from Ralph’s main group and starts a tribe of his own. This tribe tortures and murders both humans and animals.
Often times, the human race questions whether humans are born with morals of if they are set upon us by society. Sir William Golding advocates the idea that moral constraints are learned rather than innate, and when removed from societal restraints humans return to a natural sinful state. In Sir William Golding’s Lord of the Flies, he uses the actions of the characters in the novel to demonstrate that with lack of a strongly established society, morality, immorality and amorality will change. After the boys crash on the island, it is apparent that the boys take some time to adjust to their new unsupervised lives. Even without the physical presence of authority, the boys “ .
Through the story, we see the boys loose their ability to stay civil and an example is, “The conch exploded into a thousand white fragments and ceased to exist” (181). This shows that as the boys started to become savage, they lost all their ability to be civil. Also, since Piggy still believed in the good and civility in people, when he died and the conch broke, we could see that they lost all touch to their past, civil lives. As the boys become more savage, they start becoming what they feared most, the Beastie. To the boys, the Beastie is portrayed as a wild beast that they must hunt down and is a higher power, but what the beast symbolizes is the human reaction to fear.
Jack was the first of the boys to show signs of aggression, then it turned on his hunters, and then it took control of Ralph. Jacks show of violence made even those who opposed it, Ralph and The Hunters result in hostile conduct. Violence is like a weed; it spreads and chokes out everything around it. Violence can be the demise of all
The conch, the beast, and the lord of the flies are all symbolic of the destruction and savagery that progresses on the island. Firstly the conch is a strong symbolic force on the island; its existence rivals that of a police officer or another member of the law. At the beginning when Ralph found the conch in the lagoon, he “blew a series of short blasts” (Golding, 15) this called order on the island as all of the boys made their way to the beach. Shortly after that they established that the only person who was holding the conch would be allowed to speak at the meetings. This worked well at the beginning, however, after the fire had been let out by the hunters, the boys started to disrespect the conch and what it stood for.
‘You knew, didn’t you? I’m part of you?’”(133). After the conversation with the Lord of the Flies, Simon goes unconscious, when Simon wakes up, he runs to the camp to tell everyone what he had just encountered. It was raining and there was thunder and lightning, thinking Simon is the beast, the boys deliriously murder him, “At once the crowd surged after it, poured down the rock, leapt on to the beast, screamed, struck, bit, tore. There were no words, no movements but the tearing of teeth and claws” (141).
Kill the pig, cut her throat, spill the blood' We first hear this when Jack as his hunters kill their first pig. This is a political allegory because Jack leads the group when they chant this and makes them usually say it every time they kill a pig, showing his dominant power. “next time there will be no mercy” Jack struggling between 2 sides, civilized side and the vicious, savage side within him. No longer can suppress the inner evil. ‘An Awesome stranger’- Focalisation is used by Golding here to give reader an idea of Jack’s point of view of the island- turning savage and primal degenerating (opposite of evolving.)
When people are isolated from society, they can change dramatically. In William Golding’s Lord of the flies, the boys land on an island that isolates them from society, which transforms the boys from civilized school boys to savage murderers. The island creates many difficulties for the boys. Some of the conflicts are, a struggle for power, surviving on a deserted island and lack of authority. These conflicts provoke the boy’s development into savage murderers .