Lord Of The Flies: Savagery

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Lord of the Flies William Golding's Lord of the Flies is an incredibly intricate story. On face value it works a simple, if not disturbing, story of a group of boy's descent in to madness. Digging deeper brings up parallels with the war going on outside the island, and looking even deeper opens up so many doors it would be hard to list them all. Without a doubt, it's a very important novel historically, and can be picked apart every which way for a very long time. One of the themes in the book is of savagery. Jack Merridew and Roger become sadistic killers looking for power of some sort. Ralph and Piggy are considered the calmer and more logical end of the group, trying to keep what semblance of a society is still left. Although their intentions are peaceful, they inherit a sense of savagery in the story. This leads to the idea that, even though Merridew and Roger are the straight-forward antagonists, there lies some sort of antagonism in each one of the boys, which leads to the destabilization of the group.…show more content…
The view switches between him and a few sorted others, but it mostly focuses on his side. This sets him as the protagonist, even if only subconsciously. His intentions aren't to cause any trouble, but the way it seems, Merridew just will not have another person leading the group. The conch holds his symbol of power over the boys, and thus the breaking of it symbolizes the loss of any sort of power. This all seems like a tragic story about the dissolution of a society in to chaos, but the chaos was not completely one-sided. Ralph finds himself in power when he brings the boys together from across the island. He loses the power when Merridew entices them with meat and action. Ralph loses most over time, and tries to win them back with logic and reasoning. This causes a conflict between Ralph and Merridew in terms of leadership, and causes more violence to occur, and eventually the death of three
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