Autonomy In Lord Of The Flies Essay

This is what will happen when boys are left to their own devices. In the post World War Two novel The Lord of the Flies by William Golding, a group of young children, all boys, are stranded on an island after a plane crash. At first, the boys relish in their carefree, happy, island environment, but eventually after many terrible events it turns into a hellish nightmare. Although it may seem that complete autonomy is a good idea for each individual’s lives, in actuality humankind needs a strong, but not absolute, government to help ensure the continuity of the human race.

Throughout the novel, we see the effects of a poor, indecisive leader: the children crumble into two different factions, leading to death and civil war. Ralph’s inability to control Jack’s temptations and lack of care for the rules early on sets the novel down a dark trail. “‘Jack! Jack!’ ‘The rules!’ shouted Ralph. ‘You’re breaking the rules!’ ‘Who cares?’”

Jack is the prime example of this. “Jack turned on Ralph and spoke between his teeth. ‘See? They do what I want.’” (Golding 179). He does not seem to care about what the other boys think and is only looking out for himself; he feels as though he is better than everyone else. Also evident, like that of past civilizations, is that Jack seems to enjoy beating the members of his tribe for fun or for very little reason to instill fear. “‘He’s going to beat Wilfred.’ [...] ‘I don’t know. He didn’t say.’ [...] ‘But the chief didn’t say why?’ ‘I never heard him’” (Golding 158). A great parallel to this is that of the Stanford Prison Experiment. Jack is representative of the guards and the rest of the boys as the prisoners. “‘They (the guards) steadily increased their coercive aggression tactics, humiliation and dehumanization of the prisoners’, Zimbardo recalls.” (SFP 2). Clearly, too strong of a leader is unadvised: while it has its benefits, there are also much stronger