Loss Of Identity In William Golding's Lord Of The Flies

Identity defines who somebody is; when one loses their identity, it can be caused by many reasons. Lord of the Flies is a novel about a plane full of boys aged six through twelve landing on an island during a war, without any adult supervision; they try to find ways to survive; they reveal the dark side of humanity. Some of the boys violently kill each other, which causes them to not trust each other. The events that occur on the island scar them, and they will never go back to the way they used to be. Roger, Ralph, and Jack all lose their identity on the island over time, and there are many factors that contribute to their loss of identity.

To begin, Ralph has hope in the beginning, when they land on the island, then he starts to lose hope and believes that they will never get rescued. Ralph realizes that without the smoke signal, there is no hope of getting rescued, “ ‘Can 't they see? Can 't they understand? Without the smoke signal we’ll die here? Look at that!’ ” (Golding 139). Ralph realizes that everybody has forgotten about how important the fire is, and that the fire is their only hope of being rescued. Ralph starts to lose hope because nobody is taking responsibility to attempt to get them rescued. Ralph realizes that even though they have been rescued, his life will never be

Lastly, when they first land on the island, Roger is very quiet and independent, then as they stayed on the island for a longer time, he becomes very violent. Roger begins to show his violent side by throwing stones at Henry, "Roger stooped, picked up a stone, aimed, and threw it at Henry-threw it to miss" (Golding 62). This explains how Roger is beginning to show his very dark and savage behavior; this specific action is not as brutal as many of the other series of actions that he has completed. They are actually somewhat still civilized as Roger restrains the desire to actually hit Henry with his hands. Roger later shamelessly kills Piggy with a boulder, "The