Theme Of Cruelty In Lord Of The Flies

William Golding’s fictional, British novel, Lord of the Flies, presents a character that serves a two-part function as a “scapegoat” and a certain commentary on life. During WWII, a group of British boys are being evacuated via plane when they crash and are stranded on an island without adults. As time progresses, the innate evilness of human nature begins to overcome the savage society of young boys while Piggy, an individual representation of brains without brawn, becomes an outlier as he tries to resist this gradual descent of civilness and ends up shouldering the blame for the wrongdoings of the savage tribe. Up until his untimely death, Piggy is portrayed as the most intellectual and most civil character in the group of stranded boys. Right from the beginning, Piggy realized that “[they] got to do something,” (8) and he recognized the shell Ralph had picked up as a conch.

(Golding 4) This shows that Roger demonstrates his desire to abandon civility for savagery. Later on in the book he turns more into an inhuman person because he ends up dropping a big rock and piggy and kills him. It states that “Roger, with a sense of

(Golding 180-181) At this point in the story, Roger is acting on his primitive instincts and becoming the biggest savage on the island. Speaking about his savagery, Roger kills Piggy with a huge boulder, which not only kills Piggy but destroys the conch into smithereens. Savagery has overtaken Roger, and his murder of Piggy symbolizes savagery and the destruction of their civilization. This quote shows that Jack's cruelty is rubbed off on his people.

Additionally, the conch shell symbolizes organization and authority, and when it gets smashed, so does the civilization left in the boys. They first elected their leader, Ralph, based solely on the fact that he was attractive and he had the conch. During the moments when it seemed the boys were contemplating their choice, they did an overview of each of the candidates including Ralph, “there was a stillness about Ralph as he sat that marked him out. There was his size, attractive appearance and most obscurely, yet most powerfully, there was the conch… the delicate thing balanced on his knees and set him apart.” (22).

William Golding’s novel Lord of the Flies is about a group of young boys, aged around 6-12, that crash land on an uninhabited island, and without adults, they fail miserably. In E.L Epstein’s article “NOTES ON LORD OF THE FLIES” Golding reveals in his novel that the flaws in human nature lead to a flawed society; which is seen in society (Epstein par. 3). Lord of the Flies provides an example of how imperfections in human nature start to surface when people are in a groups. One imperfection is their tendency to do violent and demeaning things as a mob.

There are conditions in which cruelty and violence become very present, “Chaos is one, fear is another” (Golding). Chaos and fear can cause the boys on the island to become aggressive, leading Roger to Piggy’s death. Chaos is especially present on the island when the boys are hunting down a pig and doing insane dances with chants. The boys all chant and dance, which makes them more violent than ever before on the island. Fear also comes into play when all the boys believe that there is a big beast that comes in the night.

Life is troublesome on its own, but when your loved ones betray you it gets worse. Betrayal is an evident theme in Lord of the Flies, Macbeth and Fifth Business. The betrayers typically are your friends, your family and most often yourself. In the novels Lord of the Flies, Macbeth and Fifth Business friends are the characters worst enemies.

The hidden savagery of humans that is dormant because of civilization is presented in Lord of the Flies through its symbolism, repetition and diction. The struggle for power and control on the island led to the exposure of savage nature that is present in the boys who were forced into a lawless place. Throughout the novel reason and logic are abandoned, causing the boys to act on whims and be controlled by their instincts rather than control themselves. Civilization has dampened human’s savage ways, but believing that there are no consequences could lead to the downfall of humanity and the return of the primitive ways society believes it has abandoned. Golding wrote Lord of the Flies to expose the hidden savagery that humans possess and how if humans aren’t careful they will become the savages

Roger chose to torture the boys, and eventually he chose to kill Piggy. The experience of the island pulled something ugly out of him specifically, but in all the ways that matter, he was fully aware and in control of his choice to murder another person. The other murder, Simon’s, is different in that no one person chose to kill the boy. No one in particular summoned the malice to beat him to death, but the group as a whole lost their individual values and assimilated into the group. Chapter 2 of Opening Skinner’s Box explains that people abandon their core beliefs in order to satisfy some primal need to conform.

In William Golding’s Lord of The Flies, the question of moral and humaneness is very prominent. As the book advances, the boys start to kill one another and become more and more impulsive. The boys weren’t always this way, but when the reality that they weren’t going to get rescued set in, the need for survival kicked also in. “Something he had not known was there rose in him and compelled him to make the point, loudly and again” (Golding 37). In this quote, it is evitable that Ralph had an urge to partake in savagery, although it’s not in Ralph’s nature to partake in such things.

Lastly, in the end of the book, Piggy, Ralph, and Sam and Eric, a set of twins, are the only ones who have not joined a new tribe created by Jack. The other older boys raid what they have left and leads Ralph, Piggy and the twins to confront Jack. While Jack and Ralph are yelling at each other and fighting, a large boulder rolls down a hill and strucks Piggy, who falls off of a cliff and quickly dies. On page 181, the narrator states, “Then the sea breathed again in a long, slow sigh, the water boiled white and pink over the rock; and when it went, sucking back again, the body of Piggy was gone. This time the silence was complete.

Throughout William Golding’s Lord of the Flies, he proves that human nature is savage. In this novel, a group of young boys survive a plane crash and land on a deserted island where they attempt to create a society from scratch, but ultimately fall into chaos and barbarity. In Lord of the Flies, Golding portrays the theme that one’s primitive nature is revealed when civilization is destroyed through symbolism, diction, and characterization. The boys immediately recognized the conch’s significance when they found it.

“... The number of abortions performed annually in the U.S. [is about] 1.06 million a year” (National Right to Life News). This means that in just a single decade, 10.6 million children are murdered in the United States before they are ever born. This sickening loss of life is just the latest link in an unbroken chain of human depravity stretching back to the Garden of Eden. Humans are fundamentally wicked. William Golding, author of the bestselling novel ‘Lord of the Flies’, understood this basic principle.

Thesis Statement: In Lord of the Flies William Golding throughout the book is trying to show you that society should recognize man is evil. Introduction Paragraph: In the book Lord of the Flies the author William Golding shows a group of boys losing their innocence throughout their life stuck on this inhabited island in the pacific ocean. These boys go from being quiet and shy to violent and dangerous young little boys. Golding uses the pigs, hunting, and the boys face painting to show their lose of innocence throughout the story. There 's no rules of any sort on this island these boys landed on they are free to do whatever they want whenever they want.

Throughout the novel of Lord of the Flies, William Golding provides a profound insight into human nature. Golding builds on a message that all human beings have natural evil inside them. To emphasize, the innate evil is revealed when there’s lack of civilization. The boys are constantly faced with numerous fears and eventually break up into two different groups. Although the boys believe the beast lives in the jungle, Golding makes it clear that it lurks in their hearts.