20 June 2021
Lord of the flies is the story of a group of young boys stranded on an island after an aerial accident. They find that the island they are on is uninhabited and full of wild fruits and pigs. They start off with a chief and a system of assembly where they could congregate and talk. However, as the story progresses, this unity breaks down and the boys go from civilized and educated to uncivilized and driven by their worst instincts. The story has many themes, the main one being that negativity is not external but present inside us.
“Fancy thinking the Beast was something you could hunt and kill! You knew, didn’t you? I’m part of you? Close, close, close! I’m the reason why it’s no go? Why things are what they are?”
Ralph, the elected chief of the boys, stresses on the smoke signal at the mountain being lit all the time. Even though all of them agree at the beginning, Jack and the choir take grow a strong passion to kill wild pigs that are found roaming in the island that they take the fire for hunting instead. This results in them losing an opportunity of survival as a ship which could have potentially saved them passes by without noticing the presence of the boys. This causes a rift between Ralph and Jack which would grow farther apart through the course of the story. This incident reflects how Jack and the boys preferred a short term goal to the ultimate goal of wanting to be rescued from the island. Even though Ralph is angry with them, he takes part in the feast.
Throughout the story, Ralph and Piggy insists on reason and logic, while Jack slowly descends down to savagery and tribalism as he proclaims that they should kill. The boy’s slow descent into savagery and the ebbing away of their moral values is symbolically marked by them taking of their clothes, painting their faces with various colors. The lack of parental oversight and rules accelerates this process.
Moreover, the rumors of a beastie, a large snake start circulating among the boys from the onset of the story. Ralph tries to deal with it from a logical perspective saying that if any such snake existed it would have been spotted by them. Even though the logic makes sense to everybody, they fall for the claim anyways. The little boys start discussing about beasts coming from the unexplored depths of the sea and about ghosts. Jack instead of placating their anxiety says that they should band together and instead hunt for it. Thus, a certain rumor starts occupying their minds and dictating their actions. Even Ralph, the seemingly logical one, thinks about it as they start building shelters.
While building the shelters, it becomes clear as daylight that the boys have lost their sense of rationality as they veer of playing and bathing in the waters, instead of building a home for themselves. Jack, on the other hand, is succumbed to the passion of killing and bloodlust as he focuses all his time and energy on hunting down pigs instead.
“We did everything adults would do. What went wrong?”
All this could have been attributed to their childish minds not being able to grasp the dire gravity of the situation, but at that thought is laid to rest at the last scene. As the boys are overcome by bloodlust, they set fire to the forests which attracts the attention of a ship passing nearby. A naval officer comes to the island and sees the utter loss of their innocence and is surprised how educated, civilized young English boys have fallen down to savagery and bloodlust. This observation goes away immediately as he turns back and sees the men holding machine guns and the naval ship. No matter what , unsupervised young children or conforming adults of civilized societies, all men are victims of the beast that is within them. This thought is further re-affirmed by the imagery that the boys were rescued by the adults only when they had fell down to savagery and were hunting down a fellow human being by lighting up a large patch of forest on fire.
“What are we? Humans? Or animals? Or savages?”
As the story progresses, more and more boys succumb to immorality and wash out their cultural and moral values. Even Ralph, the seemingly logical among the boys and Piggy, the sensible one, murder Simon in a tribal dance with the rest of the boys.
The murder of Simon speaks as to how clarity and the truth can be muffled by the collective immorality of other humans. It was depressing to see that Simon, who sees that the beast is actually a dead man on a parachute and comes down to inform the others is killed by a tribal ritual dance participated by everybody. Simon also had an epileptic episode in which the pig head on a stick or ‘lord of the flies’ tells him that the beast is not something external that can be hunted down and killed but something present on the boys themselves. So, Simon’s murder can also be thought of as the death of spirituality and deep truth.
Piggy, who remains sensible and thoughtful throughout the story, is killed at the end by a rock thrown by Roger. Roger was a lonesome young boy who threw stones to the side of other young boys. What stopped him from hitting other boys, was the remnant social rule that forbade hurting others. In the island, in the absence of rules and oversight, he finally fell to bloodlust and did not stop to kill a boy of around his age. Piggy’s death also shows how immorality and lack of values can brutally kill those who possess cultural values.
The story shows how easy it is to get rid of all cultural and moral norms in the absence of a society.
Lord of the flies presents a very pessimistic view of humanity and shows that there is evil lingering in the hearts of everyone and that evil dictates how societies ultimately function. Although Ralph and Piggy continued holding on their plan of rescue and their values, they too were tainted by taking part in the wild ritualistic dance that killed Simon, who was bringing the truth about the beast. Golding shows the superficiality of our written moral and cultural codes, as they are nullified by the evil in the hearts of all men. He shows that men will inevitably, descend into savagery and kill others if they think they can. Moreover, the handful of voices of reason are always overpowered by the clamor of irrationality.
Even though the story offers a bleak counter to even the most optimist out there, I believe that that the eternal tussle between rationality and irrationality would continue and the rational side will always have the edge. Golding was involved in the second world war and the painful experiences of the war shaped his perspective. The war and its aftermath also showed how rationality and morality won out after the long tussle. Moreover, the image of ‘savagery’ he conjured up was overly simplified and lacked the complexities that is part of every human society. There is no ‘one’ version of civility, it seems that the concept of civility is very much borne by the culture and the mutual understanding of the people living together. Personally I feel that human beings descending into mayhem at the lack of societal oversight is unfounded because there are many instances where a group of people have come out of dire situations together. However, I fully agree with the thought that the beast is not something we can hunt and kill, but is present within all of us is a reminder that human beings are capable of as much evil as they are of good.