Lord of the Flies Essay

Submitted By mhayes97
Words: 824
Pages: 4

Due to human nature, and how the environment and situations in life impact how a person acts, the boys in William Golding’s “Lord of the Flies” drastically change and do things they would normally never think of doing. When the boys first arrive on the island they establish order and use a conch shell to represent power. They make plans to get off the island and gather necessities in order to survive. At this point everything seems good, the boys all have plans, morals and intentions. They all agree about many important things; that they all need to work together and stay civilized in order to survive. The boys elect Ralph as their leader and he tells them “We've got to have rules and obey them. After all, we're not savages. We're English, and the English are best at everything” which shows that Ralph wants to stay civilized and come up with many great ideas that will help them survive and get off the island as soon as possible.
After the boys have been on the island for some time, many of them begin to change and forget all they have learned during their upbringing, and even start to forget the difference between right and wrong. They start to ignore all of their original plans. Instead of focusing on providing necessities for everyone, and on getting rescued, they begin to go wild and start doing things they would normally not think of doing. Jack is the first of all the boys to drastically

Hayes 2 change and this leads many of the others to do the same. Jack decides to from his own tribe that will go against Ralph and everything he has planned or believed in.

Jack forms his own tribe with a great number of the boys on the island that were originally with Ralph, and they would rather focus on killing and hunting and going against Ralph. Unlike Ralph and Piggy, who remain civilized and keep their intentions good, these boys go against everything they had originally planned. Instead of focusing on getting off the island and remaining civilized by maintaining food and shelter for everyone, they turn to complete savages. Jack says "The desire to squeeze and hurt was over-mastering." Which shows how violent be has become. They even decide to make an attack on Ralph and his tribe to take Piggy’s glasses. They completely go against Ralph and anyone with him, and these boys will do whatever it takes to get what they want. All the boys apart of Jack’s tribe have forgotten everything that they have been taught, they forget to treat each other with respect, and forget how to help one another just as they were taught to do as kids. The boys on Jack’s side begin to kill more than just animals on the island; they even start killing other kids apart of Ralph’s tribe. Killing another person on the island would never cross Ralph’s mind as he would much rather focus on survival, and getting off the island

The main cause of all this chaos and killing on the island is human nature. This book tells us a lot about human nature and provides many