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View of Society Psychologists have argued over the concept of Nature vs. Nurture for years. People are either born with a certain personality or their environment molds their persona like a potter molds his clay; one wrong moment and the entire mold can crumble. William Golding expresses his opinions in his fictitious novel, Lord of the Flies.
Through various tactics and expressions, William Golding describes how man is created with a natural evil and how life can either change or intensify the innate characteristic of wickedness. Golding s views can be refuted by several instances within Lord of the Flies and other critical surveys. The novel begins with a plane carrying a group of schoolboys being shot down by a fighter plane involved in the war. The main section of the craft crashes into a deserted island killing the pilots.
The only survivors are the young boys. They soon gather and excitedly try to form an organized government. Two of the eldest boys, Jack and Ralph, clash as they attempt to gain power. Jack is an adventurous, energetic boy who is not concerned with the priorities of the group. Ralph is just the opposite. He is focused on the necessities of the group, but he lacks the initiative to be a strong leader.
As the days pass, the boys gradually lose sight of what is necessary for survival and become uncivilized. They become frightened of a beast that exist both in their minds and on the island in the form of a dead parachutist. Soon, they become savage and kill two of their own peers, Simon and Piggy, both of whom posses a great deal of logic. Jack takes full control of the tribe and convinces the boys that Ralph is a treat.
Ralph narrowly escapes the murder attempts of the tribe and is saved by an officer who discovers the fires on the island. The novel ends with Ralph crying with an emotional outburst as the adventure finally draws to a close and the officer expressing his amazement at the actions of English boys. Golding begins the journey of the boys by giving them a fresh start. They have nothing holding them back and can organize a method for survival. The boys first set out to create a rational society modeled on what grown-ups would do. They establish a government and laws, they provide for food and shelter, and they light a signal fire (Hynes 1).
The first few days on the island are quite productive. The boys (aged six to twelve) are delighted with the prospect of some real fun before the adults come to fetch them. With innocent enthusiasm they recall the storybook romances they have read and now expect to experience in reality (Baker 1). All labor is divided and no one expects the eventually collapse of their society. Golding shows that he does not condemn mans ability to civilize itself without giving man a chance to succeed. Therefore, Golding shows signs of a belief that evil and corruption does not exist solely in each person; it can very easily be obtained.
As the story progresses, Golding attacks the fall of man by driving the boys to a point where their senses and rationalities become altered. Their attempt took the form of a parliamentary government, and it failed. They regress into barbarism (Fitzgerald, Kayser 1). One of the boys first failures is their failure to keep the signal fire burning when a plane flies over head. The boys become interested in other things and forget their jobs. As a result, the first possible rescue is a failure.
The miscues and faults only seem to get worse as the book continues. The end of innocence, a fall of man, does take place after the first chapter of Lord of the Flies they create rituals and an embryonic society that centers on hunting and killing (unknown source 70). John Peter s essay reiterates the notion that man has fallen; Like many orthodox moralist Golding insists that man is a fallen creature, but he refuses to hypostatize evil or to locate it in a dimension of its own (Peter 158). Along with the fall of man, Golding recognizes that man cannot survive without civilization. He is showing us stripped man, man naked of all the sanctions of custom and civilization, man as he is alone and in his essence (Allen 120). Golding is obviously striving to move behind the conventional matter of the contemporary novel to a view of what man, or pre-man, is really like when his facade of civilized behavior falls away (Karl 119).
The idea of uncivilized man seems to be a repetitious theme for Golding. There is in all of Golding s work crucial avoidance of subtlety, and that is perhaps why his novels are concerned almost solely with primitive struggles for survival (Karl 119). Most of the authors intentions make a lack of civilization seem bad. In Lord of the Flies he showed people how to go to hell when the usual social controls are lifted, on a desert island real or imaginary (See 121). Our civilization is based on the thoughts and perception of those around us. Civilization does not change who we are.
the novels primary implication being that what we call civilization is, at best, no more than skin deep (Stern 158). However, Golding believes civilization is vital. It also is the only recent novel of imaginative originality that I am aware of which implies that society, insane and self-destroying as it is, is necessary (Marcus 165). Golding's final conclusion is that the boys effort to civilize themselves is necessary. However, because of man s intrinsic failure, their civilization inevitably destroys them.
Contrary to many views of Lord of the Flies, it is obvious that Golding believed man is a doomed species. Golding even stated himself that the aim of his novel is to trace the defects of society back to the defects of human nature (Fitzgerald 2). When people are born, according to Golding, there is an inborn characteristic within each person. The trait stays with the person throughout his life and can come and go as it pleases. The trait is an innate evil. Evil is inherent in the human mind itself, whatever innocence may cloak it, ready to put forth its strength as soon as the occasion is propitious (Peter 158).
The evil can be suppressed if the person is strong enough. Even when the evil is subdued, one critic believes the good intentions of the few are overborne by the innate evil of the many (Burgess 121). On the other hand, if the situation and circumstances are right, as in the case of the boys on the island, evil can reek havoc on its possessor. Although the thought of evil is quite distressing, it is a comforting book; it assures us that evil is natural to men, and not something we have recently invented (Marcus 167). First, the young boys encounter the beast, which brings out the essential illness of man.
The boys allow an imaginary beast to overtake their lives and they become uncontrollably fearful of nothing (unknown 111). They become obsessed with finding and killing the beast that they forget that they do not know that the beast is. Only Simon realizes the truth. Simon has an encounter with a sacrificial pig s head, where he has a metaphoric chat with the beast. Simon s sense of mankind s essential illness speaks through it. I m part of you?
Close, close, close! I m the reason why it s no go? (unknown 68). The eyes of the pig s head into which he gazes are dim with the infinite cynicism of adult life (Townsend 168). The problem is the boys do not give Simon s explanation of the beast that lives within them any credit.
If Simon is trying to express mankind s essential illness, it may seem plausible that we don t amount to much after all, that the effort isn t really worth it (Townsend 168). Golding has his own reason for why no one believes Simon. Man. Golding says, cherishes his own fears, his taboos, and will crucify any saint or redeemer who offers to relieve him of his burden by telling the simple truth (Green 167). In addition to the beast, the English boys are affected by another uncontrollable factor. Children often mimic what their parents or the people around them do.
Imitating is how kids learn before their brains develop enough to comprehend. The children are marooned on the island because of the war their fathers are involved in. When they come across problems on the island, they react in the only way they know. The children turned to evil actions when they became desperate. What is ironic is that their parents and the entire adult world were doing the same thing by fighting the war (unknown). It is only normal that the boys look to their parents for answers to their problems.
When there are no parents there to advise them, they use the tactics their parents would obviously use in the same position. Just the story reaches its climax, the point where the savages are chasing Ralph, a naval officer finds them. Shocked by their filth, their disorder, and the revelation that there have been real casualties, the officer with appropriate fatherly indignation, expresses his disappointment in this pack of British boys. There is no real basis for his surprise; for life on the island has only imitated the larger tragedy in which the adults of the outside world attempted to govern themselves reasonably but ended in the same game of hunt and kill. (Baker 2) The parents need to be better models for their kids if they expect their kids to survive. Away from the intentions of Golding, other theories and parallels have been derived from studying the novel. The novel has been plausibly interpreted as a Christian parable (Townsend 168).
Teachers even use the novel to allow students to gain an awareness of the sin and possible deviation from what is right when trying to govern themselves (Townsend 168). The story is very characteristic of William Golding. It is a moral axiom of Golding s that man, and man alone, introduced evil into the world; a view which is hardly separable from the doctrine of original sin (Green 162). For most of his narrative, he seems to be concerned with moral aimlessness; the stranded boys in Lord of the Flies, for example, almost entirely shake off their civilized behavior (Karl 119). Golding put his thoughts and ideas into each of his works, and that is how his ideas are known. In the Inheritors, as a parallel, Golding s prose reached perhaps its highest achievement in expressing the consciousness of primitive man, of a man who conceptualizes very little and knows little of chains of reasoning (unknown 70).
These are ways we know how Golding feels. He uses his great gifts of imagination and narrative to force us to accept, as part of the truth about man and his nature, the realities summed up in our time in the hysterical nastiness of Nazism and concentration camps (Allen 120). In the words of Golding good can look after itself. Evil is the problem. There is, however, a danger here: the acceptance of evil is displayed in the phenomena as being the fundamental truth about man (Allen 120).
This idea shows up in Golding s views of society. The shape of society must depend on the ethical nature of the individual and not the political system, however apparently logical or respectable (Baker 2). Golding makes it obvious that he is a pessimist when it comes to the social abilities of mankind. Throughout the novel Golding expresses his dislike for human nature. Once the boys begin their quest for rescue and survival, Golding never lets them succeed in any attempts.
Every opportunity they have is ruined either by uncontrollable forces, such as their youth and inexperience, or by their own wicked inability to achieve their goals. Golding is not a fan of society, and one could even mistake him for a misanthropist. The largest irony in the story, and one of Golding s most successful innuendoes of his opinion of society, lies within the rescue of the children. As Jack and his savages chase Ralph, they burn the forest and try to smoke Ralph out. By doing so, they attract the attention of a nearby sailor who quickly arrives to investigate. The sailor is their long awaited rescuer.
However, the irony of the rescue is that the boys are not trying to be rescued at that moment, or their burning was not suppose to be a rescue fire. Golding cleverly arrives at the notion that the boys are unable to attract the adults on their own. After all of their attempts, only a mistake can actually save them. Therefore, mankind is prone to failure, and civilization will not correct the internal defect. Throughout history man has achieved much success, such as the development of language, electricity, and other technologies. At the same time, and possibly more often, man has failed to create the moral and successful society that has been sought after for centuries.
Events such as World War II, evolution of narcotics, and the crucifixion of Jesus Christ, from a religious standpoint, fall into the category of evil in man. One can argue that man is successful or often than not, but the occurrence of failure is inevitable and unquestionable. William Golding was a firm believer in the idea that man is evil, whether it is inborn or acquired. Through Lord of the Flies, Golding establishes his morality and opinion of his society.
Hopefully, by reading and pondering the ideas associated with the novel, people can reestablish their own morals avoid he evil lurking within them.
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Research essay sample on Lord Of The Flies Fall Of Man
