Lord of the flies Essays

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Dystopian texts aim to raise concern about current issues in the world, by creating a futuristic result of the influx of this issue. William Golding’s allegorical novel ‘Lord of the Flies’, written in the years following WW2, uses the dystopic genre to express concerns about the human condition. Golding suggests that without law and order, humans are savages capable of unimaginable things. Golding exhibits the importance of civilisation by creating an anarchic world on an island controlled by children who with the lack of rules and order fall into savagery. In doing this, Golding presents concern about his own society and a warning about how easy it is for a civilisation to crumble. Ultimately “Lord of the Flies” is an exploration of the reasons for human evil.
A civilisation without law and order is seen to crumble and man’s true capabilities are exposed. William Golding creates this civilisation in “Lord of the Flies”. Golding’s experiences in World War II having commanded a rocket launcher killing many citizens made him realise the capabilities of man-kind and the savagery within each person. The novel reflects this experience through its wartime setting, and the sudden change in the boys from civilized to savagery. The boys live on this island alone and without the presence of God or adults the boys feel as if they are beholden to no one and have no responsibility to abide by any moral code. The novel opens on a positive note with a civilised election between the boys, which sets up Golding’s sense of irony as we don’t expect the boys to become a bunch of brutes. Early in the novel Jack states that the boys are not ‘savages’ because they are ‘Englishmen’. This irony was a warning to society that any civilisation is capable of being reduced to barbarism. As the boys slowly fall into savagery, all knowledge and intelligence from Piggy is disregarded. These two human aspects relate with the idea of order. The visual metaphor of the face painting of the boys and the stripping away of their clothes suggests the boys are stripping away their order and slowly leading to this savagery. Jack’s sadist personality becomes evident when he gathers a group of hunters that chant, “Kill the pig, spill her blood”, which is repeated throughout the novel, presenting a chilling motif which symbolises man's primal instincts for violence. “He began to dance and his laughter became a bloodthirsty snarling,” as Jack becomes consumed with blood lust, animal imagery shows his fading humanity. The island is a biblical illusion going back to Christian times, similar to Adam and Eve’s Garden of Eden. The children’s fall into savagery goes almost without notice for many of the boys,
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