In William Golding’s, Lord of the Flies, the extent of darkness and savagery is explored by the young boys who have crashed onto a deserted island. In Chapter 7, Flies Shadows and Tall Trees, on page 110, Golding really expresses the entire theme of the book which is that humans in the right conditions will turn to their darker desires and perception towards the world, leaving them savage.
Golding uses imagery in the following passage to show how the boys have chosen to live and take care of themselves. He wants us to understand just how much humans can submerge back into savagery: “With the memory of his sometimes-clean self as a standard, Ralph looked them over. They were dirty, not with the