Psychological Breakdown Golding Essay

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Cecilia Kayser
10th Honors Language Arts
Ms. Biederman
11 February 2015
Psychological Breakdown Golding’s novel
Lord of the Flies serves as a cautionary tale of a struggle between good and evil in human nature and against the dangers of people not taking responsibility for their own actions and falling in the mob mentality that can only bring ignorance, confrontation, eventually mutually assured destruction closer to reality. The inherent evil in all mankind is the main psychological theme of the novel, along with how quickly we can revert to savagery when we are removed from civilization. The main characters Jack, Ralph, and Piggy had the most profound roles and reacted differently to being stranded on island. The characters have similarities and differences of their psychological makeup of being on a deserted island.
These characters contributed to the psychological breakdown of bad leadership, lack of civilizations and loss of insight which contributed to a mob mentality outlook. Jack represents the physiological breakdown of bad leadership. Ralph embodies the mental breakdown of civilization. Piggy personifies the loss of wisdom. Simon serves as an image of stability. A study of the psychological insights in the Lord of the Flies clearly underlines the degeneration of virtuous characters into diabolic.

Golding’s novel is the end of innocence experienced by Ralph a twelve­year old, who

is overly confident and naive. Right from the start of the novel, Ralph is the only character who demonstrates his enthusiasm for creating a democratic society. Initially, he is enthusiastic due to the new freedom without adults looming over him. Soon after being on the island, he finds the leadership of the community shoved upon him. He is antagonistic to Jack and intellectually inferior to Piggy. Till the end, Ralph runs to save his life without collapsing to the barbarians, underlining his will power. He is symbolized by the author as the strong willed politician, exhibiting leadership qualities like selfless dedication, courage, and integrity. He tries to make full use of all these instincts in bringing back control to uncivilized society. He has correct manners and a morality and sense of justice.Where as Jack differs from Ralph by his domination that forces Ralph to surrender innocence. His loss of innocence is

accompanied by the destruction of his conscious due to decline of reason. Golding clearly establishes that ‘will power’ would be relevant only in civilized and not in primitive society.
Passion is connected with the character of Jack. According to psychologists, “Passion has got a division of thought and feeling”(Grey). This separation is important in analyzing passion. In
Jack, passion is embodied in a negative sense with Golding utilizing Jack for demonstrating the degeneration of civilization. “ The term ‘doubling’ is commonly used in psychological behavior meaning split personalities for one person, or two relative autonomous selves.”(Grey) Doubling is easily associable to Jack. His mind contains a number of primitive ideas and he can be called to possess savage traits. His features resemble those of a dictator, thirsty for power and hungry for authority. Jack’s passion for power is evident when he says; “I ought to be chief because I’m chapter chorister and head boy”(73). In the Lord of the Flies, Golding takes recourse to an established literary method of examining human rights and polity through psychological insights. Jack has innate knowledge of the elements of repulsive nature and the ways of exploiting them. He is prevented from his attempt to gain power in civilized, orderly society and takes recourse to the inherent traits of his nature i.e. dark means for gaining power. As
Freud points out in his “theory of psychoanalysis, human behavior is determined by natural instincts that are largely unconscious.(Freud)” This is heavily demonstrated by
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