Society In Lord Of The Flies

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Societies are made up of many different people with different beliefs and different backgrounds. In order to advance their lives, these people within the society must work together to promote peace, order, and fairness. However, when a group is unable to do this and instead fight each other for one’s own desires, the society can collapse. In Lord of the Flies by William Golding, a group of boys become separated from civilization when their plane crash lands on a deserted island during WWII. In order to survive and get rescued, these boys have to work together. However, they fail to do so and instead allow themselves to become barbaric, which Golding relates to society in reality. Golding portrays society as being severly flawed in nature through …show more content…
In the small society of the island, Jack and Ralph constantly fight with each other for control over the rest of the group. Although both boys have the characteristics of a proper ruler, they also have flaws that negatively affect their leadership skills. Despite being a charismatic leader, Ralph tends to become frustrated when the group ignores him or when Jack tries to take charge. Since Ralph was voted to be leader, he believes that he should be the only one to give orders and all his orders should always be followed by everyone. When disaggreeing with the boys during a meeting, Ralph shouts, “You voted me for chief. Now you do what I say” (81). Ralph calls the meeting in order to make sure his thoughts and ideas are heard, however, once people start to question or challenge his decisions, Ralph immediately becomes defensive and asserts his authority by making himself superior. Ralph is unwilling to allow others to make decisions because he is obsessed with maintaining his power over the group. Jack is also obsessed with his own power and uses violence and cruelty to assert it. After hunting and killing a pig, Jack gives chuncks of meat to the boys. However, when he skips Piggy, Piggy questions Jack asking for meat. Jack “had meant to leave him in doubt, as an assertion of power; but Piggy by advertising his omission made more cruelty necessary” (73). Jack believes that he is powerful …show more content…
When the boys first join together on the island, they only care for themselves and do not care for others in need. After lighting a fire to attract a ship, Piggy realizes that one boy was not present and asks the group, “That liitle ‘un, him with the mark on his face, I don’t see him. Where is he now?” (46). Not only do the boys neglect to care for the younger kids, but they also are unaware of what even happened to the boy. Without Piggy, the boys never would have realized that someone was missing. Furthermore, instead on focusing on getting rescued, the boys get overwhelmed with the free from controlling adults and civilization and forget about maintaining the fire. Instead, they become fixated on hunting and killing pigs. While Ralph repirmands Jack for letting the fire go out, Jack disregards the problem and instead tries to tell Ralph about his [Jack’s] memories “of the knowledge that had come to them when they closed in on the struggling pig, knowledge that they had outwitted a living thing, imposed their will upon it, taken away its life like a long satisfying drink” (70). The group of boys who represent an entire society begin to stray from the idea of a structured civilization and become a group of savages full of lust and violence which leads them to hunt and destroy themselves rather than work together to advance and
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