Survival In Lord Of The Flies

Humanity as a species is naturally adaptable, and this is the characteristic that allows us to continue surviving even in dire conditions. In Lord of the Flies by William Golding, a group of boys is stranded on an island, yet they continue to live at the expense of many parts of their humanity. When man’s main priority is physical survival, he loses his sense of right and wrong, their sense of what was important to them before, and their sense of the consequences of their actions. Part of what many humans consider a part of them is their sense of right and wrong, so much so that some even call it our humanity. In the beginning of the novel, Jack, Ralph, and Simon had gone to explore the island when they came across a baby pig who was stuck …show more content…
In Lord of the Flies, Ralph complains about what the other boys think is important and speak about during assemblies, saying that someone would “‘say that [the boys] ought to build a jet, or a submarine, or a TV set’” (51), but when Jack becomes chief later in the novel, these priorities have been forgotten in favor of what is most pertinent to their survival, which is mainly to hunt for food and what to do about the beast that they believe is hunting them (133). Back in the beginning of the book, the boys were still new to the idea of survival and hadn’t yet adjusted to the idea that what was important now was staying alive. They still wanted to have the things that they had before, and so they think of outlandish and impossible ideas of what they need, but later on they forget about what they had before because they now know what is important to them: staying alive over anything else. We also see another example of a loss of a priority of their formal lives when Ralph contemplates his appearance, discovering “dirt and decay” and realizing “how much he disliked perpetually flicking the tangled hair out of his eyes” (76-77). In civilised life, sanitation and cleanliness are important. It’s a priority …show more content…
To break one of these rules means punishment, and this is one of the first things that humanity loses when our main priority becomes physical survival. When the boys killed their first pig, it was only fun and games when “Maurice pretended to be the pig and ran squealing into the center, and the hunters, circling still, pretended to beat him” (75), but later on they become more savage and violent, even to the point where a simple game is tainted with their violent bloodlust and when Robert pretended to be the pig, he “squealed in mock terror, and then in real pain” as the boys really hurt him (114). Throughout their short lives before their time on the island, they were conditioned from the moment they could understand that hurting another living being was a horrible, immoral act and doing so would end in punishment. There are rules that we have been taught to follow, but our sense of these rules becomes less important to us when our focus changes from obeying the rules and growing up, to keeping ourselves alive. We can see another example of this in Roger, who once threw rocks at a littlun called Harry, but around Harry, there was a space “perhaps six yards in diameter, into which he dare not throw,” because the way he thought about hurting

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