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The Lord of the Flies - analysis
On a small isolated island in the middle of the ocean, a group of British schoolboys land as their plane is shot to the ground, all male and below the age of thirteen. They are left only with the confusing remnants of adult society to create a world of their own, based on what they have learned from their past. However, the task of organizing and working under a rigid set of rules proves them impossible, as their society quickly descends into complete anarchy and moral decadence.
The island, upon which they are forced to coexist, seems to be uninhabited (other than by wildlife) and its climate is tropical. In the midst of the initial confusion following their arrival, one of the boys, Ralph, finds a certain conch and blows it in order to assemble the group. Together, they hold a civilized meeting and Ralph is elected leader, contested only by the fearful Jack Merridew, leader of the choir boys. Ralph declares their newly formed society’s two objectives to be “having fun” and “getting rescued, using smoke signals”.
Along with Jack and Ralph, a third boy, Simon, emerges to form the leading trio of the island, the omega being Piggy, an overweight rational boy who is constantly bullied by the other boys, and whose spectacles are used to light the signal fire.
However, despite Ralph’s initial decrees and the other boys’ enthusiasm, their dreams fall apart quite quickly; save for Simon and Ralph who are building cottages for themselves and the “littluns” (The younger, more helpless children on the island), most of the boys are idle and unwilling to do work. Jack and his choirboys are assigned with hunting for meat, and with maintaining the signal fire on the mountain.
One day a ship is seen off the coast of the island and the boys realize to their horror that the fire is out. When they finally confront the hunters, they respond indifferently, having gotten their first kill in hunting. The story continues downhill after this sequence, as they are further divided into camps. With the introduction of “The Beast”, a mysterious monster seen by one of the littluns, nothing seems to be able to save them from utter chaos.
One of the major themes in this allegorical novel, which is constantly hinted at, is the constant struggle between the instinct of civilization versus that of savagery. The will to, through unity and collaboration reach a higher state of being versus the will to satisfy one’s one immediate needs and indulging in sensual pleasures. These two contrary concepts are vividly manifested in the two likewise contrary characters, Ralph and Jack. Ralph is portrayed as the uncontested symbol for society and moral structure, while Jack remains the manifestation of total savagery – a fact that becomes all the more clear as the story proceeds.
At the beginning of the story, the boys are still products of the conditioning received in the adult world. This is evident in the way they organize and talk. The conch, originally used to call the assembly, quickly becomes a symbol of the abstract structures of adult life. The boys are told only to speak once they held the conch in their hands and to do otherwise would be to break the rules.
However, as time passes and their memory of the societal constructs fade, their relations to rules and civilization become increasingly distant, and are replaced by the cruel ways of nature. This downfall can be measured by looking to the signal fire – The whole purpose of their society, and the only remaining link to the adult world. It is neglected in the early stages of the story by the hunters, who are caught up in the frenzy of chasing and killing a wild sow. Even after the realization that they had missed their perhaps only chance to go home, they seem more interested in reenacting the hunt, than getting off the island.
As the story proceeds, more and more boys descend into savagery in Jack’s self proclaimed tribe, as Ralph and Piggy desperately tries to hold on to their all the more distant goal. In giving his speeches, Ralph cannot even seem to recall the purpose of the fire and relies on Piggy to remind him.
I think that William Golding has put his finger on a very important philosophical question in writing this book. In this story, it is depicted as the battle between civilization and savagery, but what does that mean to the individual? A civilization is a group of people compromising their own individual wills, in order to conquer nature and thus increase collectively in power, while the savage is someone working solely for the pleasure of the self. From this one could conclude that the instinct to civilize is the instinct to compromise whatever immediate lust one might have in favor of the good of the whole, or rather the great future. This is something often seen in religion, where the believer is often required to neglect its desires and immediate wants, for an abstract eternity of good described as heaven. This line of preparational thinking is becoming the most dominant force in the western world. The savage mind, on the other hand, disregards this “heaven”-state as a distant myth, and succumbs to its own direct will. This more animalistic line of thought is here labeled contemporary thinking.
The final destination of the preparational society is the classic utopia, as portrayed by Aldous Huxley in Brave New World (1932). All inhabitants are, through social conditioning, subjects to one uniform morality, which lead them to fully believe in their freedom and their place as cogs for the great wheel. Society will eventually grow to exist as a greater being, and further extend its united arms. I believe that the preparational mind is a logical result of intellectuality, and the need for safety at all times.
Whereas the preparationalists await a future of zombie-like unity, the future of the contemporary society is harder to predict. Since the sole purpose of the contemporary mind is the gratification of the self, I would assume the most beneficial future to be one where all individuals are free to do whatever they will. The problem however, as is well visualized by the book, is the fact that ultimate freedom inevitably leads to its own destruction. When one is free to rob others of their freedom, as is the case with Jack’s pyramidical society as well as the corporations of capitalism, then can that society really be called free?
The societal symbols in The Lord of the Flies are many and their appearances frequent. The boys quickly lose their touch with their preparational minds as they are exposed to the harsh hunter-gatherer reality of the island. The society which then emerges is a vivid model of the Old Capitalism: Here, the doctrine is purely the survival of the fittest and the inherent right of the strong. Jack is at the pinnacle of this lawless mountain gazing down at his underlings.
The downfall began when the signal fire at the early stages of the book spread throughout the woods, burning a large area of the island to the ground along with one of the littluns. Upon this, Ralph, still being the leader of the group, decides that Jack and his hunters are to maintain the fire, as well as hunt for meat. With this, the symbolical “state” and “economy” were separated, thus also separating their interests. Jack and his boys now completely controlled the means of production, leaving Ralph (state), to solve the conflicting interests emerging in the group. The littluns, for example, received little to no care under Jack. The choirboys, or rather, the Bourgeoisie, inevitably seize power and become the ruling class of the island.
Lastly, I want to address one particularly appealing scene in the story: Simon’s conversation with The Lord of the Flies. Although silent and often marginalized, Simon was always felt to be the most important character in the book. He was moral, not because of fear of punishment or rules, but rather because he seemed to be “inherently good”. The safety of the littluns was always in his interest and he never desired power. When he finally, somewhere toward the ending of the story finds himself in front of the title carrying sow’s head (originally left there as a sacrifice to the beast by the hunters), they engage in a dramatic dialogue. The Lord of the Flies (which by the way is the exact translation of Beelzebub, sometimes considered to be Satan himself) tells Simon (Peter the apostle’s name before he met Jesus) that the beast is not a physical being, but rather something evil that exists within each of us. This evil, this urge to destroy and create chaos, is the same evil that flows within the blood of the contemporary minded pyramidists, i.e. the capitalists.
