Are humans innately good? And do wickedness and violence corrupt the innate good at times? Or are humans innately evil, with the restraints of civilized morality serving to suppress is negative aspect. Such is the underlying nature that William Golding’s first novel, “The Lord of the Flies” seeks to find answers to.
The novel of Golding takes place in a remote island somewhere in the vast Pacific Ocean. It is a rank, dense, humid, and untamed island full of wild plants and animals. On this island, the characters of the story, Ralph, Jack, Piggy, Simon, and the rest of the choirboys from England that have been stranded as their ship sinks nearby while trying to run away from the ruins of war. In the story, Ralph, the main hero, assumes the title of leader of the ragtag lot in the beginning by gathering all the lost boys and securing their position and safety on the island. Ralph quickly established rules among his peers that they should stick together, gather their food systematically, and has established that their rescue from the island is of their utmost priority. However, Jack, the anti-thesis to Ralph, seeks to establish leadership for himself, and declares to the gang that they should stay on the island, away form adult control and the pressures civil conformity. This clash of ideas between the two leaders saw the group being split apart as the story move along, with Simon and Piggy going with the leadership of Ralph, and the rest of the boys following the authoritative rule of Jack.
However, a third power has been influencing all the boys from the start of the story. The boys called it “The Beast”. The Beast is the name the boys gave to the fear that they are experiencing since they came on the island. The fear of the unknown. The fear of the uncertainty that lurks within the dark jungles of the island. This fear finally manifest itself during one of Simon’s schizophrenic lapses. In Simon’s perception, he is conversing to the head of a pig that they have slaughtered. The animate head introduced itself as “The Lord of the Flies”. The lord states that the uncertainty of the boys is but their true nature, suppressed by the rules of civility. The lord believes that the boys, in no time, will be influenced by the feral nature of the wilderness, and that they will revert back to the primal state of man, that nature of violence and destruction.
The words of the pig head held true, for as the story progresses, the group of Jack became more and more primal. With their basic nature gone wild, they have lost all restraints of morality, enabling them to commit the foulest acts done by man by being murderers of Piggy and Simon. The wild boys, in turn, directed their bloodlust at Ralph, of whom they chased throughout the island with stick and fire. Only by being spotted by a passing ship was Ralph finally saved. The ship captain, seeing all the smoke and fire on the island, went ashore to find a bloody boy running towards him being chased by a group of boys wielding torches and spears.
In his story, Golding has examined man’s basic nature in the form of the boys. Without society and morality telling him what to do, man will revert back to a more animalistic nature, of which fear and aggression play the biggest part stimulating his impulses. Ralph is the boy who still seeks to be rescued from the island, is the sole voice of reason in a sea of distraught environment. Ralph represents the few that constantly struggles to find goodness and peace in a very destructive world.
The book, written by William Golding in 1954, does not point out that man is nothing more than a wild animal. Rather, Golding seeks to impart a lesson to his fellowmen. He would like to point out that every man should act more like Ralph, a voice of righteousness and order. We should all be like Ralph, who would put the lessons society has taught us at heart, rather than be monsters without the shackles of morality that bind them./TE
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