Lord Of The Flies Humanity Analysis

The Evil in Humanity As the students sit in orderly rows facing the board, their faces are composed as they patiently wait for their teacher to call on them for an answer. However, the moment the teacher steps out of the classroom, chaos ensues. Boys yell across the room to each other while girls pull out their phones to check messages. The longer the teacher’s absence, the wilder the scene gets. Projectiles fly through the air and students tackle each other to the floor. While seemingly innocent, this scene reveals the human tendency to resort to disorder the moment an authority figure is absent. This is the very concept that William Golding captures in his novel Lord of the Flies. Without adults present, London school boys resort to violence
On a hunt for pigs, Ralph, Jack, and a couple of other boys come across a boar. Ralph strikes [the boar] with a spear and has a feeling of a sudden upsurge of pride, “Ralph was full of fright, apprehension, and pride. He felt the need of witnesses… Ralph talked on, excitedly. ‘I hit him all right. The spear stuck in. I wounded him!’ He sunned himself in their new respect and felt that hunting was good after all” (Golding). By using repetition of Ralph’s words, Golding expresses Ralph’s excitement of having the ability to kill and maim another living thing. Ralph, possibly the most civil of the boys, is still consumed by the exhilaration of hunting and killing, proving that no matter what the outward characterization of one is, it cannot suppress the inherent need for violence. In addition, despite being the representation of order, both Piggy and Ralph exemplify the evils of humanity during the death of Simon. While the earth thunders with lighting and a war rage on the in the sky, a separate terror passes through the island when, “Piggy and Ralph, under the threat of the sky, found themselves eager to take place in this demented but partly secure society... ‘Kill the beast! Cut his throat! Spill his blood!’The sticks fell and the mouth of the new circle crunched and screamed. The
When Ralph and Piggy first locate the conch, Piggy plans to sell it for money but Ralph, however, suggests, “‘We can use this to call the others. Have a meeting. They’ll come when they hear us-”(Golding). The boys’ civilization is based around the authority of the conch. The conch is the call for order and assembly, and the person who wishes to speak at assembly holds the conch. However, even when the boys were somewhat civilized, the conch rarely works unless the speaker is one of “significant” power such as Ralph and Jack. As the book progresses, the conch becomes less and less effective as the boys’ civilization slowly breaks apart. The boys prefer to hunt and play, leading to their love of fighting and killing of animals and other human beings, rather than civilly sorting out issues and adhering to the rules of societal conduct that the conch symbolizes. The lack of use of the conch explains the boys’ defiance of the civility the conch tries to bring to the island. This resistance reveals that humanity’s very core is savage. To the near conclusion of the book when all reason and civilization fails, the conch “[explodes] into a thousand white fragments and [ceases] to exist...Viciously, with full intention, he [Jack] hurled his spear at Ralph. The point tore the skin and flesh over Ralph’s ribs, then sheared off and fell in the water” (Golding 181). The conch, the symbol of order