Identity In Lord Of The Flies
Everyone's personalities shift with their environment, they may endure impossible affairs, but they almost always stay the same rooted person. In Lord of the Flies, this is not the case. In this book, a group of young boys must learn to survive and adapt to their new life stranded on an island. All the characters undergo changes as they face off with each other and their environment. In the end, the boys in Lord of the Flies, by William Golding, lose their civilized identities the longer they stay on the island.
There is a clear alteration in the character Percival of Lord of the Flies and his morals. For instance, Ralph holds an assembly where a boy mentions the beast, when he is done, Piggy pushes forward another boy, asks his name and …show more content…
When the boys first arrived on the island, Piggy and Ralph found a conch shell and blew in it to call the surviving children together. As they arrived, Piggy requested their names and repeated Sam and Eric's to remember them , “Sam, Eric, Sam, Eric”(19). As the story progresses, however, they are addressed in a different manner. For example, Jack decided to go hunting, and that he needed to mask his face. Once he painted it with clay, he wanted a mirror so he said , “ Samneric. Get me a coconut. An empty one” (63). From there, they become “Sam and Eric” once more when with Ralph and Piggy, and then back to “Samneric” when they join Jack’s tribe at the end. This difference, is no simple change of names, it is the displacement of their true identities. When addressed as “Sam and Eric” they are two individuals, but when they later are called “Samneric”, they are no longer two different people. This name change, disintegrates their separate existence. Overall, Sam and Eric suffer loss of themselves as …show more content…
For some, that change in recognition was minimal. For others, such as Sam and Eric, Percival, and Jack, that loss is more apparent . All three characters transformed drastically from beginning to end, displacing their moral compasses as they rode out their adventure on the stranded island. When they left their refined lives, they thought they knew who they were, but after facing many hardships on the island, they discovered their true selves from their instincts that became evident along the way. As William Shakespeare once said, “ We know what we are, but not what we may be”(BrainyQuote,
There is a clear alteration in the character Percival of Lord of the Flies and his morals. For instance, Ralph holds an assembly where a boy mentions the beast, when he is done, Piggy pushes forward another boy, asks his name and …show more content…
When the boys first arrived on the island, Piggy and Ralph found a conch shell and blew in it to call the surviving children together. As they arrived, Piggy requested their names and repeated Sam and Eric's to remember them , “Sam, Eric, Sam, Eric”(19). As the story progresses, however, they are addressed in a different manner. For example, Jack decided to go hunting, and that he needed to mask his face. Once he painted it with clay, he wanted a mirror so he said , “ Samneric. Get me a coconut. An empty one” (63). From there, they become “Sam and Eric” once more when with Ralph and Piggy, and then back to “Samneric” when they join Jack’s tribe at the end. This difference, is no simple change of names, it is the displacement of their true identities. When addressed as “Sam and Eric” they are two individuals, but when they later are called “Samneric”, they are no longer two different people. This name change, disintegrates their separate existence. Overall, Sam and Eric suffer loss of themselves as …show more content…
For some, that change in recognition was minimal. For others, such as Sam and Eric, Percival, and Jack, that loss is more apparent . All three characters transformed drastically from beginning to end, displacing their moral compasses as they rode out their adventure on the stranded island. When they left their refined lives, they thought they knew who they were, but after facing many hardships on the island, they discovered their true selves from their instincts that became evident along the way. As William Shakespeare once said, “ We know what we are, but not what we may be”(BrainyQuote,