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Lord of the Flies - Savagery Essay Example

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Lord of the Flies - Savagery Essay Example
Lord of the Flies** suggests that without order, savagery will emerge

William Golding’s Lord of the Flies suggests that without order, savagery will emerge. Through his writing, he explores the idea that there is a wild and evil sense of savagery within us all that without order and civilisation, can and will consume us. For any civilisation to flourish and prosper, order must exist. With order, comes a hierarchy of power within society. For a hierarchy of any kind to function, all parts of the system must know their purpose and carry out their duties. If any component of the hierarchy was to, for whatever reason, falter or fail, order will cease to exist, savagery will emerge and society would fall into ruins. Within Lord of the Flies, the boys seemed to have a sense of understanding of this ideology upon their first arrival on the island. After all the boys had assembled, they attempted to imitate the structures which they knew existed in the world which they came from. First of all, they established the hierarchy of power by electing Ralph as leader and soon after, Ralph delegated other roles and positions of power. For example, Jack who became in charge of the choirboys and also, subconsciously, Piggy to be in charge of the littluns. Different levels and positions of power are essential within a society to provide guidance and leadership to the weaker and less superior ones and hence, establish order. However, as mentioned before, each level of the hierarchy must know their purpose and carry out their duties. In Lord of the Flies, Jack’s power-hungry and blood-lust nature gets the best of him. He accuses Ralph of being nothing more than a coward and says, “Bollocks to the rules! We’re strong-we’ll hunt!” And with that, Jack goes off to create his own tribe signifying his descent into savagery. As a mean of stabilizing order, Ralph calls upon frequent assemblies on the beach. In reality, politicians and other important figures of society do the same.

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