Lord of the Flies

The arrival of Y2K brought none of the social, environmental, or technological catastrophes predicted by the tabloids, but neither did the new millennium bring relief from the persistent impediments to free expression that characterized the twentieth century. Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., reminds us that throughout most of human history, authority, “fortified by the highest religious and philosophical texts, has righteously invoked censorship to stifle expression.”

He cites the Old Testament proscription: “Tell it not in Gath, publish it not in the streets of Askelon; lest the daughters of the Philistines rejoice, lest the daughters of the uncircumcised triumph.” Schlesinger also offers the injunction of Plato: “The poet shall compose nothing contrary to the ideas of the lawful, or just, or beautiful, or good, which are allowed in the state; nor shall he be permitted to show his compositions to any private individual until he shall have shown them to the appointed censors and the guardians of the law, and they are satisfied with them.”

Introduction

Lord of the Flies has been the center of controversy over the years having been resurrected from its status as a cult classic. However, in my opinion this novel represents a lot of possible socially wrong viewpoints and could be the cause for seeding violent, vulgar and anti-social thoughts in school children. It is because of this reason that I propose to restrict it from classrooms in the school system. The issue of banned books has been escalating since Guttenberg introduced the printing press in 1455.

Once speech could be printed, it became a commodity, to be controlled and manipulated on the basis of religion, politics, or profit. After Pope Leo X condemned Martin Luther’s Ninety Five Theses in 1517, both Catholics and Protestants began censoring materials that they found dangerous or subversive. Religious censorship quickly led to political censorship when Luther defied the Pope, bringing an immediate response from Emperor Charles V. On May 26, 1521, the emperor issued the Edict of Worms, containing a “Law of Printing,” which prohibited the printing, sale, possession, reading, or copying of Luther’s works.

However, in the United States and England, a social consensus on censorship was emerging that would be far more repressive than overt state or church power. By the 1830s, this new ideology was proclaiming the necessity for propriety, prudence, and sexual restraint.

During the remainder of the nineteenth century, private virtue became public virtue, and American and British editors, publishers, writers, and librarians felt obliged to examine every book for crude language or unduly explicit or realistic portrayals of life. In her introduction to the 1984 New York Public Library exhibition on censorship, Ann Ilan Alter said that there may have been more censorship, self-imposed or otherwise, during the nineteenth century in England and the United States than during all the preceding centuries of printed literature.

The twentieth century in America has seen the emergence of pressure groups that maintain an uneasy balance in the struggle to interpret our First Amendment rights. The federal government tips that balance in whatever direction the winds blow, and since 1980, those winds have been chilling. Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. notes: “[T]he struggle between expression and authority is unending. The instinct to suppress discomforting ideas is rooted deep in human nature. It is rooted above all in profound human propensities to faith and fear.”

Lord of the Flies – In the Spotlight

Lord of the Flies focused attention on the concept of cult literature as a campus phenomenon. Time magazine called it “Lord of the Campus” and identified it as one in a series of underground literary favorites that were challenging the required reading lists of the traditional humanities curriculum.

Up until William Golding’s surprise bestseller, it had been common knowledge that students were reading “unauthorized books,” especially J. D. Salinger The Catcher in the Rye, in spite of (and frequently because of) their condemnation by “the establishment.” But the existence of a serious sub-literature with an intelligent, dedicated readership flourishing in the midst of the conventional curriculum was something unprecedented on college campuses.

During the twenties and thirties, the novels of F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, and Thomas Wolfe had quickly been welcomed into the ranks of mainstream, respectable writers and labeled literature. While a few critics might choose to ignore these newcomers, there was nothing particularly subversive about what they wrote. Following the success of The Catcher in the Rye, however, no literary observer could be quite sure that the tastes of young readers could be trusted. After all, there were certain attitudes in Salinger that threatened the established order, and when Golding wrote Lord of the Flies, there was apprehension afoot that young readers might find Jack more interesting than Ralph-as indeed many of them did.

Analysis

What nervous detractors overlooked was the obvious lesson in this Golding classic: that traits like naked aggression and gratuitous cruelty, selfishness, idolatry, superstition, and a taste for violence are not restricted to any particular nationality or race but are inherent in human nature and inhabit the mentality of every human being. If there was anything subversive about this idea, it was that no longer could evil be considered peculiar to the Japanese or the German character. In fact, those who had recently fought against them had waged war with equal relish.

When Golding saw the ecstasy on the faces of his fellow sailors in the North Atlantic as they returned the fire of the enemy or launched an attack he felt the shock of recognition that the beast was within us all, just waiting to break through that fragile veneer we call civilization. What he clearly intended as a reminder to his readers (after all, man’s aggressive nature was not a new philosophical position by any means) became for cult readers another weapon to use against those who argued that atrocities such as those committed by the Germans and the Japanese could never be committed by the Allies who had struggled against them.

“We” were good people who treated others with kindness and generosity and fought those who attacked us with the greatest reluctance and the utmost disdain. Even to suggest that we might enjoy the slaughter was to malign the honor and integrity of the Allied forces.

Regardless of how his theme was interpreted, however, Golding’s thesis had firm mythological precedents. There are many myths underlying Lord of the Flies, but the basic description of reality is of a world inhabited by men of an evil nature restrained only by voluntary adherence to a pragmatic pact of nonaggression. Such a pact passes for civilization, but because it is maintained only through fear, it is constantly threatened by that fear. The defensive fear that keeps one man from his neighbor’s throat can also incite him to cut that throat before his own gets cut.

Lord of the Flies is a case study in alienation. Gradually, with horrifying inevitability, against a backdrop of paradise, the numbers of those who remember their humanity and still cling to the threads of civilization are reduced until there is but one solitary figure left, and just before the ironic rescue, we see him–become him–as he flees his savage pursuers, the backdrop itself reflecting the degradation of those pursuers as the island of paradise burns and smokes and is reduced to char and ashes.

Storyline

First we see the whole group splitting and taking sides, but the balance, at least for a while, remains on the side of Ralph. Then slowly but irresistibly, Ralph’s supporters are drawn toward the charismatic Jack and his choir, until finally there are only four holding out against them: the twins, Piggy, and Ralph himself. Then the twins are captured and Piggy is killed. Ralph is alone, civilized man alone against the powers of darkness. But we are left with the awful suspicion that he remains “civilized” only because Jack must have an enemy and Ralph must be that enemy.

Excluded forever from Jack’s group, Ralph encourages exaggerated sympathy because he is so terribly alone. A victim always seems somehow more civilized than his tormentors. Nevertheless, much of the power of this book derives from the fact that our sympathies can only be with Ralph and that we, therefore, can feel the vulnerability, the awful weakness, of flimsy rationality at the mercy of a world gone mad. There is no place to run, no place to hide, no exit. And rescue is only temporary and perhaps ultimately more horrible than quick and early death.

Media treatment of issues about children relies heavily on such simplistic generalizations with children represented as objects of concern or as threats to adult order. The former relies on an idealized view of children as pure, innocent and vulnerable, needing protection or salvation from dangers they can neither identify nor comprehend. The latter, of children drawn innately (unless prevented) towards evil and anarchy, also has deep historical roots (Miller, 1983). It is a portrayal powerfully evoked by William Golding’s (1959) novel, Lord of the Flies.

The power of this fictional work is evident in the frequency with which it is given respect and credibility in press accounts of ‘deviant’ children. It evokes an apocalyptic vision of anarchy as being inevitable should children lose the discipline and order of the adult presence. The portrayals of children as ‘innocent victims’ or ‘culpable delinquents’ are no more than alternative placements that the adult world creates into which children are located at different times, in different circumstances.

The idea that children are products of nature or nurture leads to media concern as to whether child ‘deviance’ is rooted in a biological predisposition or in an environmental determinism. Children’s meanings and motivations are persistently ignored, as is the position of adults, both familial and professional, as powerful definers of deviant behavior. Consequently, much of the physical and psychological harm inflicted on children by adults is disregarded, while transgressions by children of their set role are the subject of furious condemnation.

Original sin is what Golding was writing about a religious concept, we suspect more relevant to the mayhem that occurred at this C of E school in Liverpool than any glib sociological generalization. Children will run wild, viciously wild, unless they are properly supervised. They need parents to give them a stable and ordered home.

They need teachers who know how to keep order as well as how to impart knowledge. They need, God help them, practical instruction in the difference between right and wrong. Here was a rhetoric established and developed which was to re-emerge throughout the next decade, particularly following the murder of James Bulger. It invoked Golding’s construct of anarchy inherent in children left to themselves.

Thesis – Fallacies and Immoralities

Golding seems in many ways to simplify Lord of the Flies in order to make his point as clearly as possible. For example, all developments in the book are entirely predictable, suggesting not only that the course taken by Golding’s boys is inevitable, but that violence and brutality are inevitable in all interactions among human beings. Moreover, though Golding’s carefully constructed book includes a fairly complex network of literary symbols and devices, all of them tend directly to support the central message. For example, the apparent deus ex machina ending of the book is undercut by the facts that the British are still at war and the adults who arrive to restore order are themselves engaged in a mission of destruction the motivation of which is not fundamentally different from that of the savage hunting frenzies of Jack and his tribe of boys.

This parallel presumably suggests that the supposedly “civilized” adults are really as savage as the primitivized boys, though it could also be taken as a suggestion that the training received by Jack and his “choir” in military school had already been sufficient to inculcate them with the kind of militaristic values that have led civilization to a cataclysmic war. Indeed, despite the apparent clarity of its message, Golding’s fable is flawed on several accounts.

For one thing, this island society could never really represent a new start for humanity because it is all male and therefore incapable of perpetuating itself. For another, the boys on the island are not really innocent; they have already been thoroughly socialized by the same society that seems to be destroying itself through warfare.

Still, in some ways Lord of the Flies is an exemplary dystopian fiction. In it Golding creates a fictional society distant from the “real” world, then utilizes the defamiliarizing perspective of that distance to comment upon the shortcomings of our own social reality. However, whereas most dystopian fictions are designed to function as cautionary tales that warn against the development of specific social and political problems, Golding suggests that all human societies are inevitably doomed by the darkness at the heart of humanity itself.

Golding’s book thus lacks the drive toward positive social and political change that informs the best dystopian fictions. If there is a cautionary element in the book, it would seem to involve a hope that were humans aware of their natural tendencies toward violence they might stand a better chance of keeping those tendencies in check. In this respect, it is important to note that Lord of the Flies really makes two major points. First, and more obvious, is the suggestion that human nature lies at the root of most of the ills that plague society. But the book also suggests that society itself is based on an attempt to deny this fact, thus making matters even worse.

Although many critics have complained about the gimmick at the end of the novel — the boys are saved; the officer doesn’t “understand” the violence which has occurred — it is justified because it is another “appearance.” The officer allows his “eyes to rest on the trim cruiser in the distance,” but we doubt that he can see it or the water with full knowledge. Lord of the Flies is therefore a novel of faulty vision. Can the boys ever see the elements? Are the elements really there? Is a marriage between elements and consciousness possible?

The novel is not about Evil, Innocence, or Free Will; it goes beyond (or under) these abstractions by questioning the very ability to formulate them. Look at any crucial scene. There is an abundance of descriptive details — the elements are “exaggerated” because they are all that the boys possess — but these details are blurred in one way or another. The result is, paradoxically, a confusing clarity. (Even the “solid” words the boys use are illusive: Piggy says “ass-mar” for asthma; Sam and Eric call themselves one name, “Sam ‘n Eric.”) Here is the first vision of the dead man in the tree:

In front of them, only three or four yards away, was a rock-like hump where no rock should be. Ralph could hear a tiny chattering noise coming from somewhere–perhaps from his own mouth. He bound himself together with his will, fused his fear and loathing into a hatred, and stood up. He took two leaden steps forward. Behind them the sliver of moon had drawn clear of the horizon. Before them, something like a great ape was sitting asleep with its head between its knees. Then the wind roared in the forest, there was confusion in the darkness and the creature lifted its head, holding towards them the ruin of a face.

Conclusion

Golding gives us the short distance, the hulking object. Ralph (and the others) should be able to see. But he cannot. Although he “binds” himself — becoming more stable — he does not know where the noise comes from or what the “no-rock” is. His senses cannot rule the elements. He, like the lifted face, is a ruin. V. S. Pritchett claims that Lord of the Flies indicates “Golding’s desire to catch the sensation of things coming into us.”

On the contrary, it indicates his need to tell us that “out there” and “in here” never marry — not even on an enchanted island. We should not forget that the Lord of the Flies may be only a skull — an object given miraculous life because of faulty vision. It is precisely because of this misguided literary piece and its possibility to lead school children astray with its vague philosophies.

Works Cited

Carey John, ed. William Golding: the Man and His Books. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1987.

Devkota Padma Prasad. “The Darkness Motif in the ‘Primitive’ Novels of William Golding.” DAI 51 ( 1990): 860A.
Monteith Charles. “Strangers from Within into ‘Lord of the Flies.'” ( London) Times Literary Supplement ( September 19, 1986): 1030.
Tanzman Leo. “The Murder of Simon in Golding’s Lord of the Flies.” Notes on Contemporary Literature ( Nov. 1987): 2-3.
Watson George. “The Coronation of Realism.” The Georgia Review (Spring 1987): 5-16.
Golding William. Lord of the Flies. New York: Coward-McCann, 1962.

Lord of the Flies is a novel written by William Golding, it was published in 1954. It is an allegorical novel in which Golding uses many powerful symbols to present his ideology about human nature. In this novel human nature is seen as a theme which runs through the entire novel. In this essay I will give examples of how Golding presents Human Nature in Lord of the Flies. The quote “where’s the man with the megaphone? ” connotes Human Nature. When the boys land on the island after greeting one anther they ask for others.

This shows Human Nature because naturally they are curious about their surroundings; this is developed in each human from a very young age. Looking for other people when you are lost is a common thing to do. Human Nature is presented through the pronoun “where” because as most humans would do when they are lost, they are questioning things. “We’ve got to have rules and obey them. ” When Ralph starts to desire rules it is the beginning of civilization on the island. Rules are a way of keeping everything under control so that everyone behaves and all rights are equal.

The noun “rules” represents Human Nature. It connects with the principle of Human Nature where naturally rules are desired to keep everything in line. Rules have been made dating back to biblical times to restore law and order. Without rules there is chaos, the fact that this boy has recognized that rules are needed to be made and obeyed shows the impact not only human nature but society has on all of us. The conch is a strong symbol of rules and rules relate to civilization. The conch was one of the first set of rules made on the island.

No boy may speak unless he is holding the conch and once he is holding it, he cannot be interrupted. The boys have imposed this “rule of the conch” on themselves, and thus the conch represents society’s rules. We have rules so that we act civilized, desiring to be civilized is simply part of our Human Nature. Human Nature is presented through the event of Jack killing the pig. “His mind was crowded with memories; memories of the knowledge….. taken away its life like a long satisfying drink” this quotation gives the reader chance to explore the mental state of Jack in the aftermath of killing his First Pig.

Jack is overjoyed by kill and is unable to think straight as his mind is “crowded with memories”. A flaw of Human Nature is the feeling of power it’s something all humans desire unfortunately the lengths some people will go for power can be extreme. Golding explicitly connects Jack’s exhilaration with the feelings of power and superiority he experienced in killing the pig even If it is not a good thing. Jack’s excitement stems not from pride at having found food and helped the group but from having “outwitted” another creature and “imposed” his will upon it. Ralph Wept for the end of innocence, the darkness of man’s heart” this is at the end of the novel when Ralph realizes that although he is saved from death on the island. He will never be the same again. He as well has lost his innocence and learned about the evil that lurks within all human beings. The phrase “darkness of man’s heart,” talks about the presence of evil instincts lurking within all human beings, no matter how civilized you may be. This connotes Human Nature as it talks about something that is within all humans naturally just that some people are able to suppress the evilness.

The question that rises in this novel is whether these boys where evil all along or whether it was the effect the environment had on their nature. Human Nature is presented in the novel as the protagonist Ralph and the antagonist Jack. It is clear that when they both land on the island they both appear as immature kids who wanted to get back home. It is part of their Human Nature to return back to where they came from, which is what they try to do. “You’ll get back to where you came from” here Simon talks and acts almost as if he was a prophet, as if he knows truly that they were going to go home.

It is in their nature to go somewhere knowingly that eventually they will go back to where they came from. Golding’s use of words in the novel and the way he presents Human Nature through different techniques makes us question Human Nature. The novel mostly focuses on Humans Nature being the cause of Society’s Flaws. The novel makes you think about Human Nature as a whole and whether these boys were capable of killing each other from the beginning or whether it was due to their surroundings.

It also makes you think about yourself; someone who is affected by human nature; if you were left on an island at a young age to tend for yourself what would become of you. In this novel Jack the antagonist has his first experience of killing a pig at first he couldn’t do it, but eventfully he did. This urge then took over his innocence and turned him into a murdering savage. It is clear in Lord of the Flies that Golding believes Human Nature to be evil.

This is to compare R.M. Ballantyne’s Coral Island with William Golding’s Lord of the Flies. Both novels situate their characters isolated in an island removed from society and with no adult supervision, thus leaving them to fend for themselves. Without the rules and order of society and civilization, the boys return to their state of nature – however, Ballantyne and Golding have differing views on what that is. Ballantyne’s boys retain their values and behave accordingly to the rules of society, whereas Golding’s boys struggle with their savage primal instinct and the tendency to be primitive and evil. In the end though, Ballantyne and Golding both explore the problem of evil and how their characters struggle with it.

THESIS:

Lord of the Flies and Coral Island depict how Man will act according to his instincts when he is isolated from society and in doing so show how their characters mature as they face the problem of evil.

FIRST POINT: In both books, the boys are stranded in an isolated island and are left to fend for themselves without adult supervision.

Coral Island: Ralph, aged 15, Jack, aged 18, and Peterkin, aged 14, find themselves shipwrecked in a deserted island in the Pacific. They build shelters, make fire, gather fruits, build boats and explore the island and nearby islands as well.

Lord of the Flies: After a plane crash, Ralph, Piggy, Jack, Roger, Simon, twins Sam and Eric, and a group of boys of varying ages with the youngest ones as young as six or seven, are stranded in the island. The oldest in the group are Ralph and Jack, both twelve years old. They elect Ralph as leader, and set rules on building shelters and fire, and hunting for food.

–   both sets of boys are stranded in an island left to fend for themselves

–   in Coral Island, the three boys are friends, and have reached their adolescence as compared to the boys in Lord of the Flies, who can still be considered as children. The boys in Lord of the Flies are not necessarily friends but they went to the same school – they were thrown together in a situation and are forced to live together.

SECOND POINT:  Both novels explore the problem of evil through the adventures of the boys.

Coral Island: Readers follow the adventures of the boys, of their encounter with a shark, of their exploration of the island and Diamond Cave, their meeting with natives, Ralph’s journey with the pirates and his gallant rescue of the natives, Ralph’s reunion with his friends, and finally, their escape from death from the natives who have been converted to Christianity.

Lord of the Flies: Readers follow the events in the island as brought about by the character’s actions and attitudes. The fire that swept half the forest was because of the boy’s irresponsibility, as was the fire’s burning out and thus missing to send a signal to a passing ship.

Further, their character flaws stimulate the events in the island – Jack’s aggressive and belligerent behavior translated into a confident control of power and command over the weaker ones, and the fear and confusion in many of the boys made them susceptible into engaging into savage and primitive actions, letting go of reason and immersing in their primal instincts. Further, readers see that even the protagonists struggle with their principles, as Ralph and Piggy join in the ritual dance and even help kill Simon.

–   Both sets of characters face the problem of evil. The boys in Coral Island face problem of evil from external forces – pirates, natives, the wild, and they face and fight against it when they come across it. Whereas in Lord of the Flies, the boys’ greatest enemy is themselves – the inherent evil that resides in them, the potential to be primitive and savage and to let go of reason, the fear and violence in them, that is the greatest battle that they face. The problem of evil is intrinsic – the boys struggle with the values that society taught them versus their instincts now that they found themselves in the wild with no supervision whatsoever.

–   Thus, the isolation in the novels forces the characters to mature. In Coral Island, the boys were presented to behave accordingly, keeping their values intact and even able to Christianize natives. Thus, it shows that even without the controls imposed by society, Man in the state of nature will use his reason over his desires, and maintain order.

On the other hand, in Lord of the Flies, the boys were presented indulging in their basic needs of placating their desires over fulfilling their responsibilities to ensure their being saved. The boys struggle with behaving as adults versus behaving like children, between using their reason and satisfying their thirst for hunting, between their morality and their rituals and tendency to be evil. In both novels, the characters had to act beyond their years and had to cope with their extraordinary situation.

THIRD POINT: Both books end with returning to civilization, the three boys in Coral Island sail back to England while the boys in Lord of the Flies were found by a Naval officer who saw the fire set by Jack’s tribe. The end of both novels signals the coming of age of the characters, as they come into realization of what has happened to them.

Coral Island: After all their adventures, the three boys go back home wiser and more mature because of the experiences that they have had.

Lord of the Flies: The Naval officer thought that the boys were all fun and games at the island, but was surprised to find out that two boys have been killed. In a sense, these boys are no longer children – they have seen and participated in such violent acts, and have encountered their dark, evil sides. Upon seeing the Naval officer and asked what happened, the boys break down and cry, realizing what had become of them.

Jack’s tribe have become blood-thirsty and completely savage, Piggy and Simon murdered, and Ralph reduced to a figurative pig, a prey running for his life from his former companions. Because of their experiences in the island, the boys matured and have grown wiser, knowing full well now what man is capable of.

–   both sets of boys come out of their respective islands different and with a better understanding of themselves, although in Coral Island the boys were not tarnished with evil, while in Lord of the Flies the boys come to a realization of how brutal and inhuman they have behaved.

–   Coral Island comes to an end with the boys’ going back to England, with all their little adventures resolved. Lord of the Flies ends with the boys’ crying and realization, and the fight between Ralph and Jack seemed to be over with the arrival of the officer and being rescued.

CONCLUSION:

Lord of the Flies and Coral Island depict two ways Man will act according to his instincts when he is isolated from society – Ballantyne shows that Man will uphold the values civilization taught him while Golding puts forward that Man will descend to savagery.

By isolating the characters from society, Ballantyne and Golding effectively removed the boys from the controlling norms and standards that society imposes to shape the actions and behavior of men. Ballantyne pursues his story focusing on the events that happen to the characters and how they cope with these challenges, in the process showing that man is good and that he has the capacity to fight off evil from external factors.

On the other hand, Golding’s story is driven by his characters’ emotions and motivations. The events happen in Lord of the Flies as a result of how the characters behave. The greatest challenge they had to face was in them: they needed to struggle with man’s tendency to descend to savagery and evil. At the end of each book, the boys are saved from the problem of surviving by themselves and are presented with the chance to return to society and civilization.

Thus, from both books we garner that isolated from the controlling function of society and civilization, Man will fight for his survival, and behave accordingly. However, Man’s state of nature is debatable, the question of whether Man is innately good or evil is perennial, and at most the two books provide perspectives on how Man might behave stripped of society and civilization. For Ballantyne, this means that Man will use his innate goodness and reason, while Golding puts forward that Man will descend to savagery without the pillars of civilization.

It seems that Golding’s portrayal of man’s state of nature is more realistic though, given that he presented younger boys much less exposed to society and dealt more with internal conflict and the crisis of survival, as compared to the adventures of Ballantyne’s characters. In the end, both reflected the attitudes and behavior of men during their time, and showed through their respective narrative how their characters grew and matured; how their way of thinking changed as they coped with the challenges of surviving by themselves.

From a Freudian perspective, the tripartite components of the human psyche—id, ego, and superego —are enacted symbolically by Jack, Ralph and Piggy, in the respective order. Simon’s existence in the story serves no purpose to portray this psychic mechanism whereas the other three main characters wrestle with each other and attempt at role balancing in response to survival need. Jack is the id-ridden one, who follows the primitive instinct of the body, and hunting and killing to his satisfaction at any cost.

Obviously, even as one of the Hunters, Simon’s apathy about hunting and his abstinence from eating meat evince the dominion of his mind over his body. Considering the superego, readers might confuse Simon with Piggy and equate their roles as both of them stand for the ethical voice on the island, trying to maintain moral standards by which the ego, Ralph, operates. In fact, the characteristics possessed by Piggy are more consistent with the core of superego.

Intending to be socially conventional, Piggy constructs an ethical frame according to the rules imposed by adults, by which he emphasizes their importance whenever in the face of injustice. In contrast, Simon knows man’s essential illness as a result of long time introspection, in a natural shelter concealed in undergrowth from humanity. On the other hand, Simon’s altruistic tendency, shown by his feeding of the hungry horde of neglected littluns, intensifies his saintliness, as the divisions of the psyche essentially embody three levels of desires.

Recalling the scene when Simon, Ralph and Jack find the candle-like plant, the difference in their interactions with the outside world is clearly demonstrated. Ralph denies their illuminating functions and Jack shows contempt for their inedible quality. They associate an external object with its possible practical use in reality. Simon differs in “seeing” the candle buds, treating an experience as a pure communion, through which insights would have developed according to his sense of impression. Such internal individual perception is limited to affect his inner world of beliefs, but never the others’.

This account for the great difficulty Simon encounters when he tries to explain the beast that he “sees”, actually a concept, is true when those utilitarians cannot even understand Piggy’s practical and logical consequence. Another item worth mentioning is Simon’s inclination to be internally or spiritually satisfied—he detects the candle buds after telling his companions that he is hungry. Candles are a commonly used decoration in religious venues, generally meaning a connection to spirit. Similar instance occurs when the others think that he would be bathing in the lagoon, he seeks solitude— a cleansing of his mind.

Although realizing that the beast-innate evil nature of mankind does exist, Simon is steadfast in his faith in original virtue of humanity, which was once heroic and sick. If the island is personified as a female, Simon is prone to embrace its beauty and tranquility, meditates alone in a glade surrounded by white glimmering flowers of the candle buds, which symbolize mankind’s spiritual purity. He is not ever disturbed by the affirmed discovery of the beast, and feels completely at ease with going by himself across the forest to rejoin Piggy’s group.

The other boys interpret the island in an opposite manner, and become more aware of her danger and hostility as time passes by, giving vent to this restlessness by claiming the existence of the beast. During an assembly, Simon makes a valiant and unsuccessful effort to indicate the essence of the beast- “maybe it is only us”, implying that he expects the beast is one of the two dimensions of our nature . Then he questions the crowd, asking “what is the dirtiest thing there is? ”, assuming mankind’s natural tendency to have an affinity with the clean- the virtuous side of himself.

This belief is radically undermined when he witnesses the brutal killing of a sow with a sense of violent sexual imagery comparing it to a rape, rendering the glade a filthy and bloody place. The concrete ugliness of the body—the spilled guts and the pungent smell, juxtaposes with the abstract one—the hunters’ indulgences to bestial impulse . Nature, which he used to hold in regard for her sacred beauty, is tainted with the sin of flesh, where its root is man’s body, an indispensable part since birth.

The pig’s head on a stake, foul but magnetizing a flock of flies, changes into the Lord of the Flies in Simon’s hallucination, in which he remains conscious, suggested by his comment on the self-proclaimed beast- merely “a Pig’s head on a stick”. The Lord of the Flies is an externalization of human sin envisaged by Simon, acting as a medium for presenting his inner conflict with choosing between compliance and self-preservation, the ignorant lie and the despairing truth, at last the abusiveness of evil and the fragility of virtue.

Through the monologue in a form of phantasm, Simon refutes his previous notion of human nature and brings a new definition to it—the beast is part of us instead of being in dichotomy; “Fancy thinking the Beast was something you could hunt and kill! ” he said to himself. He comes to recognize his own plight and that of the island, having a premonition of death as the Lord of the Flies promises to have “fun” on the island. Awake, Simon defies the threat and accepts his fate, as “What else is there to do? ”.

He undergoes a physical and spiritual transformation-“The usual brightness was gone from his eyes and he walked with a sort of glum determination like an old man”. The unmasking of the supposed beast on the top of the mountain which he finds to be a dead parachutist, confirms his belief- the beast is within us. Before climbing down the mountain to make public the truth, he frees the corpse of the fallen man from the bondage in compassion, with a significance of “dust thou art, to dust returnest”, enabling nature to purge the sin from the body.

In his last and desperate attempt in liberating mankind from sin, Simon fails, albeit his love and unwavering faith in mankind, believing that confronting the truth would achieve them a conversion into goodness. His death is inevitable, as a testament to his hypothesis—he stumbles into a circle of insanity before he can explain the nonexistence of the beast, then being torn apart by a group of dancing and chanting “beasts” that have their predatory instinct unleashed and their identities lost. In the arms of the sea, a sign of life’s eternality, Simon finds the homeland of his soul.

The ‘strange, moonbeam-bodied creatures with fiery eyes’ that forms a halo around his head give a little consolation to his death, but they are actually low form of life similar to flies, which are aesthetically accepted by nobody. It is Simon’s noble spirit, under that decaying body, makes them glow. Simon’s death produces no corrective effect on the boys’ ignorance of their inner beast, as ironical as his death, most of the boys give in to such bestiality afterwards so as to gain a psychologically completeness of the brutalities that they have committed, and the island soon ends up being an earthly hell in blaze.

The participation of Ralph and Piggy in Simon’s murder, driven by the need to join the “demented but partly secure society”, indicates the irreversible loss of the boys’ innocence to animality, as the two are the only left on behalf of rationality, yet being insensible to the internal beast, believing that ‘evil is somewhere else’. Even for Piggy, who reasons scientifically, has his own limitation to reach the understanding of their defects by nature, and simply concludes Simon’s death as an accident when he ants to exculpate himself. This explains the futility of Science when tackling with the dark side of humanity. The story itself is a miniature of mankind history, and the reason for the collapse of a society can be inferred- neither determined by the fire nor the conch. The former represents technology—can be the first spark ever ignited but also a destructive atomic bomb, helps, at the same time, totally destroys civilization.

And the latter refers to a democratic parliamentary system which Golding had elaborated on in his speech-“The moral is that the shape of a society must depend on the ethical nature of the individual and not on any political system however apparently logical or respectable. ” Therefore, Simon is the final resolution for all chaos, who exemplifies the ideal moral that individual should have- he is temperate in sensual desire, sacrifices for mankind’s welfare expecting nothing in return, sees through man’s latent ill nature but martyr for a faint possibility of healing it.

Nonetheless, here comes the paradox- Simon is not a convincing character that can come to life. The author had him idealistically created and endowed him a propensity to put overly the spiritual above the material: basically, he does not express the normal desire to survive, neither in a primitive society nor a civilized one, for the structural model of psyche is inapplicable to him. Again, he spontaneously has an insight into human nature with a covert thinking process, likely to produce an ill-founded outcome for his reliance on idealism (of philosophy) if being in reality.

Rather than calling him an idealistic thinker, he suits better to the role of a visionary, having a supernatural intuition that Ralph could go home eventually. Thus the only way to justify for his motivations is that he is deliberately intended to be a Christ figure, admitted by Golding in an interview, in which he also said, “What so many intelligent people…find, is that Simon is incomprehensible. …a person (Simon) like this cannot exist without a good God.

Therefore the illiterate person finds Simon extremely easy to understand…” In “Lord of the Flies”, Simon is designed to be a symbol of religion, because of the parallelism between his fate and Jesus’s which is found by many critics. Unlike Jesus, Simon’s death is not redemption of the world from sin. It indeed coincides with an assertion made before the outbreak of World War II, by a German philosopher, Friedrich Nietzsche—”God is dead”, literally meaning that the conventional Christian God is no longer a feasible source of any absolute moral principles.

Henry Reichman, in his research titled Censorship and Selection, Issues and Answers for Schools. Censorship defines censorship as the “the removal, suppression, or restricted circulation of literary, artistic or educational materials … on the grounds that these are morally or otherwise objectionable in light of the standards applied by the censor” (Cromwell, 2005) . Often, the judging of the books as unfit for public or classroom consumption is done unilaterally by an authorized policymaking body tasked with oversight functions.

This has adverse impact to the teachers’ exercise of academic and creative freedom guaranteed by the First Amendment that protects “the students’ right to know and the teachers’ right to academic freedom” (Shupe, 2004). Throughout the history of literature, censorship of literary texts and judging them as unfit for public consumption has always provoked social and political debates. The offensive advocates who pose themselves as guardians of morality and social order insist that the society needs protection from destructive elements that may damage its moral and social fibers.

The defensive side, on the other hand, promotes the upholding of constitutional rights for free expression, criticizing censorship us a curtailment of this basic human right. Ironically, banning the books from public consumption has proven to have done the opposite. The public becomes even more curious, finds creative ways to get hold of these banned books and discover for themselves that the very reason of the banning should be the same reason why the public should read them in the first place.

For instance, while Mark Twain’s “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” was challenged because of its racial slur, many in the academic circles believe that it should all the more be read by the public to learn about racism and its adverse social impact (Shupe, 2004). Restraining the public from reading a literary text that reflects this social reality does not and cannot shield itself from seeing this happening in real life. Unsurprisingly therefore, these banned books or literary texts whose subjects are deemed taboos by the authorities became all-time best sellers continually being “consumed” by the public.

The public’s curiosity has been sustained by the authority’s persistent efforts to dictate what the public can and cannot read defying the provisions of the First Amendments that enshrines creative and academic freedom (Shupe, 2004). This has all the more invigorated the public’s tendency to rebel against repressive authorities. Banning the reading of what the public considered acclaimed literature seems not just illogical but unwarranted. This has made acclaimed banned books like the Lord of the Flies sustained its popularity generations after generations.

I. The Lord of the Flies Restrained from Flying To understand the “restraint flight” of the novel, it may be deemed necessary to trace its roots from its conception to publication, illuminating the tumultuous routes it has taken before it reached the public eye. William Gerald Golding wrote the novel less than ten years after World War II after serving in the Royal Navy from 1940-1945 where he saw man’s unnerving capacity for atrocities. As it is commonly believed, war brings the worst and the best of man’s human nature.

But expectedly so, Golding identified more on the evil side of man, owing to his background as a disillusioned advocate of rationalism, championed by his father Alec Golding, a school teacher and ardent believer of rationalism. In his writing about his wartime experience, he wrote: “Man produces evil as a bee produces honey” (Gyllensten, 1983). He felt that the atrocities committed by the Nazis in such magnitude could be committed just as well by any other nations owing to humankind’s innately evil nature.

He wrote the book at a time of Cold War, fresh from the hostilities of the Holocaust, the widespread dehumanizing aftereffects of atomic bombs, and the threat of the so-called “Reds” behind the Iron Curtain. These conditions all found their way to the book, making it a good study of the political and ideological underpinnings of this milieu. From its pre-publication to its promotion to the public, the Lord of the Flies has undergone a turbulent path. Rejected by publishers a record of 21 times, the book was adjudged as “absurd and uninteresting…rubbish and dull” (Conrad, 2009).

Conrad (2009) recalls that the book seemed to have reached a dead end, until a former lawyer hired as editor from the Faber publishing house, Charles Monteith, resurrected the book from its near oblivion and convinced his colleagues at Faber to publish the book at a measly sum of ? 60. As it turned out, Monteith’s business instinct earned Faber millions of pounds as the book sold millions of copies worldwide and continues to do so up to this time prompting the author of the book to retort that he considers the royalty income as “Monopoly money” (Conrad, 2009).

The book’s huge commercial success can be attributed to two things: first, it has a good narrative filled with thrilling action and a theme that amplifies the endless battle between good and evil; and second, it has been continually challenged by certain school authorities making it all the more attractive to readers. The more it has become controversial, the more it has gathered cult following, assuming celebrity status as a literary text. The thesis of the book underscores the tendency of man for violence.

In the novel, a group of British schoolboys are trapped in a tropical island after the plane that would take them to someplace safer from the nuclear war crashed. Initially acting in a more civilized way, these schoolboys form some sort of a social group with a leader and sets of rules. As they discover the difficulties of such an arrangement within the uncertainty that surrounds them in that tropical island, they begin to question the existence of that social order and start to defy its conventions.

The “good force” is led by Ralph who symbolizes man’s adherence to civilization and proper social decorum; while Jack leads the “evil forces” symbolizing man’s innate evil nature that manifests with proper environmental stimuli engendered by the harsh realities of life such as surviving in a jungle. As the story progresses and the uncertainty of being rescued become remote, Jack begins to reconfigure the composition of the social order initiated by Ralph. Within these contesting ideologies, Jack starts to emerge as the leader of choice by the majority of the group.

Deciding that Jack’s aggressive stunts and hunting skills are the necessary skills of a leader in such a harsh environment, the majority of the boys shift their allegiance to him and leave the “orderly” and “civilized” leadership of Ralph. With Jack’s leadership, the boys undergo a downward spiral and turn to horrific violence to dismantle civilized social constructs in the name of survival. In so doing, two boys are killed and they would have continued to slide down to ultimate self-destruction had their eventual rescue failed to come just in time.

Published in 1954 and written by Golding, the Lord of the Flies has been constantly challenged and banned from school curricula in the United States and other parts of the world. The Nettverksgruppa (1996) or NVG, an association of students and staff at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) in Trondheim recounts that the following academic institutions challenged this novel for its so-called “demoralizing effect that implies that man is little more than an animal”:

A person’s goals and ambitions often times do in fact interfere with the people around them. If someone is so determined to fulfill their dreams they often times do whatever it takes to do so, some people may even turn into a whole new person. Two characters from two different pieces of literature who face this struggle are: Oedipus from the play ‘Oedipus’ by Sophocles and Ralph from the novel ‘Lord of the Flies’ by William Golding.

Oedipus’ goal of seeking the killer of Lauis and finding out the truth about his life and Ralphs goal of survival and getting off the island both conflict with the others around them. Oedipus was very determined to figure out the truth about who killed King Lauis and the truth about his life and who his real parents were. The people around him kept telling him that he was the one who murdered Lauis and the woman, Jocasta that he was married to was in fact his biological mother and his father, who he had killed was Lauis. Oedipus of course could not face the truth and accept the fact that everyone was right so he was determined to keep seeking the killer.

Oedipus talks to the blind prophet, Teresias about the truth and he tells him the same thing that everyone else has been telling him all along, that his mother was his wife and the man he killed was Lauis and Lauis was his father. “You are the cursed polluter of this land“ (pg.38) and again Oedipus disagrees with him, Teresias then calls him blind because he could not face the truth. This causes interpersonal conflict because the both of the men then start insulting and fighting with each other. “When you prove me wrong then call me blind” (pg.38) Oedipus and Teresias argue and Oedipus says to him when you can prove me wrong about actually killing Lauis and that He and Jocasta were actually my parents then you can call me blind to the truth.

Before Oedipus accepts the fact that everyone was right he asks questions about where and when Lauis was killed because he ensures that it is actually the truth before he tells everyone he knows. (Did you not say that Lauis was killed in a place where 3 roads met?” (pg.46) . Oedipus makes himself look bad for not listening to what people say and just listening to himself and telling himself that nothing was true when it turns out it did. Oedipus then cannot live with himself for killing his biological father and then having a relationship with his mother so he then makes a decision to claw his eyes out and become blind because he was blind to the truth all along anyways.

Oedipus cannot live with what had happened in his life so he claws his eyes out because after all he was blind to the truth after all. Before he does so he states “ To a land of exile; brother as it shall be shown and father at once, to the children he cherishes , son and husband to the woman who bore him. Father-killer and father-supplanter” (pg.38) basically meaning that he knew he done wrong and that everyone was right, but he was a good man through it all. Overall, someone goals can on fact cause a person to have conflict and arguments with society around. Not only does Oedipus’ goals interfere with society around him in the play ‘Oedipus’ by Sophocles but also in the novel ‘Lord of the Flies’ by William Golding.

The character Ralph has a goal and desire of surviving to live on the island and also being rescued from the island. This struggle of the character, Ralph causes conflict with the other boys on the island because after being on the island, isolated from family and friends they basically change into other people or as they call themselves“animals”. They try to put order and rules in on the island for everyone to follow so they can at least be a little civil.

Everyone agrees to put Ralph in charge on the island but after a while of taking orders from him the boys separate, Ralph needed to rules to ensure survival but everyone eventually turned on him for it. “There was a ship out there, you said you’d keep the fire going and you let it out!” (pg.74) This quote is said by Ralph to the boys. Jack, another one of the boys on the island had a team of boys with him and their goal was to keep the fire going on top of the mountain just in case there had to be a ship out in the ocean, they were hoping there would be one out there so that the smoke from fire would inform the men/women from the ship that there were people on that island, but of course Jack did not complete this task, instead he and the boys went hunting, that is all they cared about it seemed.

Ralph gave each and every boy a job on the island and to be fair, they all had to finish them, but that is not the way it went down. Ralph noticed no one was doing their given task so he got mad. “Been working for days now and look! And they keep running off. You remember the meeting? How everyone was going to work hard until the shelters were finished” (pg.51). One of the boys, Simon had some medical problems with having seizures, one night they got bad and he ran out of the woods uncontrollably, he could not talk right, the other boys ran after him like a pack of wild animals, they had “mistaken” him for the beast that they thought had been on the island, the boys unknowingly killed him brutally, stabbing him continuously.

Afterwards Piggy and Ralph realized that it was not the beast that they had killed, it was actually Simon, they felt nothing but guilt, they felt that they could have been more cautious. Piggy tried to get rid of the guilt by saying they were under pressure because they were scared but they both knew that was not the case. “Don’t you understand,Piggy? The things we did.” (pg.173) Ralph talks about the things they did, referring to the death of the boy, Simon, you can tell that they felt guilt. “I wasn’t scared, I was – I don’t know what I was” (pg.173). Here Ralph states that he knew they were not scared of the thing that popped out of the woods, that turned out to be Simon, he knew that that was not the reason why everything went wrong, deep down they all knew that it was because of how much they changed and turned into savages from being isolated on the island with nothing.

In comparison of the two works, they both have similarities in terms of society being affect by a specific character. Both of the books are affected by setting as well, the characters, Ralph and Oedipus have goals that have to do with setting, which then causes conflict with society. In the play ‘Oedipus’ by Sophocles, Oedipus’ goal of setting is trying to figure out the truth of his life; who killed Lauis and who his real parents were. This causes conflict with the citizens around him because he constantly shuts people down when they try to help him and tell him the truth. “You are the cursed polluter of this land” (pg.38) Teresias states that the one who ruined the land was, Oedipus, him saying that then caused argument, because Oedipus listened to no one he just believed he was right.

Conflict with others helped him piece together the truth of his life, he then states “ To a land of exile; brother as it shall be shown and father at once, to the children he cherishes , son and husband to the woman who bore him. Father-killer and father-supplanter” (pg.38) it causes conflict with others because when Jocasta realized what had happened, she then killed herself. This play is similar to the novel “Lord of the Flies” by William Golding because the setting of the Lord of the Flies influence the goals of the character Ralph which then causes conflict with others, the setting in which the boys are in causes Ralph to have a goal of survival and to get off the island, he puts rules in order which not everyone agrees to so that then causes conflict and uproar on the island. “we’re on an island, we’ve been on the mountain top and seen water all around” (pg.31)

This shows when the boys have just arrived there and when they first realized where they actually were and that they were there alone. “we saw no houses, no smoke, no footprints, no boats, no people, we’re on an uninhabited island” (pg.31) this quote states the struggles they have ahead of them with being so young and having to be able to survive alone, Ralph knew they needed to put some order in so he does, he becomes captain but not everyone agrees with the jobs he puts in place, which is why it caused conflict. As you can see both of these books are similar in the sense of setting, and how it eventually aids in making conflict.

Overall these two pieces of literature do show how a person’s desires and goals, conflict and interfere with the ones around them, whether they mean to or not, sometimes they may not even mean too, but if someone is so determined to complete their goal it can have a big impact on people’s lives around you, it can affect the way they live for the rest of their lives.