Essay on Lord of the Flies

The novel, Lord of the Flies, was written by William Golding. William Golding was born on September 19, 1911. His literary ambitions began at the young age of seven. He received his Bachelor of Arts from Oxford University in 1935. His novels explore characters and situations. In Lord of the Flies, it is a time of war. A group of English schoolboys are on a plane, when they are attacked and they have to evacuate their aircraft. They find themselves on a remote island, somewhere in the Pacific Ocean, without any adult supervision. A boy named Ralph takes charge and forms a crude society, with a democratic type of government. Then, a boy named Jack decides to break off and form his own society, with him being the leader, governing with a dictatorship type of government, causing Ralph s society to crumble and fall apart. William Golding believed that the defects of a society could be traced back to the flaws of the human nature. These societies were very different from each other because the individuals were very different.

Ralph s society was based on everyone having a say in the government. Ralph was kind and good to the people of his society. He let them have freedom and liberties which was not go for his society because they abused their freedom and became lazy and irresponsible. His society did not have their priorities in order because Ralph did not stress that the rescue fire and the shelters were necessary. Ralph was passive and did not keep his society in line. The were too unruly to control. Another factor in the demise of Ralph s society was the other members. Piggy, like Ralph, was not aggressive enough. He let himself be pushed around when he knew he was doing the right thing. Piggy did not have the leadership qualities. An example of this is when he let the littluns go when he was supposed to take all of their names. Finally the society got too unruly and could be not be controlled.

Jack s society was very different from Ralph s. He was the dictator and the members of his society had to do what he commanded. One of his flaws was that he had no respect for his society. He was disorganized and did not keep track of things. Something could have happened in his society, causing harm to the people in it. An example of this was when they had a fire for cooking the meat and he did not take care of it so it went out of control. He did not make rules or give anyone any responsibilities. His people would get lazy and irresponsible. Jack had no objective. This caused his society to not have a goal also. All they wanted to do was hunt. Jack was too aggressive. The people of his society were too scared to have their own opinion. Jack wanted to have fun, and that was all he wanted. This made his society centered around having fun and avoiding responsibility. Another member affected the society was Roger. Roger was the executioner. The whole society feared him and they did not want to break the rules, for they knew they would be severely punished. This also caused the society to have no opinion. With all these flaws, Jack s society would have failed also if it had enough time.

These societies were very different from each other, but they did have one thing in common, they both failed. The society had defects because their leaders had defects. The shape of a society must depend on the ethical nature of the individual and not on any political system. What William Golding implied throughout this book was that the defects of a society can be traced back to the defects of human nature.