The boys lose their individual identities when the older children just become known as the ‘biguns’, and the younger become known as the ‘littluns’. They are not known by their names anymore, but just as a group term. At a time when a group of people should stick together and unite, the boys create a situation that prevents this. They form a barrier between the ‘biguns’ and ‘littleuns’, by separating people into two different groups. This loss of unity and similarity is bound to create problems, just as it does in the real world when two dissimilar sides oppose each other because they cannot identify. When the hunters paint their faces and kill pigs, they are losing their individualism, and becoming part of a group mentality of savagery. Two twins, named Sam and Eric, "combine" personalities as "Samneric." They are no longer known as two separate individuals, but as one person instead. Later in the novel, the savage boys begin to paint their faces, and end up wearing masks - “He... gazed at the green and black mask before him, trying to remember what Jack looked like.” Golding writes, “...the mask was a thing on its own, behind which Jack hid, liberated from shame and self-consciousness.” For Jack, this is his true, dormant self emerging from beneath his childish exterior - “He tried to convey the compulsion to track down and kill that was swallowing him up.” Ironically, the times when Jack’s character is revealed to the greatest extent is when he is hidden behind a mask. With the act of putting on the mask, the boys lose the ‘metaphorical masks’ of their previous personalities, which concealed their true atavistic selves.
From the calling of the first meeting and all along up to the final hunt for Ralph, the sense of order and respect is gradually declining among the boys. In the beginning, everybody listens to what everybody has to say, and they attempt to construct a civilized society on the island. The problem comes when the boys begin to realise that there are no consequences for their actions. “There was the brilliant world of hunting, tactics, fierce exhilaration, skill; and there was the world of longing and baffled common-sense.” This line illustrates their way of thinking perfectly. They quickly begin to take advantage of this fact, although earlier on in the novel, even the future savages are still subconsciously aware of what constitutes right and wrong, and the recollection of social limitations. The best example of this can be found with Roger in Chapter 4, “...there was a space around Henry, perhaps six yards in diameter, into which he dare not throw. Here, invisible yet strong, was the taboo of the old life. Round the squatting child was the protection of parents and school and policemen and the law. Roger’s arm was conditioned by a civilization that knew nothing of him and was in ruins.” The boys soon realise that swimming and eating fruit all day is more fun than laying the foundation for a fair and safe society where everybody works for the benefit of the whole group. As the respect for the conch is lost, so is law and order on the island.
When the ship passes by early in the story, it is a sign that after that point, the boys cannot be saved. This means that they are unlikely to ever get another chance to be rescued, but also means that they themselves, as human beings, cannot be saved from the inevitable descent into evil - “The world, that understandable and lawful word, was slipping away. Once there was this and that; and now - and the ship had gone.”
Without the rules and laws of civilization, man naturally reverts to his primitive state of barbarity. As the boys live without adults, the mandates of society imposed upon them by the grown-ups gradually fade away. They are first afraid to kill anything, and this is obvious by the line, “They knew very well why he hadn’t [killed the piglet]: because of the enormity of the knife descending and cutting into living flesh; because of the unbearable blood.” Eventually however, Jack, who soon realizes his previously suppressed love of hunting and bloodshed, leads the others in hunting the wild pigs on the island, and the boys soon lose their squeamishness.
The absence of adults means a lack of order and authority, but also a lack of security. “If you’re hunting sometimes... you can feel as if you’re not hunting, but - being hunted, as if something’s behind you all the time in the jungle.” The childish idea that ‘if there’s adults nearby then everything will be all right’ is lost. This forces massive responsibilities on the ‘biguns’ to take the part of the adults on the island. At one point, Ralph states, “Things are breaking up. I don’t understand why. We began well; we were happy. And then - ...Then people started getting frightened.” This highlights the fact that although the boys have gained so much responsibility on the island, they are still only children, and this is simply Golding’s way of reminding the reader of this fact. When the littleuns burn to death in the forest fire, the surviving boys try their best to forget the incident ever happened, and to avoid talking about it. This is obviously a very childish way of dealing with things, and illustrates the loss of responsibility within the group.
The key moment early on in the novel is the election of Ralph as leader of the group. The former head of the choirboys, Jack, is now overthrown, without any power except that which he has when holding the conch: something anyone else can do as well. The effect of this for Jack is that he loses his authority and feels alienated by the group.
Ralph eventually loses his socially imposed moral values, and finally reverts to the savagery of the rest of the boys. “He shot forward, burst the thicket, was in the open, screaming, snarling, bloody” and “Ralph too was fighting to get near, to get a handful of that brown, vulnerable flesh. The desire to squeeze and hurt was over-mastering.” Ralph is like a wild animal, demonstrating that this primitive tendency towards violence is present in all men. The loss of civilisation promotes this degeneration. This is a strong message, and so the use of Ralph contrasting his earlier strong and dependable self is Golding’s method of hammering it across. Ralph experiences a loss of innocence, and discovers and weeps for "the darkness of man's heart”, which enables him to fight becoming savage.
The boys are conditioned, at first; to do nothing exceptionally wicked because, although there are no adults, the fear of the law is still present to some extent. Maurice still feels “the unease of wrongdoing”, though he knows there is no grown-up to punish him. As time passes with the absence of these rules, they impose less upon the boys' pursuit of “fun”, which is one of their main objectives.
It is interesting that Golding decides to focus on a group of boys rather than a mixture of both sexes. The message he could be trying to portray is that boys are much more power hungry and perhaps less aware of consequences than girls. The absence of girls prevents a situation in which sexual tensions between characters could ‘cloud’ the underlying story and how it develops. Also, there is the possibility that this was much more intentional that it originally appears, in the sense that Golding may be trying to say something about men alone rather than humans in general.
