Golding’s ‘British’ boys have nothing in common with Ballantyne’s, bar that their initial joy of finding themselves in a paradise island with no adults to hold them back.
In Ballantyne’s period wars were fought for valour, renown and glory, but in Golding’s time all they meant was blood, death and barbarism.
Because Ballantyne never saw the real human psyche emerge when in a crisis he used his idealistic views instead. Whereas Golding had first hand knowledge of human weakness and violence. So would be able to draw upon his experiences and write accurately about the human psyche.
‘Lord of the Flies’ describes in detail the horrific exploits of a group of young boys, who make a extreme transition from ’conditioned’ to ‘savage’. The book is set in a Third World War; a plane crash-lands on a deserted island. A group of British boys are left; they begin to set up an ordered society. Insurgence ensues and the civilised group split in two. The boys quickly deteriorate into ‘savages’. They become murderous barbarians, who are then ironically rescued by a naval officer who represents ‘civilised’ society.
Golding has written the book around a main theme. In ‘Lord of the Flies’ the society that holds everyone together is taken away, and without these conditions our ideals, values and the basic principals of right and wrong, good and evil are lost. Without the strict rules and moral ‘conditioning’ and the guidelines of society, anarchy and savagery are allowed to surface and a decent into instinctive primordial iniquity is imminent. Golding shows the reader that we fit our moral values around our environment and that when there is no civilisation to govern us, we fall into a moral maze and become wild and primitive like the jungle on the island. Golding’s views are basically that every person is born bad, but it is the conditioning of civilisation that we receive that keeps us from doing wrong.
There is also an idea that the 19th Century philosopher, Jean Jacques Rousseau, wrote that man is essentially good, a ‘noble savage’, when in the ‘state of nature. Which is the state of all the other animals and the conditioned man was in before the creation of civilisation and society’. He believed that good people are made unhappy and corrupt by their experiences in society. He viewed society as ‘artificial’ and ‘corrupt’ and that the furthering of society results in the continuing unhappiness of man.
These two views display the utopian views and ethics versus original sin. Although Golding believes in the idea of original sin, he has created characters that display the extremes of these two views.
Golding has displayed Roger to be the person that was ‘conditioned’ by society. Roger displays a violent and sadistic streak from the start of the book. By throwing stones at Henry he is beginning to release the ‘conditioning that he has received, yet it is the same ‘conditioning’ that is preventing Roger from hitting Henry. Roger’s dark character is then almost completely revealed shortly afterwards.
‘Jack was standing…ten yards away. When Roger opened his eyes and saw him; a darker shadow crept beneath the swarthiness of his skin’. This shows Roger’s true ‘natural’ state emerging from his inner depths. Without the ‘conditioning’ received from society his natural state will rise completely to the surface and remain there.
Towards the end of the book when Roger has completely cast aside all ‘conditioning’, he pushes aside his own chief to get at human flesh.
Roger does not require a ‘mask’ to hide his deeds. His soul is already black, so he fears no further evil.
Simon is the complete opposite of Roger. He is an example of Rousseau’s ideals’. He is an almost Christ-like figure; he has pure goodness within him and can recognise the evilness in others. Simon contradicts Rousseau in a way because he shows no sign of corruption or evilness receive from society. Simon has powers of vision and a kind of instinctive understanding of the world around him.
Simon is physically frail; he suffers from fits and faints, and is unable to voice his insights. None of the other boys understand him; he is simply dismissed as ‘batty’ and ‘funny’.
His perception of the natural life of the island has a distinct contrast to the other boys. When he retreats to his secret den and is absorbed by richness and variety, he recognises that the real beast is in everyone, and that this truth must be accepted before we are either ruled by it or overcome it.
At the end he becomes a martyr, who died for others, he is killed as he tries to tell the boys the truth about the beast.
From the beginning Jack is singled out from the rest of the boys because of his flame red hair. This insights a sense of ferocity and violence in the reader’s mind, even before his personality is revealed. He contributes to the whole group by providing meat. Jack openly contests Ralph’s leadership and is obsessed with power. At the start he controls the ‘wearily obedient’ choir with military discipline.
Jack rebels against hope of rescue due to the amount of pleasure and enjoyment he is having on the island.
Jack rejects the democratic processes by which rules and decisions are made, and instead imposes his own desires by force. Jack rules in an autocratic embodiment of power. He enjoys his ‘subjects’ to be hurt in order for their obedience and loyalty. Ironically if they hadn’t have been rescued, Jack’s tribe would have lost their main source of food, the fruit trees that were burning, to route out Ralph.
‘The fools! The fools! The fire must be almost at the fruit trees-what would they eat tomorrow?’
He overcomes and suppresses the civilised restraints which originally prevented him from killing a pig and surrenders himself to his violent and bloodthirsty instincts. He finds a certain fulfilment in exercising power over others, which he carries out without any thought of justification or the people involved. His beating of Wilfred is a cruel abuse of his power. Jack finds primitive solutions to the problems on the island. He resorts to superstitious practices, by leaving a ‘sacrifice’ for the beast, and uses ritual to keep the tribe together and control their individuality.
Ralph is portrayed as the epitome of British boyhood, handsome, sporting, decent and honourable, but not possessed of any great intelligence or imagination. ‘There was a mildness about his mouth and eyes that proclaimed no devil’. He has no hidden depths or unhealthy character traits such as Jack and Roger. We are told throughout the book that Ralph’s father is a commander in the Royal Navy. This is where his views on cleanliness and higher levels of hygiene come from. He oft-describes images of his middle-class home, which sustain him throughout his ordeal on the island.
Although he is intelligent, he often finds the tasks of thinking things through and making decisions too much for him, and relies on Piggy to help and prompt him. His respect for Piggy gradually increases as he grows to value Piggy’s loyalty and common sense.
Ralph displays physical courage, such as when he forces himself to climb the mountain to see the beast, and moral courage in the way that he admits his part in Simon’s murder. He struggles in his belief that people are fundamentally good. In the end he realises ‘the darkness of man’s heart’.
Ralph represents the moral values of civilisation and democratic rule, which are eventually defeated by the sadistic and evil nature contained within the society.
Piggy’s appearance and isolation prevent him from a full contribution to life on the island. Ralph is dismissive of him at first, thinking him to be a whining, overweight hypochondriac who can be ordered about.
Piggy is totally segregated from the rest of the boys; he comes from a working class background and is presumably a scholarship boy. Ralph observes, ‘Piggy was an outsider not only by accent, but by fat and ass-mar and specs and a certain disinclination for manual labour’.
I believe him to be a socially unacceptable to the other boys and he is totally inept. Piggy fears people because of past torment.
Although he is a social outcast, Piggy is the most intelligent boy in the island. He exhibits foresight, good sense, caution and an organising ability. In the end he is seen courageously standing up for his sense of sense and rational behaviour.
Ralph and Piggy’s relationship is symbiotic, each possessing qualities the other lacks. He also shows a deeper understanding of people than Ralph does; he recognises the hatred Jack feels.
Piggy shows unwavering loyalty to Ralph and to the end believes in the values represented by the conch.
Golding frequently uses imagery to describe the scenery and the setting. At the end of chapter nine, Golding ends the chapter with a sublime celebration of beauty.
‘The water rose further and dressed Simon’s coarse hair with brightness’. Golding uses personification and adjectival imagery to create a ‘halo’ around Simon’s head; this elevates him to the status of a saint.
‘Now touched the first of the stains that seeped from the broken body and the creatures made a moving patch of light as they gathered at the edge’. The writer uses euphemisms to describe Simon’s ‘broken body’, this calm and solemn language is used to describe how Simon becomes part of eternity and natural that he dearly loved.
Golding makes the ‘burial’ very beautiful and naturalistic, Simon was one with nature, and his send-off reflects his innocence and knowledge. The tide Golding mentions is related to cosmic images, ‘somewhere over the darkened curve of the world the sun and moon were pulling; and the film of water on the earth planet was held, bulging slightly on one side while the solid core turned’. This creates a sense of rhythm and majesty of the universe, that Simon was greater than any normal human, he was created by nature, and it is now reclaiming him. The longer sentences draw out the beauty and let the images flow through the readers mind without interruption.
He is transformed from the pathetic broken body into something divine and noble. His dignified burial, which is presided over by nature, challenges the ferocious, vile ritual which caused his death.
The island is totally segregated and isolated from the rest of the world. It is a microcosm which reflects what is happening in the greater world outside.
It is an unspoiled tropical island with an abundance of fruit, vegetation and natural life. There are comparisons between the island and the biblical ‘Garden of Eden’. Nature on the island is stunning, and at the same time hostile and stark. The fruit can provide nourishment and refreshment and can also cause stomach aches; the sun can delight and also hit like a wall of heat.
The island gives an example of the establishment of a utopian society, which then depredates back into autocratic rule. It is given as a parallel to worldwide history. Such as the Russian revolution, they set out become equal and to rule peacefully, but the greediness of human nature awoke in some, and they then began to become dictators in a supposed equal world.
In chapter eight, Simon comes face to face with an imagined Lord of the Flies; it is in fact a pig’s head on a stick. Golding uses the language of the schoolboy world of play and games to show their increasing savagery. Many playground games involve fun and ritual, Jack’s hunting offers both of these elements. The game of miming the hunt begins playfully and develops viciously. The truly chilling thing is when everybody laughs when Jack says they should use a littlelun for the part of the pig.
Golding’s syntax during the end of this chapter is much shortened; this is to display Simon’s thoughts in a literary manner so that the reader can see his state of mind. His mind is obviously degrading, because he eventually has ‘one of his times’, a fit, which is a result of great mental stress.
Simon is a macrocosm of every person on earth, he is facing the two parts of his inner self, the good and the evil within him are confronting each other externally. Strangely the evil within him is externalised outside of Simon whereas the goodness within him stays inside of him.
Golding does this to show us that we all externalise our fears into a tangible object, so that we can defeat it in some way. But if it were displayed inside us then we would have no clear way in which to defeat the evilness within us all.
Golding portrays the whole of the human race in these few boys. He reverses mankind’s evolutionary state; he removes civilisations restrictions on them so their natural primal state is laid bare. We are shown that are roots were based around murderous savages, which, if left unchecked, we would all eventually become.
I think that Golding has shown the disintegration of the boy’s personalities to such an extent to achieve the direct opposite of Ballantyne. I believe that Golding completely believes in the ‘original sin’ that resides in all human beings. Although I think that we all have a part of us that is in tune with evil, most of the world’s population has the ability to control this side of our personality, and in most, will only surface in extreme conditions. In effect, I partly believe in Golding’s theory because he gives us examples of evil, within Roger and Jack. But I can also see that humans have a natural good side to them, in which Golding has shown in Simon. The author has written a profound novel which does display ‘man’s essential illness’ that we will never escape from.
By
Cheryl Gogin