Violent Society in Lord of the Flies

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Why does the society on the island collapse into violence in ‘Lord of the Flies’?

        ‘Lord of the Flies’ is an allegorical novel by William Golding in which he employs the scene of a deserted island and the cast of a group of English schoolboys to serve as a framework, through which he explores the themes of his book. The major themes that Golding tackles are the conditioning of behaviour vs. the malicious inclination of human nature and the spectrum of civilisation and savagery. The violence on the island is generated for several reasons, major ones being the loss of conditioning, the transformation from civilised to savage and the conflict between Ralph and Jack.

        Conditioning is the learning process by which our behaviour becomes dependant on an event or action occurring in our environment. The boys have been constantly conditioned by schoolteachers and parents to follow the conduct of the English society, and not to do wrong or be immoral, as if they were disobedient, they would have been given punishments from authority: in this period, corporal punishment would have been common. The point in the book which clearly demonstrates the conditioning of the boys is when Roger throws stones at Henry in chapter four: ‘Roger gathered a handful of stones…a civilization that knew nothing of him and was in ruins.’ (page 78). Here, Roger is incapable of throwing the stones directly at young Henry and feels compelled to throw them near to him but not near enough to hurt Henry or cause him any discomfort. Golding is trying to say that Roger was constrained by ‘parents and school and policemen and the law,’ all who are figures that condition the moral code of society into Roger’s mind. Conditioning is something that must be continuously drilled into the boys, lest it be forgotten, and as the novel progresses, the morals and principles that they have learnt from this conditioning begin to fade away. The conditioning is what keeps them from become savages as it suppresses the darkness within human nature. But the conditioning can never fully rid the boys of this dark temperament, and so as the conditioning ceases to play a part in the development of their behaviour, the wicked disposition grows and the boys can do nothing to resist becoming savages, and thus violence pours into the society on the island.

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        To be civilised is to have a highly developed culture and society and to show moral and intellectual advancement, and Piggy and Ralph, out of all the boys, are the best display of civilised characters. Piggy and Ralph both believe in making the society on the island into a society that functions efficiently and compatibly, and making the boys stay polite and well-mannered, so that order can be kept. Piggy especially has the civilised understandings of the figures of authority in England, such as schoolteachers and policemen, but sadly he lacks the influence and power to enforce such customs onto ...

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The writer has produced an engaging, well written account and shows a good knowledge of the novel by referring widely to different parts of it in detail. The quotes themselves need to be improved and the essay writing itself could be less descriptive in places. Overall, this attains a very good rating, but not quite the top! ****