Ralph represents good’s struggle with evil through his actions. To start with he is tempted by Jack and hunting, “Ralph watched them [the hunters] envious and resentful.” And this is reflected in the way he treats Piggy; at the beginning he mocks him and does not take him seriously, ““Piggy!” Ralph shrieked with laughter,” by the end he is to Ralph “the true, wise friend called Piggy.” Golding has shown a drifting scale through the book at the beginning Ralph and Jack are great friends, by the end they are mortal enemies. As Jack becomes less civilised Ralph likes him less and as Ralph becomes more civilised he likes Piggy more. Ralph represents the failing battle of good against evil. Even though ultimately he was rescued, he failed to stop evil and maintain order, peace or even the fire.
Jack represents evil in the book and is typically compared with Hitler and other evil dictators in history. The simplicity of Jack is the terrifying part about him. He acts on his feelings and rules everyone by fear and dictating to everyone one. He is arrogant, determined, quite clever, bossy and a bully. At the start he is clearly a bad person and there are dark hints of his evil, “light blue eyes, frustrated now, and turning, or ready to turn to anger.” However he is still just a typical bully, nothing special, just in a special situation. Jack controls the “hunters” who start as the choir but descend into savagery following Jack. It is who Jack is at the beginning of the story compared to who he becomes that shows how evil dominates the island. Jack like many others is primarily concerned with meat, hunting, games and having fun no matter who they hurt. This makes him appealing and as Ralph constantly tries to enforce the rules Jack uses this to undermine Ralph and strengthen his own position. For example Jack criticises Ralph for “not hunting” and being “bossy”.
Golding also uses symbolism to present the struggle between good and evil. Firstly there is the Conch. This object is used by Ralph to call meetings and to keep order in a gathering by making a rule that only the holder of the Conch may speak. The Conch represents democracy and begins as a beautiful colourful object, “a deep cream, touched here and there with faded pink.” But as savagery creeps into the island it gets duller and darker until Roger smashes it into “a thousand white fragments”. This shows how as evil creeps into the island democracy and rules become less and less relevant until they are destroyed completely by evil, embodied in this case by Roger. The fire represents man’s inability to control nature. The fire is used to cook meat and to try and signal for a rescue. However as savagery increases the fire is not used as a signal, it is used only for cooking meat. This shows how some of the boys give up on civilisation and loose hope of it coming back. In the end the hunters try to use the fire to kill Ralph. Ironically this act of pure destruction and chaos leads to the resurrection of society on the island through the arrival of the rescue boat.
Simon and Roger represent two ends of a scale in the book. Golding has used Roger as a representation of true evil while using Simon as a Jesus like pure good character. Both are loners with few friends and stay outside the group but when it is involved in good things, like building huts, Simon joins in. As the island descends into savagery Roger not only joins in but also becomes as powerful as Jack “wielding a nameless authority.” Of course as Simon is the representation of good he is destroyed by evil. Roger as the representation of evil not only helps to destroy Simon, but also murders Piggy. These two characters also help to define the decent into savagery. At the beginning when Ralph has just been elected leader, Simon goes with the Jack and Ralph exploring the island. He is at his most popular at this point and this shows how at the beginning good people like Simon are very expectable. Before the end Simon is murdered and by the time Ralph is hunted Roger is nearly as powerful as Jack. “Roger edged past the Chief, only just avoiding pushing him with his shoulder.” This shows how powerful Roger has become, because while you would think all of Jack’s followers fear or at the least respect him Roger clearly has little of either for Jack as he nearly knocks him over while passing by. This shows how evil has began to dominate the group and makes it seem like Jake is no longer evil enough to control the group. This shows that evil is it’s own master and Roger would probably go on to take over the group, as he is so evil and therefore powerful.
Golding experiences of WWII are linked to the entire book. In WWII Golding would have seen un-imaginable evil, men fighting men to the death merciless and horrible to watch. The ideas portrayed in the book offer explanations to why evil dominates good. Firstly it is easier to be evil and a lot more fun. The novel shows this by hunting and other games. During a hunt a boy must cause pain to an animal and ultimately kill it, but that is not considered as the pleasure is a drug to the young boys’ minds which none can deny. The same goes for games involving others being hurt, they know that they are causing pain but slowly they begin to care less and less. They cause more and more pain to the human they are hunting letting the excitement overwhelm them, until an event like the death of Simon happens and boundaries have been crossed. By then there is no turning back and the once innocent boy playing games are lost in savagery and they have become easy to control with fear and hunting. That is how Jack gained his power. Secondly being good all the time is near impossible and boring. Even Ralph joins the hunt and is in fact the first to make fun of Piggy. In fact Ralph is the first to call Piggy Piggy, “his real name’s Piggy.” And begin the cycle of bullying that leads to his death. What Golding shows by this is nobody, not a saint, a pope or anybody has ever gone through life without performing, however small, some evil consciously. Every boy on the island is tempted and in some way they all commit some form of evil, whether it is the name calling of a weaker boy to the murder of another, they all do it. There are only two exceptions: Piggy, because he is not strong enough to perform evil and Simon, because he is pure good. But in reality no one exists like Simon, unless you believe in Jesus (and what the Bible teaches) and even if you do then you also believe he was more than human. Thirdly the line between good and evil is unclear. As Golding shows the decent into Savagery is slow, as the island changes boundaries of acceptance change. To start in a private school the children would not have bullied an other, as they did to Piggy, as the laws of there school would punish them. Once on the island there new freedom is a luxury and they do not hesitate to call others by names. However they all still cling to civilisation, for a while at least, as at the beginning none would attack another without justification. As the island changes the boundaries are pushed so far that murder is justifiable. As mentioned before once the boundaries are crossed there is no going back. Golding offers another explanation to the reason for evils victory, “the darkness of man’s heart” perhaps men are naturally evil. If one takes this mentality then in reality there is no struggle between good and evil; just resistance as evil dominates and men become moraleless creatures driven only by basic desire. Books like Lord of the Rings or Harry Potter portray evil as a different species, as men who are corrupted and not as Golding describes men in there natural and basic form. Lord of the Flies is perhaps the only novel which describes the battle between good and evil as the inner battle which every man must face. Simon was a visionary and his realisation is what Golding was trying to say, the “beast” they all feared was within them. In other words they feared each other and themselves but could not realise this. Golding presents the struggle between good and evil as a battle doomed from the start. He portrays men as naturally evil and only the few who cling to civilisation as good, but they are ultimately doomed as the three who do stay true to humanity are destroyed save Ralph who is rescued by luck. Lord of the Flies shows how without the fragile walls of society what human nature is truly like and why evil in the end will always be able to dominate good.
By Rory Kinane
