Lord of the Flies
To Survive by All Means
What if you survived a plane crash, how lucky would you be? In this novel, not all survivors wished they survived because the events after the crash was actually worst then the crash itself. A plane had crashed into an unknown, uninhabited and wild island. Only a group of young boys had survived this horrible disaster. With the odds of being rescued slim to none and no adult supervision to create law and order, how can these survivors even survive through it? As it seems like freedom and paradise, away from the adult world in the beginning, it soon ends in a horrible nightmare of savages and no civilization. How Mans inhumanity to man makes countless thousands to mourn relates to this novel is that it proves that mankind are capable of causing cruel crimes, shows brutality and savagery and the extermination of a civilization.
In the world of mankind, we have done many right and wrong things. In this novel however, mankind are capable of causing cruel crimes. There are many examples of these crimes, which includes frequently killing poor defenceless hogs and even murdering one of own kind. Jakes tribe heartlessly killing little harmless pigs and murdering innocent Piggy shows cruelty and inhumanity to other creatures and to his one kind as well. It also shows that Jake is exemplified as a criminal, always causing awful deeds and doing whatever he wants. Jake was the chapter chorister and head boy, which means he had responsibility and was the head of the choir in the beginning of the novel, but wanting to do the same to Ralph as he did with the pigs head on a stick. This elucidates that mankind can often fickle from friendly to hostile.
A long time ago, we believed that mankind was once in a non-civilized state. We were like savages and acted in a primitive behaviour. In the novel, Jacks tribe was very much like this. Both of them showed brutality to animals and looked like wild animals from the lack of clothing. A pigs head on a stick was an example of Jacks brutality to animals. It also symbolizes evil and chaos because Lord of the Flies translated in Hebrew is a synonym of Satan, and the head of the pig was described as there was blackness within, a blackness that spread. The following quotation was a metaphor which meant blackness, which is similar to evil and chaos, was surrounding of the pigs head and it spread onto Simon which made him hallucinate. Another similarity between Jack and mankind during ancient times were the tattered clothes that they wore. The tattered clothing motif reveals that from the lack of clothing, people would return closer to a primitive behaviour, which leads to becoming savages. This concludes brutality and savagery can come from tattered clothing and can lead to cruelty to animals.
If law and order were eliminated in civilization, there would be chaos and crimes everywhere on earth. This dark illusion actually happened during the end of Lord of the Flies. This began when Jack rebelled against Ralphs ways and started a tribe of his own. As additional boys joined Jacks side, Ralph was left with only Piggy. Jack opposing Ralph exemplifies a mutiny, because Jack was rebelling against the chief and gathers others to follow his ways. After these events, the conch which symbolizes law and order becomes destroyed by Jacks crew. Just after the conch exploded into a thousand white fragments and ceased to exist, Jacks tribe turned very hostile towards Ralph and wanted to kill him. This shows that once without the conch, there would be the extinction of law and order.
As it seemed as if all of humanity was lost, there was still hope in the end. The Marine Officer that appeared in the end of the novel locked up all the evil and cruelty within Jacks tribe and brought back order and civilization. He was the Deus ex machina who suddenly resolved the situation immediately. Without him, there would be no way that Ralph could survive. But if a modern group of boys would happen to become stranded in real life, would they behave in a civilized or non civilized way?
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