Golding's Lord Of The Flies: Character Analysis

Enlightenment philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau writes, "Nature never deceives us; it is we who deceive ourselves". Nature forms humans as blank slates, and it is only through life experiences that humans become corrupted. In the novel Lord of the Flies by William Golding, a group of English schoolboys crash land onto an unknown island, and they must learn to survive on their own. At first, the older boys, led by Ralph and Piggy, take control and keep the peace. Jack, another one of the older boys, desperate for leadership, becomes bloodthirsty. He and his group of hunters break from civilization, and they turn into violent savages. The civilization Ralph and Piggy create shatters when the boys' violent natures take over. In Lord of the Flies,
Golding illustrates that humanity is maniacal and selfish through nurture, not nature.
The characters in the novel carry symbolic meaning and as the story progresses they come to represent the evils of human nature. Ralph is the protagonist who keeps order on the island and represents the organizational powers of civilization. Nonetheless, his calm and calculated demeanor doesn't prevent him from turning into a savage when times get chaotic. When the boys reenact the hunting of a pig, he is overcome by their savagery and the bloodthirsty environment he finds himself in transforms him into a savage as well. "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." (Golding 115). Ralph is known to be a smart and resourceful boy who cares about keeping peace on the island. He often disagrees with Jack when it comes to survival. Jack only cares about remaining in the current situation while Ralph concerns himself with getting rescued. However, when Ralph accompanies the hunters to pretend to hunt a pig, he jabs Robert with a spear, forgetting his
humanity and succumbing to evil. Ralph is a rational boy by nature, but when the environment becomes too violent he goes along with the flow, becoming a maniac. Furthermore, in Why Boys Became Vicious, William Golding writes about a group of Russian boys who lose their parents and homes during the first world war: "Dispossessed, without anywhere to live or anything to live on, they roamed the country attacking and killing out of sheer cruelty". The cruel situation of the boys takes a toll on their nature as they fight for their survival. With proper shelter, food, and a loving family, it is highly unlikely that these boys would have turned against their nature. The harsh environment plants a message into the boys' minds that to survive they must steal and kill. Fearful for their own lives, savagery is the only option they feel they have.

The boys' lack of viciousness at the beginning of the book is striking.
Even Jack and his choir group are quite obedient as they strive to signal passing ships. However, Jack's nature begins to turn maniacal when he quarrels with Ralph for leadership. The first real act of cruelty the boys commit is the bloody murder of Simon. The boys are dancing to a frenetic chant when Simon arrives. Forgetting their humanity, the boys beat, bite, and tear Simon up. "At once, the crowd surged after it, poured down the rock, leapt on to the beast, screamed, struck, bit, tore. There were no words, and no movements but the tearing of teeth and claws," (Golding 153). The boys mistake Simon for the dreadful beast, and use their weapons and bodies to bring it down. When the boys first arrive, none shows such blatant hostility. This bloody murder is a result of time passing on the island and the boys growing malevolent toward one another due to the situation in which they find themselves. The environmental change is what causes the boys' anguish and cruelty and ultimately leads to Simon's death. This is further proven by the Stanford Prison Experiment in 1971. In the Stanford Prison Experiment, 24 mentally healthy males were given the roles of prisoners and guards. The prisoners were ordered to stay in their cells while the guards looked over them. As the days passed by, the guards grew more aggressive toward the prisoners. However, the experiment did not begin cleanly, as the setting's purpose
was to reenact the environment of prison. "To understand the meaning of the experiment, you have to understand it wasn't a blank slate; from the start, its goal was to evoke the experience of working and living in a brutal jail" (Konnikova). For instance, the guards were instructed to watch over the prisoners, and they were given wooden batons. Real life jail conditions are far from pleasant, and that affects the way a person thinks and behaves. The subjects of the study had not shown a prior propensity for violence; it was the brutal environment they were placed in that affected their decision making.

Mankind is famous for brutal acts against each other and to other animals, which are not born with them, but gains through their environment and the pressure their peer put on them. Golding proves this in the Lord of the Flies. The boys do not start out evil, but develops evil traits as they sense danger around the island, such as the beast. Jack's hunger for power and food leads him to kill a pig, and that gets him going on a rampage towards evil. The Stanford Prison Experiment proves the point. The guards begin to do horrid things after they have been put in that environment. When before, they were just healthy, everyday students. If evil was inside them when they were born, then they would have committed crimes before coming to Stanford, but did not. Humans' personalities are blank when they enter this world, but adapt to their environment, doing what they can to ensure their survival.