Lord of the Flies Essay/ Character Comparison Ralph vs Jack

The novel " Lord of the Flies" focuses on the conflict that exists between two competing impulses that Golding, suggests exist within all humans; these being the instinct to follow the rules, act in a peaceful manner and comply to moral commands compared to the instinct to act violently in order to gain control over others and to satisfy our own greed and personal desires. The conflict exists within the novel in several forms; law and order vs. anarchy, civilization vs. savagery and the basic term of good vs. evil. Golding uses these themes consistently throughout the novel, clearly associating instinctive savagery with evil and the instinct of civilisation with good. The representation of this lies in Ralph and Jack, the two central characters in the novel; Ralph is the protagonist representing order and civilisation while Jack is the antagonist, who represents savagery and a desire for power. Lord of the Flies is an allegorical novel with Golding conveying his ideas symbolically through these characters. The novel follows the behaviour of the two evacuee English schoolboys along with several others during a fictitious war, after a plane journey relocating them went badly wrong and they found themselves abandoned on an uninhabited island, with no adults. Once they realise a rescue is not imminent, they relish in the lack of rules from a higher power; this leads to clear divisions forming inside the group, namely between those that follow Ralph's mentality towards democracy and those that follow the mentality of Jack and his disregard of order and the rules. It is this group that gradually descend into murderous savages. It is with this that Golding implies that savagery and violence is more primal and natural to human beings and that the instinct of civilisation that Ralph shows is something that occurs mainly when enforced upon a person. Generally, when we are left to our own devices, the situation the boys find themselves in on the island, we will naturally