Mental Changes In William Golding's Lord Of The Flies

Often in our lives other people affect us in both negative and positive ways. In the case of Lord of the Flies, the kids influence one another while on the island, in mostly negative ways. These influences cause for mental changes in the brain. Most of the time, mental changes affect physical changes. However, in some rare occasions it is the other way around. While on the island the boys go through numerous physical and mental changes. Although mental changes are somewhat more significant than physical changes, physical changes are still very much apparent and can sometimes cause for mental change. Crashing onto the island, the kids have immaculate, clean faces due to the fact that they attend a Catholic school which, incidentally, enforces a school uniform code. As time progresses, some of the kids, particularly the choir boys, dirty their faces because of their hunting adventures. As seen on page 69, "Jack, his face smeared with clays, reached the top first and hailed Ralph excitedly, with lifted spear." After dirtying their faces, the choir boys proceed to paint them. Page 74 mentions, "I painted my face—I stole up." In the beginning the face painting is only
something they do for fun. However, near the end of the story it becomes so bad that Ralph cannot even recognize who was standing in front of him. On page 195, "A smallish savage was standing between him and the rest of the forest, a savage striped red and white, and carrying a spear." It can be seen by this quote that the face painting becomes a mask of evil over the choir boys' faces. Nevertheless, besides their faces, there is a smaller, more inconspicuous physical change, hair. Their hair is manageable and of appropriate length when they arrive on the island. As time passes, they develop more animal-like characteristics as their hair becomes long and tangled. On page 64, "His fair hair was plastered over his eyebrows and he pushed it back." However, Piggy did not experience a significant change in length of hair; it can be inferred that this was meant to symbolize his difference from all the other boys not just in hair length, but also intellectually. On page 64 it states, "The rest were shock headed, but Piggy's hair still lay in wisps over hi head as though baldness were his natural state and this imperfect covering would soon go, like velvet on a young stag's antlers." When making the inference that Piggy is different from the group from having shorter hair, one can also guess that William Golding intentionally makes Ralph's hair longer than everyone else's as another type of contrast from the normal boys. This is evident due to the line on page 66, "Ralph stood, one hand holding back his hair, the other clenched." Hair is something that can be seen as insignificant; however, during the fight for life and death Ralph finds that his exceedingly long hair becomes a burden and his life in danger. Even though the plane crashes onto the island, there is no mention of deaths caused by the plane crash itself.
Nonetheless, Ralph barely dodges death on the island while Simon and Piggy actually die. On page 200, "Then he was down, rolling over and over in the warm sand, crouching with arm to ward off, trying to cry for mercy." Even though Ralph is lucky, the choir boys kill Simon thinking he is the beast. Page 154, "Simon's dead body moved out toward the open sea." Lastly, Roger pushes a huge boulder into Piggy resulting in his death on page 181, "Piggy's arms and legs twitched a bit, like a pig's after it has been killed. Then the sea breathed again in a long, slow sigh, the water boiled white and pink over the rock; and when it went, sucking back again, the body of Piggy was
gone." After seeing Simon and Piggy's death, Ralph is forever traumatized and starts to lose his faith in the other kids on the island. In this case, the physical changes on the island cause for the mental changes of not only Ralph, but also the choir boys. Seeing that the choir boys faces are painted, Ralph can tell that they have already changed so much mentally that he cannot turn them back around. The choir boys physically become more savage and obsess over hunting because of this. All in all, without these small physical changes in hair, face, and body the mental changes would never have occurred.