Piggy And Ralph In Lord Of The Flies

At the stories beginning a plane of British kids were shot down from the sky during a war in Britain. It crashed on the coast of an tropical island. Neither parents nor any type of any type of civilization were found on the island. The boys also heard an atomic bomb go off before the plane crashed, so they know that their home (as they know of) is gone. Throughout their time there, the island becomes very chaotic and unclean. For example Ralph (the group leader) becomes angry when the boys do not go to the bathroom in the right area, or when the boys set parts on the island on fire for a signal for help.
There are two main characters as which Golding describes: Piggy, the “fat boy”, and Ralph the “fair boy.” Later on after Piggy and Ralph meet, more groups
of boys were found on the island: Innocent toddlers, and a choir group led by a kid names Jack. Ralph is not very knowledgeable, but is humble and presents good leadership. This is why he voted as the group leader for the boys. Meanwhile Piggy is not confident in leadership or himself, but is smart and crafty. Piggy even influenced or changed Ralph’s decisions in parts story which shows how wise he is. An example of this is when Piggy offers Ralph to use the conch shell (a shell which is blown to make noise), as a signal regroup or settle down the boys.
From acts of bad guidance and immaturity, the boys experience and create chaos, lose of friendships, and loose chances of survival.The boys are not yet mature (excluding Ralph and Piggy), because they have not had the chance to think of life without parents or society. At one point, Jack the leader of hunters, failed to kill a pig and excused himself saying, “I was choosing a place. Next time.” This shows how the boys have taken modern civilization for granted, and do not know how to survive on their own.
When the boys skip work and play it also shows immaturity again, because they still see surviving on the island as a game, not life threatening.
Each boy is given a job from Ralph, but they never complete their tasks, such as building shelter for the toddlers or keeping the signal fire burning. This looses the boy’s chances of surviving, and finding help to leave the island. Even Jack is not a mature or humble leader. He displays this when being the leader of the hunters. Jack leads everyone into chaos; such as applying war paint before hunting and starting the hunter dance. Evidently lack of leadership and maturity leads to violence on the island.
The spark of death on the island starts once the boys are dismantled with fear. Once one of the toddlers with a birthmark claimed he saw a “beastie,” this moment created fear in all the boys- “He says a beastie came in the dark; he was dreaming!” When fear is created, the boys seem to look up to a leader for hope. This relates back to when Ralph was chosen over Jack. This made Jack became very jealous of him, and since then he wanted to be leader. Then once Jack had the moment to take power of leading the group, chaos started and many main characters
died.

I think William Golding chose kids for this story, because they would not have the fear of killing for survival- they would have a more natural human instinct, before modern civilization instinct. If adults were chosen in the story they would have a longer experience in modern civilization and understand what is wrong and what is right. Meanwhile the boys are young and only go by natural survival instincts, after they loose their civil set of mind their parents taught them. This made the book more interesting, because it can relate back to human history, before civilization existed.
However, the book was not interesting from the very first page. It took about four chapters for any interesting events to happen. But I feel William Golding did not start the book with bursting action for a reason: This relates backs to how the all the boys changed from a modern human, to a human in with only survival instinct -dynamic characters- this made the story and characters believable.
The believable story and characters caught my attention throughout the book. This made me finish the book in under half a day; I was hooked. But I was still curious after the ending. William Golding did not give much of the boy’s history of their past life. Even the ending was satisfying and realistic, the story did not discuss the boy’s past life at all. This is something I did not like, because I could never guess what the characters would most likely do in certain situations.
However, that is my personal preferred style of reading. Other people might enjoy having mysterious traits in characters that are attained overtime. Overall this book portrayed influences on me that everyone should experience. The dialogue fits the age of boys in the story, so any young adult can easy read and understand.