Society Without Rules Analysis

A society without rules cannot expect to prosper. Rules are created so that people within the society can operate and function efficiently, with everyone doing their part. William Golding’s novel Lord of the Flies, is the result of what happens when a society tries to form without rules at all. Thus, ideas of civility and moral judgment decayed, causing the boys to do actions that society would not have thought of. Throughout this novel, a steady theme of the book is that without rules, people can lose sight of their beliefs and morals. Cruelty is a consistent result of what happens when people do not abide by rules or society’s expectations, causing ethics and moral judgment to disappear.
Without rules, the boys believed that they were free
This was shown when the boys were playing the pig game with “Robert scream[ing] in mock terror, and then in real pain...The desire to squeeze and hurt was over-mastering” (Golding 114-5). Because the boys have been isolated from society for so long, their moral judgment became clouded. The author used words like “desire” and “over-mastering” to exemplify how they couldn’t control themselves because there was nothing to hold them back nor was anyone to tell what they were doing wrong. Next, “Robert scream[ing] in mock terror, and then in real pain” shows how the boys went too far as in it was just for fun, but then things started to get serious. Without that wall so that the boys know where to stop, they just cross the boundary between fun and hurting each other. Rules and society form a wall so that the
Over the course of hunting more and more, the boys found it not just for survival, but they actually enjoyed killing. When they were hunting one time, “Jack stood up, holding out his hands [full of blood] ‘Look’ He giggled and flicked them...Then Jack grabbed Maurice and rubbed the [blood] over his cheeks” (135). Playing with blood isn’t something that a normal person in society would do because that represented that they were hunting for the fun of it, while Jack used the idea for food as a cover. Society’s expectations had uncoiled around the boy’s due to such isolation from it, so flicking blood for fun would what the boys thought as appropriate. Rules have always been the “glue” to society, because in order for society to form, something needs to keep them together. If rules were not a part of society chaos and disorder is bound to collapse the society altogether like wood without glue. The boys lost sight of every moral that they were taught since they were kids, due to nothing holding them back or anyone to tell them that they are making the wrong choices. In addition, right after, Robert said, “Right up her ass!” (135) which was the result of loss of civilization and society’s expectations. One of many society’s expectations for a respected person is to watch from foul language. Robert broke this by saying “Right up her ass” so that he wasn’t bound by society or their expectations. Due to