Lord of the Flies by William Golding shows that everyone is naturally evil. I think people will really be like Golding’s characters if they were removed from a civilized society. They would become savages as they split as a group, break rules, kill and no longer use civilized ways to exist. People become uncivilized as the evil side of them comes out without any rules and civilization to hold them back.
When people are removed from a civilized society, they have to make their own rules. However, these rules always tend to get broken. Ralph first made the rule of the conch (p.43).
Everyone who held the conch has the right to speak without anyone interrupting, except the chief, Ralph. However, in every meeting, no one obeyed this rule, especially when Piggy or the littluns are speaking because the people think that they have less influence. Piggy kept saying “I got the conch!”(p.221) throughout the book many times, but no one ever listened to him. Ralph also made the rule about the fire. Jack promised Ralph that his hunters would be responsible for keeping the fire going (p.55), but he disobeyed Ralph and abandoned the job just to go kill a pig (p.88).
Ralph had made a speech about keeping all the rules on the island (p.98-102), like keeping water in coconut shells, building shelters, the location they use as a lavatory, and maintaining the fire. All these rules had been made as a whole group, but all these rules were broken. They were broken because civilization on the island fell apart. We are civilized only because we have rules to obey.
The Essay on Rules Are Made To Be Broken
Someone may agree with this statement because someone might feel that life is too short to be following rules and that they should live life how they want. Although they should not do things that are extreme and are UN necessary for example killing someone would be extreme and they should not be going to these extremes. However small rules might not matter to people and so that some rules might be ...
People also kill when they are removed from a civilized society. On the island, they killed Simon, assuming that he was the beast before even clarifying the fact. They said “Kill the beast! Cut his throat! Spill his blood! Do him in (p.188)! They didn’t even want to know who the beast actually was. Roger pushed a rock over the cliff and killed Piggy, just to break the conch and Ralph’s influence as a chief (p.222).
They didn’t even hesitate about taking innocent lives. They tried to capture and kill Ralph by burning down the whole island to smoke him out and expose him. It didn’t work because the people from a nearby ship had noticed the fire and came to rescue them (p.238).
In Lord of the Flies, people split as a group and no longer use civilized ways to exist. Civilized people stay together as a community. If they stay together, they become strong and in some way depend on each other. In the book, everyone was in a big group at first, but Jack rebelled and made a tribe of his own because he can’t accept Ralph’s ways of being chief (p.158).
“Things are breaking up. I don’t understand why. We were happy.” (p.102) Ralph said this in his speech. He also asked Piggy about why they were breaking up, and Piggy thought that it was Jack’s fault. After Jack created his own tribe, he no longer used civilized ways, like negotiation, to get the things he needed from Ralph. He uses wild and feral ways to get what he wanted. He even stole Piggy’s glasses by force in the middle of the night (p.207).
People have pure evil inside them, and are only held back by rules and civilization. Golding has showed a perfect example of this in his book. People will be savages and evil if they are taken away from a civilized society. They would split as a group, break rules, kill and no longer use civilized ways to exist.
