"The Lord of the Flies is a picture of our society today."
Discuss the statement and show the way the statement applies
The Lord of the Flies is about a mini-society of boys formed by chance. Their
isolation from adults forced reality upon them and so they had to think for themselves
and work together. As a commentary of today's society it does well to explain some
of today's issues like violence, laws, pride, greed, fear, religious power and the
conflict between living in a civilized society or savagery.
It is all about the choice the boys made when life became real. In the
beginning their lives were controlled and protected by their parents, teachers and
police officers. Jack cannot kill the pig even though he can eat meat because of the
"enormity of the knife descending and cutting into living flesh." (p 41). Roger cannot
hit the boys with the stones even though he could if he wanted to because he has been
conditioned by the society he used to live in. This is the type of society the children
live in. Everything is a game until the beast. The beast signals the end of the games
and start of reality. Lives are at stake in perspective of the boys and survival must
occur in any form. Our society is much like this as today's society is also about
survival and what choices we make to survive.
The mini-society started off peaceful. The purpose was to set a signal fire and
live off fruit until help came. The conflict came when the fire and hunting could not
be committed to at the same time. As the fire was a 24 hour task and hunting needed
the whole party, the party started to take sides. Ralph's fire would be the sensible
thing to do to get rescued however hunting would lift the standard of living for all the
boys and would also be a luxury, recreational event. The fire was hard work and
immediate results were none even thou...