Savagery In Lord Of The Flies Rhetorical Analysis

Nine years after the world’s bloodiest and most destructive war, much of the world was still shaken to its core from the violence it had witnessed. To summarize the horror, and to serve as a warning to future generations, the author, William Golding, wrote Lord of the Flies—an allegory for man’s constant internal struggle between the instincts of savagery and civilization. His characters, Ralph and Jack, who embody these conflicting predispositions, are constantly at odds; Ralph attempts to abide by the rules of civilizations but Jack’s alluring savagery undermines his efforts, and eventually, every boy on the island loses touch with their responsibilities. It is Jack’s triumph in the end implies Golding’s overall message that cruelty exists …show more content…
Serving as the symbol of authority, Ralph uses the conch to call the surviving boys to an assemble. Here, the boys elect Ralph as the leader and he attempts to honor the responsibilities of civilization. Ralph makes the executive decisions regarding the rules of the tribe, and despite his best efforts to recreate the order of civilization, his work towards building shelters and keeping the fire going fail. Out of a sense of duty, Ralph and Simon are the only boys that work on the shelters in chapter three, while the rest of the tribe goes off to enjoy themselves swimming or playing. Jack, in particular, goes off to hunt the pig. Representing the primitive part of human nature, Jack is the first of the boys to truly embrace the savagery of the island. Throughout the novel, obsession over bloodlust continues to grow. Relatively early, Jack struggles to explain to Ralph this sudden desire to hunt, “tried to convey the compulsion to track down and kill that was swallowing him up” (Lord of the Flies 50). After only a few days on the island, Jack is forgetting the responsibilities of society, and he is consumed with a barbaric impulse to