Cruelty In Lord Of The Flies

In Lord of the Flies, the boys act out of fear and cruelty instead of showing heroism and nobility thus displaying the weakness of the human heart when faced with extreme circumstances. All the fear the boys have is from the fact that they are alone on an island without any adults, rules, society, without anything. They are just little kids and do not know how to survive alone. Along with the loneliness, there is the speculation of a terrifying beast. This leads to Jack becoming a savage and doing what he wants despite establishing rules and a leader at the start. His true savagery comes out when they kill Simon. He gets into the heads of all the boys in his tribe, saying that they will hunt down the beast and that is what causes the death of Simon. They are all caught up in the dancing and the meat, even Ralph …show more content…
“He came – disguised” (Golding, 177). This shows how the fear has gotten to a point where they have become cruel and absent to the truth and reality of the situation. The cruelty continues when Jack and his tribe plan to raid Ralph and his group for Piggy’s glasses. “We shall take fire from the others. To-morrow we’ll hunt and get meat. To-night I’ll go along with two hunters – who’ll come?” (Golding, 178). They could have just asked them for his glasses to make a fire but the fear has made them so savage that the first thing that comes to their mind is to steal it. All civilization has been lost at this point in the novel. Piggy tries to restore some civilization by confronting Jack but things just break out into fights, resulting in the conch being shattered and Piggy falling to his death from a boulder thrown by Roger. Once again, instead of realizing the truth in the situation, Jack retorts by saying, “See? See? That’s what you’ll