Desire In Lord Of The Flies Essay

In 2009, sixty percent of all children in America were exposed to violence, crime, or abuse, and forty percent were victims of violent acts or abuse. These children that were exposed to violence are more likely to have violent tendencies (Finkelhor, Hamby, Kracke, Ormrod, Turner). All humans have a desire to do what is wrong or evil, to go against society’s rules. While that desire is often pushed down deep inside the soul, certain situations can cause it to force its way out and wreak havoc on the world. William Golding, through the novel Lord of the Flies, shows the effects of that desire on the world. The novel is about a number of boys that get marooned on an island off the coast of Europe. The boys need to make a society and establish …show more content…
If this were true, however, Jack and his tribe could have stayed civilized. The most important part of Jack’s change in the novel is when he splits off from the group to make his own tribe. “He laid the conch with great care in the grass at his feet. The humiliating tears were running from the corner of each eye. ‘I'm not going to play any longer. Not with you’” (Golding 127). The humiliation and anger that Jack feels in that moment overwhelms him. It was not his own fault but only his original instincts and humiliation that took control of him. Then again, there is reasoning that Jack could have chose to disband his tribe and apologize at any given time. But, there was too much emotion and fear that Jack was feeling at the time, and he never gave himself the chance to think about changing his mind. He was never given the chance to be chief and Ralph had always told him what to do, so this position of power in the new tribe had made him not want to go back to the way things were. He felt appreciated and important from the boys, adding even more to his hatred of Ralph. The contrasting argument is that Jack had a choice, but there were too many things overwhelming him that made his decline into savagery