William Goulding's Lord Of The Flies: Film Analysis

Philosophy is a very influential field of study. It allows for some professors to ask some very poignant questions. For instance, what would happen if a group of children were removed from civilization and placed into the wilderness on a remote island with no hope of rescue? Depending on the philosopher, one would receive conflicting answers to this question. The children would form a government and try to cooperate to survive, or the youth would devolve into a state of chaos with no laws or morals and eventually end up perished. These are the ideas of the state of nature of John Locke and Thomas Hobbes respectively. Harry Hook took inspiration by both if these philosophers when he directed his film adaptation of William Goulding’s novel, Lord of the Flies.” Near the beginning of the story, the children unintentionally try out Locke’s idea, but eventually the children end up in Hobbes’ state of nature where violence and fear are the norm. The plot of the movie will be reviewed, then the reader will see that when people are separated from their government, over time, chaos will erupt and Hobbes theory will prove correct. In the film, a plane full of boys from a military school crashes near a small island. All of the …show more content…
When his glasses were broken by Jack’s posse, it symbolizes Jack’s loss of his ability to reason. They needed the glasses to start fires for rescue and for cooking. This coincides with Hobbes’ state of nature. According to Hobbes, people will abandon reason and become more savage-like. This becomes more evident as the movie progresses. Another example of Jack’s loss of morals is when Simon is killed by accident in the dark. His group thought it was the monster, when it was actually a member of his group. Jack showed no remorse. The day after this event, he raided Piggy and Ralph’s camp and selfishly stole Piggy’s glasses and wrecked their camp. Jack insisted that his tribe refer to him as,