Loss Of Innocence In Lord Of The Flies By William Golding

When something pivotal happens to someone, their attitude and way of thinking change devastatingly. Although these boys may only be 6-12, they go through the same things that anyone would undergo. This loss of innocence causes people to act in ways contrary to their typical self. In Lord of the Flies, William Golding uses the characterization of the boys to illustrate how people lose their innocence when going through a traumatic event. The littluns might just be elementary age boys, but they lose their innocence and show a true savage side, as seen throughout the book. The littluns start out as innocent little school boys, but by the end of the book they’ll have gone all out savage. “…Now you been and set the whole island on fire” said Ralph (Page 37). As shown in this quote, the littluns get way too excited with the new technological advancement of fire, and burn down half of the island. As this happens, they realize that they will not get punished by anyone for their actions now, and realize that they can do whatever they want, without any consequences. You can see the changes between the boys in …show more content…
“Roger stooped, picked up a stone, aimed, and threw it at Henry- threw it to miss” (Page 51). As described on page 51, Roger throws rocks at the littluns, but he misses purposely, because he was trained to be afraid of the consequences. But, when Roger realizes that they are somewhere with no consequences, he starts to act freely and do what he pleases. He ends up purposely dropping a boulder on- and killing- Piggy without any care in the world, because who is going to punish him? Although you might think he hadn’t changed throughout, he had, and he goes from missing Walter to not hurt him, to almost nonchalantly dropping a boulder to smash Piggy’s head. Roger is just another prime example of how the biguns change, and he isn’t the