Juveniles In Lord Of The Flies

In William Golding’s The Lord of the Flies, a group of young school boys crash on an unfamiliar island at the first light of what seemed like would become the next world war. The boys immediately begin to build their own utopia, ebullient in the absence of civilization. However, as catastrophe begins to creep out of the woods, the juveniles are unable to maintain their system of order, and they begin to degenerate into barbarity. Essentially, they are unable to do so because they refuse to tolerate and work with each other, and they have no justice system to keep themselves under control. As French philosopher Voltaire once stated, “ Let us all pardon reciprocally each other’s folly, that is the first law of nature.” This is one …show more content…
Cesare Beccaria, an Enlightenment period philosopher, stated that “crimes are more effectually prevented by the certainty than the severity of punishment.” Not only did the boys make punishment certain for those who do not work to survive on the island, they didn’t have an organized system of punishment at all. If they do not have a proper system of law, the boys cannot expect to survive on the island. Because many of the juveniles’ goals do not correspond with survival, but with fun instead, they do not complete the tasks that set them up for sustenance on the island. For example, when Ralph and Simon are building shelters for the boys to keep them safe, Ralph complains that “all day [he has] been working with Simon. No one else.” and that the other boys are“ off bathing, or eating, or playing” (Golding 50). This quote clearly shows that none of the boys other than Ralph and Simon care enough about survival to help maintain their living essentials. If Ralph had created a system of order in which those who were lazy and slothful were punished, the boys would have been able to get a lot more useful work done in a shorter amount of time. Without this system of government, people do not feel the need to contribute to their group as a large, as many feel their own needs or wants are more important that the essential need of the entire group. Beccaria warned that if a system of crimes …show more content…
If the boys had made wiser choices, like to follow philosophers Voltaire and Beccaria’s ideas, their chance of creating order would have been much larger than it ended up being. The boys’ choices can resemble the stick sharpened at both ends. With such power and such freedom, the boys could either wisely use the spear to aid in their survival, or they could become savage and use it for the sake of violence and killing. Because the boys chose incorrectly, they were unable to effectively govern themselves, which led to the collapse of order on the island. Lord of the Flies by William Golding truly teaches humans what having civilization means and what would happen without it. After all, the world today would be horrific if we chose not to tolerate each other or if we had no system of