When the teacher leaves the room in elementary school, the first thing that comes to the children's minds is to scream “Party!” throw things and stand on desks, but as soon as the teacher arrives back in the classroom they immediately sit down. This idea is demonstrated in William Golding's Lord of the Flies when their symbols of power and authority, the conch shell and their uniforms, are taken away by nature. With the loss of those symbols, their civility is lost as well. Through this, Golding is claiming that when authority is no longer present, humans can easily fall back into savagery.
When humans are left on their own, everyday survival tasks become a way into savagery. Hunting may no longer be just a way to live, but, for example, a game. Jack and Ralph talk strategies on “cutting the pig’s throat to let the blood out” (Golding 31), they have to figure out a way to kill an animal, without completely destroying the meat. They want the meat to be edible, so the best way to do that is to talk about strategy. Over time and through many different strategies, hunting becomes …show more content…
But as time takes its toll on the conch, it takes a toll on the boys as well. The conch represents the rules in place that they follow, and when Jack gives a, “‘Who cares’” (Golding 91) to the conch and its power, the younger boys join in on his savage mentality. Hunting becomes a thing to mock, a game to play, all because Jack no longer wanted to obey the conch and all that it stood for, he was done following rules that helped keep them alive. When “the conch exploded into a thousand white fragments and ceased to exist” (Golding 181) that was the end of any sort of rules or power. Everything that they had started with, civility, honor, respect, was lost with a single throw of a rock. It was gone. Just the way Jack wanted it to be, his way, with him and only him as any sort of authoritative
When humans are left on their own, everyday survival tasks become a way into savagery. Hunting may no longer be just a way to live, but, for example, a game. Jack and Ralph talk strategies on “cutting the pig’s throat to let the blood out” (Golding 31), they have to figure out a way to kill an animal, without completely destroying the meat. They want the meat to be edible, so the best way to do that is to talk about strategy. Over time and through many different strategies, hunting becomes …show more content…
But as time takes its toll on the conch, it takes a toll on the boys as well. The conch represents the rules in place that they follow, and when Jack gives a, “‘Who cares’” (Golding 91) to the conch and its power, the younger boys join in on his savage mentality. Hunting becomes a thing to mock, a game to play, all because Jack no longer wanted to obey the conch and all that it stood for, he was done following rules that helped keep them alive. When “the conch exploded into a thousand white fragments and ceased to exist” (Golding 181) that was the end of any sort of rules or power. Everything that they had started with, civility, honor, respect, was lost with a single throw of a rock. It was gone. Just the way Jack wanted it to be, his way, with him and only him as any sort of authoritative