Human Survival and Civilization in Lord

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Human Survival and Civilization in Lord of the Flies by William Golding

Imagine you wake up and find that you have no idea where you are. The last thing you remember is a plane crash.
Soon you meet another survivor, another one of the boys being evacuated on the plane, due to the war going on
back home in England.
This exact scenario is what a young group of boys in William Goldings best selling novel "Lord of the Flies"
finds themselves in. Without any adults around telling them what to and what not to do, it''''s a dream coming true for some of the boys.
For others it''''s a total nightmare when they are forced to organize and try and survive on their own.

Human survivl and the fragile nature of civilisation, is clearly seen throughout Golding''''s novel. It shows that our instincts of human nature
will take over the instinct to live by the rules if we have the chance. Man''''s instinct to act violently to enforce our will on to others or to obtain dominance
is shown through the main charcters. The three main charcters diffrences are very well pointed out and it becomes obvious the the two boys Jack and Piggy
symbolizes two oppposities extremes of human behaviour while the third boy Ralph is pulled between these philosophies. One can also see how people who think
they are above the law can easily upset the fragile nature of civiliszation. Throughout the book you can follow how the the lack of influence of society and
civilization change the boys from cooperating when Ralph blows a conch to call order, to when they kill one of the boys called Simon.

As Golding once said himself; the purpose of the story is to trace the human back to the sinful nature of man, and I think
that in this book he made a very god job of that.Take the main charachters as an example.
Jack can through his actions be used as a symbol for the human instinct. He is relativly comfortable on the island, it doesn''''t
really bother him much that they might never be found. Survival of the fittest is his motto.
Then you have Piggy who would probably never survive by himself. Just like the civilisation back home he is dependent on others to do their part.
Piggy is the rational and intelligent one who tries to build a new civilisation on the island which would reflects what they are used to in England.
Ralph the third main characther is a cross between the two. He is torn between his instincts and common sense.
The one thing the three has in common is fear. And fear and the fight to survive is what leads them to divide into two groups,
both with one leader - each one with opposite ideas of how to survive.
Jack and his group who doesn''''t care about rules or being rescued only listen to their instincts and start living as savagaes.
Ralph and Piggy on the other hand is the more rational and intelligent ones. They at least try to build a new civilisation on the island
which would reflect what they are used to in England.
But quickly the children''''s play takes a new turn and what was once a paradise is now replaced by constant fear and rivary between the leaders
and their groups. Just as one can suspect they quickly revert from civilized to primitive and from that point on everything starts going out of control due to total anarcy

Another major theme in Lord of the Flies is actually one of the greatest emotions that controls the way any person thinks in certain situations; fear.
Fear of the unknown. The fact that all children, except for Jack, are under thriteen greatly affects the amount of fear that controls them.
Children are innocent and free spirited; this is why they are so naive. Which in turn makes them to be easily frightened.
Fear is acutually, from start to finish the only thing that stops the boys from acting rational at times. Which of course is great for Jack because as long
as he keeps the children scared he has control over them as a leader. He easily manage to do this by creating a beast which was really nothing but a dead
pilot with a parachute.Fear comes from a misunderstanding, not until you fully understand what something is then there is nothing to be afraid of.

This is clearly one of those books you can sit and analyze for hours on end, and that is what makes it so intresting.
The scenario, how people manage to live on a deserted island so close to nature and how fast one will turn his back
on someone in order to survive, is something I think many people find very intresting. It''''s not only a social experiment on how people
act in groups but also a deeper look inside our instincts.
You can compare this novel with Daniel Defoe''''s novel "Robinson Crusoe" where Crusoe is stranded and isolated from the world on an
island and forced to survive on his own. The big diffrence is that Lord of the flies isn''''t built on creativity, ingenious or rationality. Instead it''''s filled with
power games, anarchy and dictatoship. Still, both of these books gives a good picture of mankind because of the sharp contrasts and with that it gives us
a more balanced picture of how humanity works. Despite this, both Robinsion Crusoe and Lord of the flies tends to become less realistic since both
books, especially Lord of the flies are exaggerated and therefore concentrated on a certain part of humanity. Man can be both rational and passionate
depending on the situation and which people you choose to look at.
.
In this novel you can draw parallels to alot of historical events as well, such as the second world war.
Golding has obviously been very touched by the war and its brutality. He wrote Lord of the Flies during the second world war,
but yet he says nothing about the book taking place during the second world war which I think most people would just assume.
Another way of viewing it is that the story is actually taking place during world war three.
At the time the book was written the first atomic bomb dropped over Hiroshima and many people lay in fear of a nuclear war.
Golding was probably one of them. Why else would he send the a group of school boys so far away from civilization and any tactic nucleartarget?

But despite this fact the most significant theme in this book revolves around problem of human evil and whether you are born evil or whether
it is a product of society? What in us are evil, and what is good? And what right do we have to judge other people''''s evil deeds when
we don''''t know how we would have acted in their place. Lord of the flies is a inquire into human behaviour in groups and what
forces that orignally controls mankind. <...