Barbarians In Lord Of The Flies

To be barbaric or savage like, we as humans would have to lay aside our morals and our human side, in order to act like the boy’s in the book Lord of the Flies. However, there could be more than one cause as to why some people are barbarians. William Golding clearly expresses in his book Lord of the Flies that there are more factors that cause someone to act like a savage. He also emphasizes on the struggle with the boys on the island between being, savages, humane, and keeping order among all of the boys. As the story progresses, William Golding continued to show the reader the struggle between the humane side of a person and their barbarian side of them, when there is no structure and order held within a society. After reading William Goldings

work I realized that the boy’s savage and immoral acts were caused based off of the boys situation, and the environment they were in forcing the animal side of them to show and controlling their thought process and actions.
The closest animal to our human “make-up” are monkey’s there is only “one percent of us that’s not chimpanzee, two percent that’s not orangutan… six percent that’s not rhesus macaque” (Slater 154). These animals can act very calm and collected, but then if a situation occurs, or their environment changes, then so does their demeanor, and they can become savage like. For example, in Harry Harlow’s experiment his monkeys were kept in cages that did not replicate their natural habitat, and with his experiments on them it eventually drove them to be “emotionally disturbed” (Slater 145). In addition, William Golding’s story reflects how the monkeys acted because of their environment. For the boys on the island they came from a very structured society, and then placed into an environment that caused them to act according to their environment in order to survive. An example would be one of William Golding’s characters, Jack he definitely reflects upon the more barbarian side of humans and how there is an aggressive animal side to them. He had to change the way he acted because of his surrounds and the situation he was placed in. “Jack was bent double. He was down like a sprinter, his nose only a few inches from the humid earth. The tree trunks and the creepers that festooned them lost themselves in a green dusk thirty feet above him, and all about being the undergrowth,” this here is describing the mannerism of Jack who became more animal like as the story progressed (Golding 62). Also, in Opening Skinner’s Box Lauren Slater provides another example of the way a human adapts to the situation they are placed in.
Lauren Slater writes about Stanley Milgram’s experiment on how he got people to administer, what they believed to be a high voltage shock to someone.

The person administering the shocks was there to get four dollars in exchange for one hour of their time, and back in 1961 four dollars was quite a bit of money. Stanley Milgram placed a person in a white lab coat in the room to conduct the experiment, the test subject believed that the person in the white lab coat was of higher authority, and didn’t know what that person would do if they stopped doing the experiment. The test subject was placed under a stressful situation, which they thought what they were doing was right in order to keep the money, and to survive. Power of situation is strong, Stanley Milgram made them believe that they were in a serious enough situation they needed to abandon all logic and continue the experiment. Also the room the test subject was in was rather intimidating, “which [was] in worse shape than the sidewalk that led [them there], walls flaking, [and] naked pipes in a complex mesh-work on the ceiling” (Slater 32). However, Stanley Milgram’s test subjects mirror the actions of the boys on the Island in William Golding book by how the situation and environment are a key factor on how someone is going to act, and dictates the choices they are going to have to

make.
Laurence Gonzales writes about extreme situations people have been in and he examines their choices throughout those events. In the book Everyday Survival: Why Smart People Do Stupid Things Laurence Gonzales writes that “the trouble they faced was not the kind where they sat everybody down to talk it over and take a vote. This was the kind of trouble where they had one chance to act, right now, and the choice had better be the right one” (Gonzales 77). This clearly describes that a lot of our decision making in life depends on the situation we are caught up in, and our choice is dictated by what the best outcome could be for us in that situation. However, humans make mistakes and at that moment it make seem like the right choice because we felt as if there was no other choice, but looking back upon those choices may seem a little barbaric and inhuman. An example in my life would be when one of my siblings and I got in a fight, it was over something that could have been resolved with reason, but instead it became violent. I was wanting my brother to grab something for me, but he wouldn’t and I was getting angry so I went and grabbed it. Therefore, letting my anger get the best of me, I ended up hitting my brother and then he ended up hitting me back and we just kept going at it. I look back on that situation and see that violence definitely was not the solution to that situation. As you can see that our actions reflect our situation and what we think at the time is the best possible solution, but in reality if we stopped and let reason and logic step in one would not choose the answer they had chosen.
Logic and reason I believe is tied with our individual morals, and the standard we hold ourselves to, but when that is compromised, then all we have left is our barbaric side thinking for us.

Not every situation leads to a bad outcome, or cause someone to do something irrational, I see it all the time when someone is caught in a nasty situation, but they don’t let it get the best of them. In Lord of the Flies the character, Piggy is the prime example, he was the one who held onto his morals while on the island and he didn’t abandon reason in any situation. Piggy in extreme situations throughout the book always “bore… a sort of humble of patience” (Golding 10). He never let his savage side take control of him, like the other boys allowed. He was the one who used reason and logic to get through situations, but the other boys didn’t listen to Piggy because of the barbaric mindset, which was brought out in them through the environment, and situations they were thrown into. Another prime example would be in Lauren Slater’s book Opening Skinner’s Box, when she writes about David Rosenhan’s experiment on how he “decided to test how well psychiatrist were able to distinguish the “sane” from the “insane,” which he then devised a plan to go in an insane asylum and test the psychiatrist on their ability to diagnose people. He decided to throw himself and some of his friends into a place which would only allow them to use logic and reason to stay sane because the place they entered

into was very dark and filled with many things that a sane human shouldn’t go through. This is a good example of how not everyone is barbaric in extreme situations.
Social Darwinism also places a role in having our barbaric side show through because it deals with the survival of the fittest, and to survive you have to do what it takes in order to stay on top of society, and to prosper. However, sometimes those choices of wanting to stay in power lead to decisions that seem only savages would make. Also, the environment ties in with social Darwinism because the environment could be harsh which would cause a person to have to act according to what the environment requires of them. In addition, “globally, internally, deeply. There was no vacation state of mind for them. They never dropped their guard” (Gonzales 77). Being in a situation where there are other people present, and they too are being barbaric in order to survive, one would not be able to drop their guard or rest at all if they too wanted to survive. Sometimes people dictate our actions and whether or not they need to be extreme or civilized, it really depends on the type of situation one is caught up in.
Overall I believe that situation places a more significant role in whether or not someone is going to act barbaric or not. Environment also plays a role in if a person is going to act savage like because if you are caught up in a situation that demands you to hunt for food, but yet you have nothing to hunt with you have to adapt to the environment, and get down to the level of the predator. Also, situation and environment coincide with each other because they both sometimes cause a person to forget their morals, and completely act as if they are not human anymore. But that is not the case for everyone there those who completely rely on logic and reason and they constantly refer back to it in every situation they are in. However, situation plays a powerful in how a person is going to act, and if the person is going their savage side to show through to control their actions and thoughts.