Dehumanization In Lord Of The Flies Essay

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Do you think you could ever think so lowly of someone that causing them pain and suffering does not affect you? In Lord of the Flies by William Golding, properly civilized English school boys get stranded on a tropical island. They start trying to live like they use to, but it greatly fails. The civilized parts of the boys start breaking down right away in the novel, very subtle, but soon takes a turn that changes the whole dynamic of the island.
Right away in the novel, when the main character Ralph and Piggy have all the boys congregate for the first time, Piggy is thought little of. He had glasses, was fat, had a weird accent, and had asthma. Piggy is looked down upon by even little boys just because he lacks physical attractiveness. On top of this, the boys call him by his old school name, Piggy, which seems like some innocent joking at first, but once pigs on the island start being killed, it brings Piggy down to the level of pigs. When he is crushed …show more content…

The rest of the novel the littluns are only referred to as a group. They never are accounted for, if they are eating, healthy, or even alive. Jack and Ralph were the worst when it came to treating the littluns right. In chapter 7, after the boys acted out a hunt with Robert as a pig, Jack made a very disturbing comment. “ ‘You want a real pig,” said Robert, still caressing his rump, ‘because you’ve got to kill him.’ ‘Use a littlun,’ said Jack, and everybody laughed.’ “ (Golding 115) This shows how the lack of care by Jack has caused everyone else to think of the littluns as pigs, just things to kill. Later in the novel, Ralph doesn’t even count the littluns still in his tribe as people because they couldn’t do anything helpful for

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