How Does Lord Of The Flies Relate To Conformity

The ability for a society to function depends largely on the amount of individuality or uniformity the society contains. Throughout history, many different leaders have tried various approaches to the structure of the society under their rulings. Popular examples include socialism in the USSR, communism in North Korea, and capitalism in the United States. All of the previously listed examples have a similarity: they involve changes in the involvement of people in their community. For example, communism consists of all people being treated equally. Capitalism, on the other hand, focuses on not conforming individuals to be exactly like each other. In Aldous Huxley’s 1930s novel Brave New World and William Golding’s 1950s novel Lord of the Flies

the authors explore how individuality leads to chaos. Thereby, they stress the need for conformity in a society to avoid an upheaval.
Conformity prevents individuality, which consequently allows several people to function as a working community.

In Brave New World, leaders use conditioning to create a uniform society, and by doing so, members in the World State avoid chaos that stems from individuality. When Bernard says he would “not like to be enslaved by [his] conditioning,” Lenina replies, “you're saying the most awful things” (Huxley 91). When people begin to have strong feelings towards anything, they develop an aspiration to become their own person. Purely the thought of people having the desire to have personal thoughts and feelings confuses Lenina, because she understands that her society would collapse without conditioning and conformity. Individuality seems beneficial to people’s well-being, however, in a society, uniformity has an important role in controlling civilization. Lord of the Flies shows that once civilization deteriorates, humans resort to innate savage instincts. Ironically, Jack wants to ensure that he and the other boys remain civil through “[having] rules and [obeying] them,” because they “are English” (Golding 42). Through Jack, Golding conveys that as long as the boys can follow rules and stay obedient, their society can function and they can all remain civilized. Golding emphasizes that the boys come from England, because the country has a developed society. If they boys all come from an advanced country with a civilized society, they should understand the necessity of rules in order for their island life to function

properly.
Individuality inevitably causes division of members in a society with opposing values. Individuality in Brave New World results in people becoming savages once they remove themselves from a uniform society. The controller in the World State has a simple mindset: “‘We make them hate solitude; and we arrange their lives so that it’s almost impossible for them to ever have it’” (Huxley 235). Uniform societies only function if people work as a community rather than as individuals. People with their own ideas and principles begin to create conflict with the other majority. For this reason, they usually result as outcasts and begin to resort to savagery. Once people become individuals in societies without the constraint of laws or any formal governing, opposing personalities create conflicts. Golding stresses the impact of individuality on the relationship between people when he says, “They walked along, two continents of experience and feeling, unable to communicate” (Golding 55). Two or more people with different opinions often struggle to agree and work together. The people begin to create conflict between each other, which leads to the degradation of their society. In order for a civilization to function, the people within must have similar ideas and opinions.
To summarize, a society must value conformity in order to protect people’s well-being and safety from savagery. Too much individuality leads to people’s opinions clashing, eventually resulting in the downfall of societal structure. Communities function better with conformity than they do with individuality.