Human Instinct In Lord Of The Flies

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In William Golding’s Lord of the Flies, a group of boys is evacuated from England during a time of war. During their evacuation, their plane crashes onto a deserted island in the middle of the ocean. Throughout this allegory, readers follow the boys attempt to create civilization and their basic human instincts take over. According to Golding in an interview in 1955 “the theme is an attempt to trace the defects of society back to the defects of human nature. The moral is that the shape of society must depend on the ethical nature of the individual and not on any political system, however apparently logical or respectful.” This book laid out more than a story about boys on an island, but of how humans revert back to basic instinct when they are distanced from society. The characters and prominent items in the book display this theory on human nature.
The boys on the island range from ages six to twelve years old. They generally separate themselves into two groups; the older boys and the little ones. This categorization represents the levels of society. The younger boys represent the common people because they …show more content…

Ralph, Simon, and Piggy show what happens to people when intellectual reasoning, order, and democracy take control over basic human instinct. Their use of the conch employed their need for rules and democracy. Using that order, Ralph tried to implement rules to manage the group, like building a signal fire. When it was allowed to burn out, their last connection to civilization was lost. This allowed Jack and Roger to lose their remaining humanity. With their desire for power, savagery, and brutality, all that they cared for was fulfilling their need of hunger and shelter. When they couldn’t find the beast, they resulted in appeasing it with the Lord of the Flies to protect themselves from its rath. In the end, the beast was within them

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