Innocence In Lord Of The Flies Essay

In today’s world we still will cite William Golding’s novel Lord of the Flies when talking about power and human decency. When the boys first discover they are alone on the island they try to maintain order and civilization. But not long after the boys lose their innocence and start out on a savage track. A struggle for power between Jack and Ralph causes the boys to choose sides and everything to fall apart. The destruction of innocence and the struggle for power cause the complete breakdown of all sense of decency and human compassion.

One of the major themes of the Lord of the Flies is the loss of innocence. When the boys first get stranded on the island they are all good London school kids being shipped away from a war, they are all still innocent.William Golding does not portray this loss of innocence as something that is done to the children instead it results naturally from their increasing openness to the innate evil and savagery that has always existed within them

(Medcalf). The first sign of innocence in the boys is when they build the fire “You got your small fire all right. The boys were falling still and silent, feeling the beginnings of awe at the power set free below them,”(Golding 15%). The fire is the first type of responsibility the boys give themselves, it's the most innocent of things in the beginning of the book, a fire, that somehow starts the loss of the boy's innocence. Simon losses his innocence when he sees the Lord of the Flies in the forest “[Simon saw] the picture of a human at once heroic and sick,”(Golding 54%). Simon realizes in the forest just how horrible and savage like humans are, and that the real things we fear aren’t imaginary beasts but real people.
The struggle for power on the island is one of the most important themes in the book. The power struggle starts with the conch shell, Ralph and Piggy use it to summon all the boys on the island. Even at the first meeting we begin to see the characters personalities. Jack desires power above all other things. He is furious when he loses the election to Ralph and continually pushes the boundaries of his subordinate role in the group. Whereas Ralph desires order and organization over power, he wants to get rescued ( Constantakis). Ralph and Jack don’t see eye to eye and usually end up arguing "And you shut up! Who are you, anyway? Sitting there telling people what to do. You can't hunt, you can't sing, I'm chief. I was chosen,”(Golding 42%). The power struggle is so great between the two that the boys begin to choose sides, and that is when the controlled civilization Ralph built is destroyed by Jack’s savagery. Jack’s want for total control is his only desire and he will do anything to get it even burn whole island of which they stay on (Cox).
Lastly, when the boys turn towards savagery the decency and human compassion they once had is gone.

At first Jack is unable to kill a pig while hunting "I was just waiting for a moment to decide where to stab him,”(Golding 12%). This shows that at the beginning of the book the idea of killing is not something anyone desires to do, but this soon changes. The epitome of the boys savage ways is when everyone participates in the killing of Simon, who was just trying to explain what the Lord of the Flies of the flies was saying (Henningfeld). The killing continues as the boys on Jack side become more and more rogue. When Ralph and Piggy go up to castle rock the voice of reason is lost in Piggy "The rock struck Piggy a glancing blow from chin to knee: the conch exploded into a thousand white fragments and ceased to exist,” (Golding 89%). When Piggy is killed the conch is also destroyed which symbolises the loss of order and control, at this point the boys have lost any sense of human

compassion.
The island forces the boys to come to terms with their true selves. Unfortunately for most of the them their true selves lack compassion and desire savagery. There are three main things that lead to the destruction of the boys. They lost their innocence, they desire power over anything else, and they lost and sense of human compassion they once had. The destruction of innocence and the struggle for power cause the complete breakdown of all sense of decency and human compassion.