Lord Of The Flies Comparison

Great minds think alike. In Lord of the Flies and Brave New World, both dystopian novels, William Golding and Aldous Huxley confirms this axiom. Whereas Golding perceives the raw evil of human nature quite literally, Huxley, too, illustrates mans’ downfall, but in a different setting. Although they wrote separately, their genius comes together to deliver the same message.
In our primal form, humans are generally malicious savages. In Lord of the Flies, this is evident via boys are stranded on an island. When the boys split into two separate tribes, conflict arises. Jack steals Piggy’s glasses, so Ralph prepares to fight him. "Then they were facing each other again, panting and furious, but unnerved by each other’s ferocity. They became aware of the noise that was the background to this fight, the steady shrill cheering of the tribe behind them.” (Golding 179) In the most basic view, splitting up solely due to disagreements isn’t reasonable. Engaging in conflict further animalizes them, and it is shocking, even to the boys, the degree of the primal viciousness that they are displaying. It is only this shock that alerts them to the noise around them, and breaks their extreme

focus on the fight. The source of the noise, a crowd of boys cheering as a result of violence, adds to the degeneration of their civility. They get excited watching people fight, even though fighting is the epitome of malicious instincts.
Huxley also uses violence to inform readers of the primal nature of unstructured man.

As Laney and Bernard begin their visit to the reservation, they walk in on a ritual that the savages hope will bring rain. A boy walks around a heap of snakes, and is whipped by an old man wearing a coyote mask. He continues to walk around, several times, as he bleeds freely (Huxley 115). They are engaging in a pointless ritual that is full of unnecessary violence. The heap of snakes is just the beginning of the cruelty they show, because they don’t have the necessary supplies available to care for them well. The old man wears a coyote mask, as coyotes are known to be scavenging fighters. Above all, the blood holds the most significant meaning. As he bleeds, what makes them human and humane is also

spilled.
Golding and Huxley both make use of violence to show just how archaic and savage we can act or feel. The two emphasize this by using numbers, as the crowds also display these signs. Finally, both events most likely end in blood. Again, spilled blood is a sign of the malicious intentions that could only come from primeval urges. And again, these cardinal urges so evil could only come from an intelligent savage - man.
To reflect the idea of civilization, both authors thought long and hard on setting. When the boys all congregated on the island for the first time, they want to confirm they are on an island. A group of boys climb a mountain, and are able to see their surroundings. They see an island; untouched by man, surrounded by reefs, and wildly beautiful (Golding 29). Metaphorically and literally, and island sets them apart from civilization. Not only are they miles from any other land, any sort of mental evolution is set apart and left to die. The abundance of nature furthers them from civilized thoughts, and this is emphasized by it’s uncut and wild essence. Overall, the island is dirty, rugged, and wild; just like the boys become.
Conversely, the civilized area of the brave new world is extremely clean and well organized. As Henry walks to meet with the director, he travels through the heart of the organization, the Hatchery. “On all eleven floors of Nurseries it was feeding time. From eighteen hundred bottles eighteen hundred carefully labelled infants were simultaneously sucking down their pint of pasteurized external secretion.” (Huxley 147)
The brave new world is regimented and cold, but is a feat of science and organization. Eleven floors full of infants is a lot of babies, which requires a lot of food, which requires a lot of land, which requires a lot of people to tend the land. Therefore, one knows that this must be a civilized group of humans as more conflicts arise with increasing numbers of people. Civilized people also tend to be organized, careful, and exact, which allows for the precise ratio of bottles to babies. It is also important to note what is in those bottles, as only uncouth swine drink milk that hasn't been pasteurized. One can immediately see the stark difference between the wild island and Hatchery. There is no schedule, no inventory, and definitely no pasteurized milk on the island. As for the Hatchery, it definitely does not have plants or pigs or plantains. Overall,
the boys are as wild as the island, just as much as the people in the Hatchery are civilized.
Humans are bad. Golding and Huxley use violence, actions, comparisons, and even the language of the characters to illustrate the properties of man. Even though there is a lot of diversity between settings, the differences only work to make the same message more powerful- humans in the wild, given time, are unorganized and malicious savages.