Mob Mentality In Lord Of The Flies

“A river is easier to channel than to stop” (Sanderson). This quote from the book Mistborn: Shadows of Self demonstrates the idea of mob mentality. The Psychology of the Mob Mentality is a social psychology that involves people participating in certain behaviors influenced by their peers. When people participate in mob- like behaviors, it is often difficult to stop those actions depending on the situation. Identity and acceptability are two main causes of mob mentality in both Lord of the Flies and Mean Girls.
In the 19th century, Gabriel Tarde and Gustave Le Bon put forth the idea of herd or mob mentality. Mob mentality is caused by several things, one of these causes being deindividuation. Deindividuation, “when people are part of a group,

they experience a loss of self- awareness” (Davies). It may be easy to confuse deindividuation with identity because both causes have a relation to losing one's self to try and fit in. Deindividuation, when put into a real world context, could lead to someone who is a part of a group referred to as “the group” versus the individual itself.
In similarity, anonymity has to do with feeling like you are not given as much attention, so you feel like you have less responsibility in a society. Diffusion of responsibility, another cause of mob mentality, is when actions are pushed onto others within a group instead of just the single individual. For example, when someone wants to get revenge on another person, they will often get others involved. When people participate in anonymity driven mob actions the thoughts running through their minds are along the lines of, Oh if they are doing it then I can do it too. Emotionally driven mob mentality deals with a heightened emotional state whether it is hostility, excitement or anger. For example at a football game, people may act out due to reactions of their peers from what is going on in the game.
When described through mob mentality psychology, individuality is; when people are a part of a group, they can lose their sense of individual identity (Davies).

In Lord of the Flies, Jack and his group of hunters, the Choir, demonstrated the concept of identity with their masks. Jack and the Choir go from one person to another in the matter of a couple of seconds with just a little bit of clay on their faces. This is further explained in this quote, “Jack planned his new face… A rounded patch of sunlight fell on his face and a brightness appeared in the depths of the water. He looked in astonishment, no longer at himself but at an awesome stranger“ (Golding 63-64). First, in this quote it says ‘Jack planned his new face’. This clearly shows that he is planning a completely new persona. In the second sentence of the quote, it is inferred that the new ‘brightness’ is his new found self. Once he saw himself with the sunlight and his reflection in the water, he saw ‘an awesome stranger’. This is perceived as Jack seeing someone that he doesn’t recognize at all, but still sees this sense of delight or awesomeness within them. In the beginning of the story, Jack was often rude and made rude comments. However, he was also a shameful, self- conscious boy with strong morals. Although, right in the moment of putting on the mask, he becomes a ‘bloodthirsty’

killer.
Although it may not be seen as a mob action, all the boys putting on masks leads to all of them losing their morals overall. When put into thought, the idea of Jack putting the clay on his face and then all the hunters following suit, would be an idea of mob mentality. In all reality, the hunters did not need to follow Jack’s doing and put on the clay identities, but they did because he is their leader. The Choir potentially could have just been acting savagely because Jack did. They might not have had the same possession that Jack had had.
When within a society, there are actions that are seen as unacceptable, but when within a group they are suddenly accepted. This is known as acceptability. In the book Lord of the Flies, all the boys start messing with Roger and it almost takes a turn for the worst. This is further explained in this quote, “Ralph too was fighting to get near, to get a handful of that brown vulnerable flesh. The desire to squeeze and hurt was overmastering” (Golding 114-115). In this quote, it says ‘Ralph too was fighting to get near’. When this is analyzed, it shows that Ralph would usually not participate in such acts as this. However, with all the boys going at Roger, he felt the need to participate too. During this stage of the book, Ralph is still a bit of a jerk but is also transitioning to the more passive, ex- chief. Throughout the whole story, Ralph never really was a complete savage, so participating in these actions just seems real out of character for him. Also, tying back to Ralph not ever being savage through any part of the book, when it says the desire was ‘overmastering’, it shows him being savage in a very extreme way.
Mob mentality is shown through so many pieces of text. One other example is the movie Mean Girls. Mean Girls is a movie about a girl, Cady, who moves to a new school and has to try and survive high school. Along the way, Cady gained some “friends” that aren’t necessarily the best. For example in the beginning of the movie one of the girls says, “On Wednesdays we wear pink” (Walters 2004). This is an example of a loss of identity because they have to wear pink on Wednesdays. In the quote it says ‘we’, we refers to them as having to function as a group no longer as individuals. They have no choice but to as they are told, otherwise they won’t be able to sit with them at lunch. Not everyone wants to wear pink or likes to wear pink. Cady didn’t have any pink to wear anyways; she had to ask a friend for a pink shirt. It shows that it can be sort of an inconvenience to try and fit into a group. People have to change the way they want to be in order to be seen as an acceptable person within the group.
As well as in the movie Mean Girls, there is this key item that causes a lot of drama. This item is known as “the Burn Book”. When the book is first introduced, all four girls, Regina, Gretchen, Karen, and Cady, start looking through the book. When they come across Cady’s secret friend Damien, Cady says, “He is almost too gay to function” (Walters 2004). This is within the acceptability section of mob mentality because she would not have said that about Damien if she wasn’t trying to fit in with the other girls.
Either Cady really was just trying to fit in, or she was just caught up in the moment and said something she probably shouldn’t have. Almost instantly after Cady said what she said, she soon regretted it, thinking maybe it was only okay when her friend Janis said it. This could be perceived as the mob mentality not fully sticking at this point in the story.
From applying the psychology of mob mentality to both the story, Lord of the Flies, and Mean Girls, you get a better connection or idea of how fictional texts actually relate to the real world.

Often times when watching a movie or reading a book, people don’t always pay attention to parts involving different psychologies or real world events. From comparing both a movie and a piece of text, people see how different their analysis of things could be. When watching a movie, people may pay more attention because the director can draw them in using sounds and objects that stand out. With books and novels, there aren’t always those sights and sounds to pull in the reader's attention. Therefore, people don’t always pay attention to fine details within the text that could help understand what is going on. When comparing the two pieces of literature together, it is easy to notice those little details that are skipped over after analysing the texts better. Authors and directors try and incorporate different events or scenes within their work to try and show how something could play out in real life. People, in one point of their life, could be stranded on an island with a bunch of strangers and be forced to try and survive. Or they could come from Africa and be forced to survive public high school for the first time in your

life.