Power In William Golding's Lord Of The Flies

How does one get power? Does it depend on where they come from? Or do they need to earn this power? All around the world there are people that have higher power than others. Most of the time people earn this power from hard work over the years. Sometimes people are in power because they have the skills to lead others. There is times that people crave power so it turns them into someone you don’t want to be. Others somewhat accidental fall into the power not even meaning to. Whatever the case may be power is something that a lot of people are brought to serve. David Spitz says, “In every society known to man, some men exercise power over others. Some issue commands that others are expected to obey.” It doesn’t matter what community or society there is going to be some person that has higher power over the others. There are three ways the Lord of the

Flies novel expresses how it’s a novel about power.
First, the beast the kids fear makes them controlled by Jack in the novel Lord of the Flies.

This is one of the power ideas that is within the novel, and is used to control the people within it. Jack is the type of person that just wants to be in charge of people, so he tells a lie to get the other kids to follow him. All the kids listen to him because he says he knows how to defeat it or conquer the monster. In reality there is no monster, Jack just wants everyone to live under his control and his rules. Jack even goes this far too actually kill another human just so they wouldn’t ruin his chance of controlling the other kids. If there was no monster the kids wouldn’t listen to Jack therefore he wouldn’t be in control. Patrick Reilly says, “Lord of the Flies, by contrast, is an attempt to trace the defects of society back to the defects of human nature.” That just goes to show that we as humans will do anything to be in control. We will kill others just to keep the power we have and if someone tries to take it anyway from us they will die too. The nature of humans will change if any of these are broken or in

violation.
Second, the conch is next object with power behind it in the novel Lord of the Flies. When the boys first arrive on the island and know that they are stranded they already started to civilize. One way they do this is to keep order on their island. The conch is how they do this task, if someone has the conch they have the floor to speak and everyone must respect what they say in some way. This was their way to keep the order throughout the island and it did work for some time. Until Jack our somewhat villain wanted all the power and destroys the conch and from there on out everything went downhill fast. Henri Talon says, “This liberal-democratic outlook and sense of fair play lead him to the honorable idea that everyone, however lowly, has a right to speak—even a littlun who wants the conch must be given it.” This shows that the conch was a great idea for the boys to keel order but someone is always going to want all the power and how you deal with that is how well you will survive. Once they broke the conch all hell broke loss within the island, people started to die and not by natural causes either. The things that were happening on the island weren’t right at all and human nature started to turn bad.
Finally, Jack is a figure in the novel Lord of the Flies that wants to control the group by using symbols or figures. Jake uses the beast to control the group first, and others tried to stop him by telling to group but Jack got rid of whoever wanted to ruin his power on the island. Then by destroying the conch Jack had gained all the power he wanted and needed to control the group. John Peter says, “Jack, is an authoritarian man. Like Hitler and Mussolini, he came out of an authoritarian tradition; himself a Satanic figure with his red hair and black cape.” In this novel Jack is compared to these leaders due to his type of leading style, he uses. The pigs head is another symbol that controls someone on the island. Simon finds the boars head in the forest, and it actually starts to talk to him. Telling him and he is going to get “jacked” and there is nothing he can do about it. Some think it was just his imagination talking to him but others think it wasn’t. In the end the pigs had was right, he did get “jacked”.
Clearly, the novel Lord of the Flies has different types and ways that power is expressed within it. Jack wanted to control everyone and be the ruler on the island. He “jacked” whoever got in his way of ruling also. The conch was a great way to keep order on the island at first but then so only became just a broken shell and ordered was gone forever after that. The boars head did control the way Simon thought and in the end it was most definitely right. Marijke Van Vuuren says, “The outbreak of evil at the end of the novel has been anticipated in Golding's allusions to the world today we live in.” we as people can’t even live on an island with others and be civil. Someone has to ruin it all and make us act like a bunch of animals. Killing for fun and not caring who we hurt in the end. That is why some people compare this part of the essay to what the world is becoming today. Do you think this novel is about power? Or is it something else?