Superego In Lord Of The Flies

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In the book Lord of the Flies by William Golding Ralph, Piggy and Jack represent in a psychoanalytical allegory the ego, the superego and the id respectively. Ralph struggles in getting the other boys to help create the shelter, instead of playing, even if it would help the group as a whole: “They’re hopeless. The older ones aren’t much better. D’you see. All day I’ve been working with Simon. No one else. They’re off nothing. Or eating, or playing” (50). Ralph understands the need to be rescued and the support that the younger children need, but he also wants to spend part of the time enjoying himself just like many of the other kids. Ralph is one of the only people that steps up and takes responsibly for making the shelter so that all of the …show more content…

Ralph maintains a delicate balance between succumbing to his internal desires and doing tasks that would help the group. Jack, after Piggy has been killed, realizes his power and impunity and in that moment succumbs to his desire to kill Ralph: “Viciously, with full intention, he hurled his spear at Ralph” (181). Jack is like Ralph that in the beginning he maintained a balance between personal desires and the good of the group, but unlike Ralph, Jack gives in to his desires and becomes a savage. Jack, at point in the book that this quote has been taken from, has completely given in to his primal desires and shows no hesitation in trying to kill Ralph. Jack himself doesn’t quite know why he is doing many of the things he is doing, he just does them because he feels like it. Piggy is the only one of the boys who knows what needs to be done if they want to be rescued: “How can you expect to be rescued if you don’t put first things first and act proper” (45). Piggy understands, unlike most of the other boys, that they are not going to be just miraculously rescued if they do nothing, he tries make the other boys believe this truth, but mostly just brush him

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