Transformation In Lord Of The Flies

Experiences and surroundings are powerful forces in humans’ lives. They can help form a person’s ideals as well as change them later in life. The human mind is keen on taking these in and translating them to thoughts or adaptations, demonstrating its flexibility and malleability. The defining characteristic of being human, then, is that we are shaped by our experiences and surroundings. And once our ideals are established, we are not static beings, but rather adapt our thoughts and actions based on the circumstances.

Humans are born as blank slates, tabula rasa. Because of this, we are most susceptible to being shaped by experiences and surroundings during the earlier stages of our lives. Children’s earliest and most frequent interactions are

with their parents. From birth, they build an inseparable bond and innate trust. It is no surprise, then, that parents play the largest role in shaping their children’s thoughts, actions, behaviors, and characters. Children pick up similar speaking styles, mannerisms, political ideologies, and more from their parents. From a young age, my immigrant parents instilled in me from a young age the importance of hard work, which I no implement in everything I do, such as schoolwork. Similarly, Mariam and Laila of Khaled Hosseini’s A Thousand Splendid Suns display the influence of their parents and surroundings. Mariam’s mother Nana teaches her to endure, explaining, “‘It’s our lot in life, Mariam. Women like us. We endure. It’s all we have’” (Hosseini 19). Later in her life, it can be seen that Mariam has truly taken this lesson to heart as she endures through the many abuses of her husband Rasheed. In a more positive way, Laila’s father imparts unto Laila a love for learning and intellectualism. “Babi had made it clear to Laila from a young age that the most important thing in his life, after her safety, was her schooling” (114). This valuation of education is further reinforced by the communist environment of a part of her childhood. Mariam and Laila’s ideals of endurance and education demonstrate how they have been shaped by their childhood surroundings, especially their parents.
Children acquire traits from their parents mainly through imitation, mirroring. Such is the case with Conor Grennan and his three-and-a-half-year-old son Finn. As Grennan explains, Finn “has recently taken to giving [him] time-outs… [Finn’s] little eyebrows will furrow, his finger will wag at [Grennan] and his whole face seems to take the shape of a V” (Grennan). Finn is imitating exactly what his father has done to him probably many times before. While imitation does not necessarily mean the ideal has been engrained into the child’s mind, performing the action himself is the first step for it to become in his own nature. Finn displays the innately human characteristic of being shaped by one’s surroundings. Grennan’s anecdote demonstrates that imitation is a mechanism through which the parents’ ideals can become the child’s. Children perceive their parents as being successful and what they should strive to achieve, so they mirror the thoughts and actions of their parents, ultimately acquiring their parents’ ideals.
The shaping of a person’s character during childhood is not done exclusively by their familial surroundings. Children can also be influence by their peers. A group of psychology researchers from Michigan State University, led by Jennifer Watling Neal, observed classes of preschoolers to document who they played with and whether their personalities changed. They found that, “[p]reschoolers’ sunny dispositions may actually be contagious. Over the course of a school year, kids who hung out with happy, smiley friends took on more of these traits themselves” (Sanders). While it is not yet certain that these findings are the result of causation rather than correlation, “[t]he results suggest that young children’s personalities rub off on their pals” (Sanders). This study demonstrates that children can be influenced also by their surrounding peers, not just from experiences within their family. Both of these sources of influence share characteristics such as children spending significant amounts of time in the environment and the experiences happening at a young age, suggesting that these two characteristics are keys in influencing a child’s development and resulting ideals.
Once established, our ideals are also subject to change influenced by our experiences and surroundings. In the search for a better life, past experiences often inform people’s decisions on what or how to change. They “Let [the past] be [their] guidance/to be someone better/and to make better decisions/for the life [they] live” (Ruth). This demonstrates that humans have the ability as well as the desire to allow experiences to shape their thinking in order “to build a better future” (Ruth). Personally, my experiences have influenced my thoughts and actions with regards to single bathrooms. There are many times, unfortunately, too many times, when I have opened the single-bathroom door and found a person standing there, or even worse, using the toilet. I instantly regret ever opening the door, no matter if it in an adult or child, nor does it matter what they were doing. I now tend to enter single bathrooms only after witnessing a person exit. If no one exits, however, I am forced to try the door. I feel a split second of terror, open the door slowly, hoping it is empty, and I feel a wave of relief when I see there is no one there (Thankfully, I have not recently had a similar encounter). I have been conditioned by those bathroom incidences to almost fear entering a single bathroom. My change in behavior and actions involving single bathrooms indicates that I have adapted based on my experiences in order to reach more desirable outcomes in the future. This change is on the primitive, instinctual level involving fear as well as a conscious, intentional level because of courtesy and consequences. Thus, I exemplify the human ability to take experiences and use the information to change thoughts and actions, both instinctually and intentionally.
People’s surroundings also play a role in changing thoughts and actions, although often in a more urgent or forceful manner. This is evident in the lives of Mariam and Laila and their marriages to Rasheed. They learn to adapt, although reluctantly, to Rasheed’s oppressive customs and become subservient to him. His authoritarian ways instill fear into the two, especially Mariam, who reveals her inner thoughts that, “It wasn’t easy tolerating him talking this way to her, to bear his scorn, his ridicule, his insults, his walking past her like she was nothing but a house cat. But after four years of marriage, Mariam saw clearly how much a woman could tolerate when she was afraid” (98). Laila also adopts a more obedient manner, although to a lesser degree than Mariam; Laila occasionally stands up to Rasheed and his abuse but still lives in fear of his power. Mariam and Laila reveal that people’s ideals and how they express them can be changed by their surroundings. Whether intentional or not, the women lose a degree of their feminist and egalitarian goals under Rasheed. This is likely because of the harsh consequences he implements as well as his tight, unwavering authority. Thus, the women must change in order to survive and avoid more, harsher beatings. By changing their ideals or at least their expression of them, Mariam and Laila demonstrate that they have adapted to their environment in order to better survive; they display the human ability to change based on their surroundings.
This trait of humans is also presented in William Golding’s Lord of the Flies through the devolution of the boys into savagery.

They start out as proper civilized children, but in order to survive, they must hunt for food and defend themselves from “the beast.” Their constant hunting creates a thirst for blood, illustrated in their chant, “‘Kill the pig. Cut her throat. Spill her blood’” (Golding 69). As they stay on the island, the boys become even more violent and civility is all but forgotten, eventually unknowingly killing one of their own as they “surged after [him], poured down the rock, leapt on to [what they thought was] the beast, screamed, struck, bit, tore” (153). Even the most civilized of the group joins the rest in their viciousness when, “Ralph too was fighting to get near, to get a handful of that brown, vulnerable flesh. The desire to squeeze and hurt was over-mastering” (114-115). The boys’ degeneration into barbarity demonstrates how their environment causes changes in their previously-established thoughts and actions as they adapt (and go too far in doing so) to their wild surroundings. Similarly but in a more positive direction, the time I spend surrounded by gregarious individuals in Youth and Government has made me more outgoing than before. The change of a group as a whole toward similar ideals and characteristics exemplifies the power peers have over each other. In response to both their surrounding environment and people, humans are able to change

their ideals, for better or for worse.
Not only can humans change instinctually and involuntarily, they also have the unique ability to recognize when they need to adapt as well as carry out these changes effectively. This can be seen through immigrants to the United States. The research group Public Agenda conducted a study in which they surveyed “foreign-born adults aged 18 or older who came to live in the U.S. when they were at least five years old” (Farkas). Regarding language, the group found that the immigrants were insistent “that learning English is critical for their success. Focus group discussions made it clear that this conviction is driven by pragmatism and the desire to be understood… Almost half (47 percent) have taken classes to improve their language skills. And 49 percent of those who came with limited or no English proficiency say they can now read a newspaper or book in English very well” (Farkas). In a country that primarily speaks English, these immigrants were able to recognize the value and necessity of learning the language in order to live a better life, and many were able to adapt effectively. They demonstrate the human characteristic of recognizing the circumstances and the ability to change based on their environment even after their early, easily-malleable years. Humans are characterized by an awareness of their surroundings, along with a desire and the ability to respond to these perceptions.
The human mind is infinitely malleable.

They are like lumps of clay, molded by their surroundings and experiences. This is especially true early in life, when they take in their surroundings and translate them into ideals and characteristics. As they get older, this susceptibility can lessen but does not disappear. Adults are able to take what they learn from their experiences and surroundings and adapt appropriately, whether instinctually or intentionally. They are able to do this because of the malleability of the human mind even after initial shaping has been completed in childhood. Humans, then, are defined by their ability to use their experiences and surroundings to form their ideals as well as adapt to

changes.