Why Is Lord Of The Flies Distinctively Good Or Bad

You can tell when someone is essentially good or bad based on their actions. That doesn't mean that when you do one unethical thing your title stating “good” is torn away and replaced with “bad”. Everyone makes mistakes, and along with mistakes come consequences. Throughout Lord of the Flies, author William Golding makes you question whether the true nature of humans is predominantly good or bad. Actions based off rules is a determining factor when deciding if someone is good or bad. If you look at someone like Ralph, he has set rules and plans on how they will survive on the island. Jack on the other hand feels like he is an exception to all the rules and by the end of the book most of the boys become his followers and eventually become

savages. Throughout Lord of the Flies, we learned the importance of rules because the boys aren't trusted to make logical choices considering they are children. The boys would have been rescued sooner if Jack would have followed Ralph’s rules and not wandered off to hunt pigs, Jack was the influencing factor that drove the other boys insane, and Jack and his followers hunting Ralph down, almost burning down the island which could have also resulted in their own deaths.

Due to the actions the took place after all the rules were ignored it resulted in numerous innocent boys dying.

Rules are put in place so groups in a society have a sense of order, obedience and the prevention of unlawful actions. Most of the time adults do not apply to common rules because they have been under their parent's influence since they were children. Not until you are an adult with your own children do people truly understand why we have rules. This is one reason why the boys struggle with following rules on the island, resulting in them missing a bypassing ship that could have rescued them. Ralph was the elected leader of the boys on the island and he was in charge of assigning each group of boys a duty on the island. Ralph designated Jack and his follower to be the hunters, but he got so caught up in the role that he cared only about hunting the island pigs that he passed up an opportunity to

go home. Ralph has a hard time coping with Jack's choice because he prefers civilization over Jack’s choice of savagery. You can tell that Jack is more worried about hunting and killing pigs rather than getting rescued when he says “the job was too much. We needed everyone,” (75) after Ralph explained to him a ship had passed and they missed it. Ralph was disappointed in the boys because he could tell that not only Jack, but the rest of the boys were all more worried about hunting then they were being rescued. Ralph notices Jack’s change in behaviour the moment he killed his first pig. Ralph can tell it's more of a game to Jack rather than hunting to survive. Ralph knew that with rules and working together the boys could survive on the island. He knew that if the boys would have followed the rules they could have been rescued. Jack was doing anything he possibly could to break the rules and hunt which resulting in them staying on the island. “You and your blood, Jack Merridew! You and you hunting! We might have gone home,” (74). Ralph is the only one that knows the importance of order and obedience. The more the boys let their guard down to the beast the more they lose sight of ever going home and living a civilized life again. Ralph is trying to fight the savagery, but even the strongest and smartest break sometimes.

Most of the boys may have elected Ralph as the leader, but Jack has his own way of manipulating people into doing and acting how he wants them to. At the beginning of the book the boy know the difference between right and wrong, but Jack has a way of blurring how others think. The boys were all focused on getting rescued until Jack went on a destructive rampage attempting to kill all the pigs on the island. Jack was the first boy to turn savage after he became obsessed with the urge to kill a pig after he passed up the first one when they first arrived on the island. “The spear moved forward inch by inch and the terrified squealing became a high-pitched scream. Then Jack found the throat and the hot blood spouted over his hands,” (148). This is an example of how Jack influenced the other boys to become more like him when he purposely killed the sow knowing that its babies would also die. The killing of the sow is also important because this shows that all the civilization the boys brought to the island had progressed into savagery. One of the boys who was most influenced by Jack was Roger. Roger was a very quiet, rarely talked about boy who was apart of Jack’s choir. Throughout the book Roger lost all hope of civilization and had the desire to hurt the other boys who didn't side with him. He first started acting out when he was throwing rocks at Henry (64), escalating to him rolling a boulder into piggy and murdering him (200), and by the end of the journey on the island sharpening a stick so he could kill Ralph (211). After the boys no longer listened to Ralphs rules they looked up to Jack as a leader which almost got all of the boys killed. Children let their emotions drive them to do the craziest of things, therefore should not be trusted to make their own rules.

Jack managed to turn all the boys against Ralph which almost resulted in the death of all of them.

The boys were more afraid of an imaginary beast that was ultimately coming after them rather then the beast that lives inside them all. Simon knew the beast lived within all the boys, but he never got the chance to explain it to the rest of the boys before they cold heartedly murdered him. “There isn't anyone to help you. Only me. And I'm the Beast... Fancy thinking the Beast was something you could hunt and kill,” (158). When the Lord of the Flies tells Simon that he is the only thing that can help him, it means that the boys will all be disconnected from all forms of civilization. If the boys would have listen to Ralph from the beginning of the book they all could have been rescued when the first ship passed, but they didn't. After they killed Simon they split up and few boys parted with Ralph and all the others sided with Jack. The group that parted from civilization went with Jack and the rest that still wanted to have rules and to be rescued went with Ralph. Jack and his gang hunted Ralph down with the spears that they hunted the pigs with. They weren't aiming to hurt Ralph, but kill him. This shows the the boys need adults to take care of them. “The fair boy said this solemnly; but then the delight of a realized ambition overcame him. In the middle of the scar he stood on his head and grinned at the reversed fat boy. No grownups,” (2). The boys thought that it was

fun to be stuck on a island with no rules, but in the end it turned out to the the worst thing that could have happened to them. It is also important because with rules, Jack could have been just like Joseph Stalin in the way that he killed anyone that didn't listen or agree with the values that he had.

In conclusion, rules are very important because without them everything turns to chaos. Children should not be in charge of making their own rules because they only look at things from one perspective. So many things went wrong on the island with the absence of rules. Ralph was the only boy on the island that knew what had to be done and how it should be done properly. Jack proved that he was not a fit leader when him and the other boys set the island on fire, killing the sow, and even how he picked on piggy. We learned the importance of rules because the boys aren't trusted to make logical choices considering they are children. The boys would have been rescued sooner if Jack would have followed Ralph’s rules and not wandered off to hunt pigs, Jack was the influencing factor that drove the other boys insane, and Jack and his followers hunting Ralph down, almost burning down the island which could have also resulted in their own deaths. The boys were not old enough to be stranded on an island with no parents. They may have thought they were, but they are only children who need an authority figure to show them the difference between right and wrong.