Lord of Flies: A Discussion of the Background and Plot
Lord of Flies is a novel written by William Golding in 1954 focusing on a group of British boys stranded on an uninhabited highland and attempting to survive though they were unsupervised, uncivilized until they are rescued. The novel was well received and named in the Modern library 100 Best Novels. The novel explores the savage and the dark side of humanity underlying even the most civilized human beings. William Golding illustrates humankind's intrinsic evil nature and a tragic parody of children's adventure tales. This paper will discuss the background and the plot of the book (Sayers. 256).
Background of the Novel
Lord of flies was William Golding's first novel published in 1954. By 1955 it was not successful because William Golding sold less than three thousand books in the United States. Lord of Flies takes place in the midst of unspecified war whereby some of the marooned characters are musical choir under established leaders while others are ordinary students.
Portrayal of the Decent Savage
Lord of Flies portrays decent savage because the boys are far from modern civilization, left in a paradisiacal environment and are regressed to a primitive state. Lord of Flies is a counterpoint to R.M Ballantyne's youth novel The Coral Island published in 1858 which has specific references such as the children's pursuit likened to the Carol island. William Golding emphasizes on the three characters namely Piggy, Jack and coral which are interpreted in the Ballantyne's Coral Island protagonists as caricatures (Miyanaga. 500).
Plot
A British airplane crashes near an isolated island in a remote region of the Pacific Ocean in the midst of wartime evacuation. The boys who are in middle age or preadolescence are the only survivors of the crush. Two boys an overweight, bespectacled boy nicknamed Piggy and the fair-headed Ralph finds a conch which Ralph uses as a horn to convince all the survivors into one area.
Piggy realizes to put first things and act properly while Ralph remains optimistic believed that they would be rescues by grown-ups. Ralph immediately commands some authority over the boys and elected as the chief due to the responsibility of bringing all the survivors together. Ralph does not receive votes to be a member of the boys' choir hence allowing the boys to form a separate clique of hunters.
Ralph establishes three primary policies, to maintain a smoke signal to alert passing ships of their presence on the island to rescue them, to have fun and to survive. The boys form a democracy saying that whoever who holds the conch will speak in the formal gathering and receive the attentive silence of the larger group (Miyanaga. 500).
Jack organizes the choir members as its leader into a hunting party responsible for discovering a food source. Ralph is given ultimate authority through the triumvirate formed by three boys; Jack, Ralph, and the quiet, dreamy boy called Simon. Simon, Jack, and Ralph inspects the island and realizes that it has fruits and wild pigs for food. Piggy has spectacles which are used by other boys to create fire.
Piggy is Ralph's only real confidant who is made an outcast by all the fellows and rendered an involuntary point of laughs for the children while being hated by Jack. Simon who supervises the project of constructing shelters feels an instinctive need to protect younger boys. As the majority of boys turns idle, the semblance of order quickly deteriorates by giving littl >e aid in the building of shelters, begin to develop paranoia about the island and spends most of the time having fun.
The central paranoia is a monster called the beast which the boys begin to believe it exists on the island. Jack begins a power struggle with Ralph by gaining a level of control over the group and boldly promises to kill the monster although Ralph insists that there nothing like a monster on the island. Jack starts to summon all the boys to hunt down a wild pig driving away those maintaining the signal fire and the ship travels by the island without the smoke signal to alert the ship's crew continues without stopping (Perry. 42).
Jack assaults Piggy, and Ralph angrily confronts Jack for failing to keep the signal. Ralph considered relinquishing the position of a leader due to the failure of the boys to attract possible rescuers but is convinced by Piggy who fears what will happen if Jack becomes a leader and understands Ralph's importance as a leader.
A given night when the boys were asleep, an aerial battle occurred near the island during which a fighter pilot ejects from the pilot and died. In the parachute, the body drifts down to the island, and both get tangles at a tree near the top of the mountain. The twins Sam and Erick are assigned the role of maintaining a signal fire and notice the corpse of the fighter pilot and the parachute in the dark (Perry. 42).
Sam and Erick mistook the corpse for the beast and ran to the cluster of the shelter that Simon and Ralph had erected to warn others. Jack decided to lead a party to the other side of Island called the Castle Rock a place claimed that the monster lives there and surprisingly on Ralph and Roger who is Jack's closest friend agrees to go. Ralph returns shortly before the two boys, but eventually, the three see the parachutist whose head raised via the wind which makes them flee believing the beast truly lives.
Jack calls an assembly and tries to turn the other boys against Ralph and to be removed from the power position but receives no support. Rodger sneaks to join Jack, and slowly an increasing number of older boys abandon Ralph to join Jack's tribe. Simon who has epilepsy has a secret where he goes alone and conducted an imaginary dialogue with the head which he dubs the 'Lord of flies.' The Lord of Flies warns Simon to be in danger due to representing the soul of man and will be killed by others (Gonzalez Luiz, 62).
Simon climbs the mountain alone finds the head to be a dead parachutist and rushes to tell the other boys conducting a ritual who beats Simon to death saying he is the beast. Ralph and Jack engage in a fight where none wins, and Piggy tried to address the gathering but was killed by Rogue. Ralph secrets confront Sam and Erick who warns Ralph of Jack and Rogue who has sharpened a stick at both ends an >d wanted to hunt Ralph as a pig.
Jack orders the team to look for Ralph; Jack sets fire to the forest as Ralph weighs means for survival. Majority of the island is burnt in flames with hunters closely to Ralph who trips and falls. Ralph looks up only to find a British officer who had come to investigate the fire. Ralph bursts into tears when told that Piggy was dead when Jack and the other children revert to their true ages. The officer expresses the disappointment of seeing British boys exhibiting a warlike feral life (Chatterjee. 50).
Works cited
Chatterjee, Arnab. "William Golding’s Apocalyptic Vision in Lord of the Flies and Pincher Martin." Prague Journal of English Studies 6.1 (2017): 45-56.
González, Luis Fernando. "LORD OF THE FLIES: THE INNATE EVIL OF MAN." Revista Folios 13 (2017): 59-68.
Miyanaga, Ryuichiro. "Absence of Bikini, or the Cold War Boyology in William Golding’s Lord of the Flies." Critique: Studies in Contemporary Fiction 58.5 (2017): 498-508.
Perry, Gina. "Real-life Lord of the Flies." New Scientist237.3165 (2018): 41-43.
Sayers, William. "Isherwood’s Kuno von Pregnitz (Mr. Norris Changes Trains) and the Premise of Golding’s The Lord of the Flies." ANQ: A Quarterly Journal of Short Articles, Notes and Reviews 30.4 (2017): 255-258.
