Unveiling the Dark Side: A Summary of “Lord of the Flies”

The Story 'Lord of the Flies', written by William Golding deals with a group of boys (no girls) that got evacuated by airplane from nuclear war. The plane crashed on a tropic island and now the boys are on their one - no adults, no civilisation. The main plot of the story is the forming of an society in order to create organised living conditions. In the beginning the boys build a responsible democratic society, formed by elections and a `head of state'. In the end it degenerates into anarchy, terror, murder and violence. This process is based on the evil that lies within each persons nature, it is the potential evil that lies within any society.

The importance of each character in this book is hard to define and probably quiet disputable, because the elements that finally led to destruction can be found in each boy. What Golding constructs is a microcosm of the world, and each boy represents a certain group of people. "Which group of people in this world is the `main'?", is the same question like the one for the main charakter. The deciding characters of the book could be Piggy (the intellectual outsider) the same as Simon (the symbolic of the Christian ideals), as the characters of all the other boys, because their decisions and action take a huge influence on the story as well. But the personalities that embody the most and are the most obvious embodiments are Jack and Ralph.

Ralph is the democratic idea of a society, whilst Jack exemplifies fascism. Ralph is a fair, about eleven years old boy. His mind is marked by the idea of justice for everyone, he is fair, calm and intelligent. He thinks, waits and takes as much aspects as he can into his consideration before he decides what to do. A marking action of his, is his first plan about what to do, right at the beginning. He wants to gather the many boys there are and wants to do an assembly in which the community decides what to do.

Order custom essay Unveiling the Dark Side: A Summary of “Lord of the Flies” with free plagiarism report

450+ experts on 30 subjects Starting from 3 hours delivery

Get Essay Help

Jack is tall, and must be about the same age. His has a “offhand authority" in his voice that appears as intimidating, he comes into view as a person who goes his one way and does not care a lot about a common sense. Right from the start he makes clear, that he is the person for the military sections, like hunting, killing and destroy. Indeed he is not evil by nature, this illustrates a scene in which he has already lourishes a knife, and becomes frenzy, but in the end he does not make it killing a little pig.

William Golding wrote an excellent piece of literature, which was exactly my preferred. Instead of writing another literature that reduces its view on the Second World War - the Jews, pure fascism and dictatorship - he enlarged his social critics to a ways higher level. He does not only focus on the tragedy of the event of the Second World War, and he does not judge this issue as a German or European affair. Lord of the Flies shows that the evil that causes destruction and terror is in everyone, maybe even in the nature of humankind. He reveals, that a democratic structure does not necessarily provide good will and intention. He reveals, that evil is not in a nation, or elsewhere.

The boys on the island started from something that might be something like the ́origin'. They founded a democracy, and in our sense of understanding nothing should have gone wrong, but it did end in terror! And why? Because Ralph - the good willing, common sensed Ralph - the embodied idea of the today's democratic politics, is suffering from the evil in everyone; and because of his capability of not understanding this, everything ends the way it does.

This is, besides that Goldwin wrote in a wonderful imaginative language, the point that makes this book a real pleasure for me to read. I generally dislike novels that reduce their message to an trivial issue and fill pages with unnecessary descriptions, although they show a standard of writing skills; but while reading Lord of the Flies I was able to feel the changes by each word, I understood (I hope I really did) the deeper meaning in the most of his descriptions of the people, the environment and the symbolic actions that took place.
Another point that makes this book interesting to read is the diversity of interpretations.

The many aspects of the novel make this possible, you could for instance focus on the psychological development of each character during the story, as same as on the development of the entire group under a social aspect. In the end, I think that is book contains a philosophy that is quiet interesting and that ought to be proved, and it contains certain ideas and study of our society that are remarkable, so is the book - remarkable.

Don't let plagiarism ruin your grade

Run a free check or have your essay done for you

Check my essay Hire Writer