The Motif of Authority and Its Importance - Lord of the Flies
Authority is a concept that we, as humans, sculpt our lives around. We need authority in order to maintain a life without chaos. For example, in society we built a democracy for our country in order to obtain a leader, an authority figure who keeps our country running. Now, imagine our lives without authority. What would we do? How would we react? Authority is truly the most important way to stay sane in such a chaotic, as demonstrated in the novel Lord of The Flies, by William Golding.
Throughout the novel there are various examples of how important authority is in our lives. The plot begins as Ralph, the main character, abruptly finds himself on an island after the plane he was traveling on went down. As he is exploring the island, he comes across another boy, Piggy. Piggy asks Ralph, “where’s the man with the megaphone?” (7). This is a significant sign of a repeating element in this novel. Here the boys are stranded on an island, there is no sign of adults, and they are immediately seeking authority, someone to tell them what to do or how to leave the island. Later as they explore the island together they find a conch shell, another sign of authority. Ralph decides to blow the conch shell to perhaps attract other boys who may also be on the island, thus boys start to appear from all over the island. This illustrates how people are immediately attracted to authority; we want to have a leader because without it there is only chaos.
As the boys start to discuss what exactly they are going to do on the island, they suggest making a democracy which is an interesting idea. Again, the boys are stuck on an island, they have no rules, no leaders, and all they want to do is pick a leader and make rules. Also they are going right back to what they just had before the plane crashed, where the world outside of the island was violent and scary to many of them. What makes them think that if they make a democracy like the adults did that it is going to end up to be successful? As people, we need to take the time to think about the concept of authority. It is what our lives rely on every day, yet many of us wouldn’t know what to do if it ever fell apart. How would we live without authority? Amongst all of the arrogance and absurdity of our always moving world, we will learn to live an adequate life without authority through the lives of the young boys in this novel.
Changes in the Boys and Mask - Lord of the Flies
Masks have been used to hide behind for centuries, either literally or metaphorically. People have used them to hide from themselves, as well as others. In the novel, Lord of the Flies, by William Golding, one of the main characters, Jack, finds himself hiding behind a mask, not only from the other characters in the novel, but from the changes that have occurred within himself.
As the novel progresses, multiple changes take place within Jack. One of the evident changes in Jack was the animalistic way he acts towards the other boys, but also when it comes to when he hunts. In one particular scene where Jack is preparing to hunt, the author describes Jack as, “Dog-like, uncomfortably on all fours … He closed his eyes, raised his head and breathed in gently with flared nostrils.” (48) He has changed from his old structured self, into a newer, more rebellious leader; a leader who is domesticated, yet wild. However these changes are a struggle for Jack to handle, which is where the concept of hiding behind a mask is key.
In the beginning of the novel, it is noticeable that Jack lives his life out of fear. As the novel progresses we see that these changes within Jack are alarming to him. To cope with these changes, Jack begins to paint his face with different colors, colors that represent those of a powerful mask. For Jack, the mask is a way to hide himself from the other boys – practically symbolizing a barrier between them. In the scene where Jack is painting his face, there’s a moment where Jack looks ,”in astonishment, no longer himself but at an awesome stranger,” (69) in the mirror which illustrates the way Jack becomes different, no longer himself when the mask is on, it is a barrier for him to hide behind. The mask is also another way for Jack to feel powerful. When he wears the mask he usually hunts, which has been a tradition in many tribal groups. In Jack’s case, when he paints his face power overcomes him and he is almost chief like, chanting things like, “Kill the pig. Cut her throat. Spill her blood.” (69) Yet, Jack isn’t much of a leader, only when he puts on that mask he is empowered to do things that he normally would not do. These changes within Jack are a wake-up call to what’s to come ahead and clearly demonstrate the purpose of masking ourselves from society and ourselves.
The Beast Within the Boys and Mankind's Essential Illness - Lord of the Flies
All of us have an unknown creature within us, a beast some would say, when our lives become so chaotic, so savage that they are unleashed upon ourselves. These beasts bring us fear as we try to live because we are too frightened to believe such a monster could live inside of us. In William Golding’s Lord of the Flies, we are able to experience these beasts through the lives of innocent children who just, like many of us, are too frightened to realize there is a savage beast within ourselves.
The boys and their “world, that [is] understandable and lawful, [is] slipping away,” (91) as their savagery becomes relevant to each other and they are forced to face their fear of the beast within them. As tensions rise, fights begin to break out among the boys, including one significant one between Piggy, the one character that seems to understand what is going on, and Jack, a hot tempered mess at this point of the novel. In this argument Piggy questions the boys, “What are we? Humans? Or Animals? Or savages?” (91) This question infuriates Jack, who snaps back, “You shut up, you fat slug!”(91) However, Piggy is right. In this time of chaos on the island, the boys are turning savage; they are forgetting everything they have accomplished and throwing it out. We are humans, but as humans we must learn that we have the capability to become people we never thought existed when we are put into situations like that of the boys.
However, there is one boy who starts to see what is happening. That boy is Simon, a scrawny kid that no one seems to want to listen to, even when he tries “to express mankind’s essential illness.” (89) What is mankind’s essential illness? The lack of humanity. Humanity does not exist on this island, there is no kindness or compassion, there is hate. Still, the boys do not understand there is actually not a physical beast on the island, but a metaphorical one within themselves, as they are frightened of what is happening to them, as well as each other.
Instincts, They're Just the Way of Nature! - Final Essay for Lord of the Flies
Rain cascades down, hitting the windshield harder than hail. The street has become its own stream, about an inch or two deep. Looking down at the speedometer on her car, she knows she’s going too fast, especially in this weather, but she can’t help it, she is driven by something uncontrollable. Lighting strikes, the tree before the bridge falls, she slams on the break, but it is not enough. Sliding with the water on top of the asphalt she spins, hits the tree and flips. She is falling. Finally the car plunges into the river where she used to play as a child. Before she can realize what has happened, water fills the car. Adrenaline pumps through her veins; she finds the release mechanism for her seatbelt, and rolls down the window. Taking one last breath she swims to the surface in hopes she doesn’t lose consciousness on the way there.
Nothing can prepare ourselves for a moment like that. Sure, there are classes we could take, even videos we could watch, but when it comes down to the actual moment, nothing can prepare us. The only thing we have in a moment like that is our instincts – our primal nature to survive. Instincts craft our decisions in moments of crisis in ways nurture cannot, thus demonstrating the power of nature. The war between nature and nurture has been around for centuries, however through the lives of Ted Bundy and Kate Ogg, as well the characters from William Golding’s novel, Lord of the Flies, the power of nature is proven to be the victor.
There have been various experiments performed to prove the power of nature in moments of duress. Found in the article, “Basic Instincts: The Science of Evil” written by Caroline Borge, an experiment in 1961, involving a physiologist named, Stanley Milgram, and multiple test subjects performed to demonstrate how people react to a stressful situation. In this experiment Milgram advised test subjects to give electric shocks to a person who would be sitting in a separate room. Now of course there wasn’t a real person being shocked in that room, there was just a man screaming as if he were being shocked. When the experiment started, a man in a white lab coat “instructed participants to administer what they believed were increasingly painful electric shocks to another person. Although no one was actually receiving shocks, the participants heard a man screaming in pain and protest, eventually pleading to be released from the experiment. When the subjects questioned the experimenter about what was happening, they were told they must continue” (1). Without a fight the subjects continued until there was no sound from the other room, only silence. Just human nature: be told, obey – Not even another thought. The participants just followed their instincts, the baseline rhythm of nature, be told, obey, be told obey.
However, unlike the simple be told, obey, rhythm of nature, there are instincts that run much deeper, more advanced and dark than any upbringing or nurture can bring. Instincts that run so deep they pump through the veins, veins filled with so much evil identical to the veins of Ted Bundy. Bundy was a young, handsome, and clever man who used this against his victims. At times he would even camouflage himself uniforms usually not seen as threatening to women. Thus, he would use this to lure his victims and kill them in horrific ways. An online article about Ted Bundy, from Wikipedia, claimed his instinctual behavior started when “he attempted his first kidnapping in 1969,” (2) shortly escalating to a brutal murder in 1971. Police even believe he may have been guilty of “[abducting] and killing an eight year old girl” (2) when he was fourteen also according to Wikipedia’s online article. Events like these do not occur because someone did not get enough love when they were a child, they occur because people like Bundy have instinctual behavioral problems that only nature can cause – when it became time to make that decision as Bundy’s veins pumped with adrenaline, to kill or not to kill, his instincts told him to kill and kill he did. Ted’s instincts even caused him to escape prison twice just to kill again. They told him to bash their faces in, slit their throats, rape them like a dog, and dispose of them like trash when he was done. They turned him into a blood thirsty savage who had lost all control. Again, nothing like this can be cause by nurture, what Ted Bundy did was something so disturbing, so disgusting only instincts could push him to do.
Differing from the evil and brutal instincts of Ted Bundy, comes the story of a mother whose instincts were literally life-saving to her child. When a woman gives birth it is completely instinctual to hold her child, to press it against her chest, and breathe in the aroma of the new life she has brought into this world. However for Kate Ogg, the mother of new born twins, the experience of child birth almost turned tragic. The expecting mother had delivered the first child, almost eleven weeks premature, their daughter, Emily. Emily had turned out to be healthy, breathing on her own, but when their son, Jamie, was delivered the delivery room fell silent as doctors struggled for twenty minutes to revive him according to an MSN News article titled, “Mom’s hug revives baby that was pronounced dead.” Kate asked the doctors if she and her husband could say there farewells to their little boy, “but a strange thing happened on their way to farewell. After five minutes, Jamie began displaying short, startled movements … The baby’s doctor told the parents any movements were purelpy reflex and their son was not alive.” (1) Yet, after a period of two hours with their new born son, Jamie opened his eyes. Jamie’s doctor was in disbelief as he checked the infant’s vital signs, and in astonishment was dumbfounded as the child was indeed alive. Later when speaking about the event, Kate Ogg explained her actions after Jamie had been delivered and was not successfully revived by doctors, “putting him back on my chest was as close to him being inside me where he was safe.” She was purely following the motherly instincts given to her by nature, the need to hold her infant, the instinctual love that is uncontrollable. The reason her child survived was because of the actions she took, choosing to hold her child to her chest, for him to feel the warmth of his mother. She saved him by simply just using her motherly instincts.
Like the instincts that nature gave Ted Bundy and Kate Ogg, William Golding gave his character Jack in Lord of the Flies, the instincts to become the animal he is through the Golding’s amazing capability to illustrate a masterpiece of imagery with his words while still implying the harsh reality of Jack’s true nature. In the first signs of Jack’s animalistic behavior Golding described him as “dog-like, uncomfortably on all fours yet unheeding his discomfort … he closed his eyes, raised his head, and breathed gently with flared nostrils assessing the current of warm air for information” (48). In this moment Jack is being described as a dog, a hunter looking for pray – looking for the scent of the next kill, in a position attack at any angle. Jack is an animal, he is a savage, and his instincts clearly demonstrate his next move – to kill. But imagery was not Golding’s only technique to empowering human nature his novel, diction also played a large role.
Golding’s usage of diction was extremely clever when it came to describing the instinctual nature that Jack –as well as other characters – possessed, but also the possibility of those instincts in any given human. As illustrated by Golding’s imagery, Jack and his crew have escalated to full on hunters, especially when they decide to kill the sow. The sow’s death is not a peaceful one, as once she was attacked and pursued through the forest, “she blundered into a tree, forcing the spear deeper still; and after that any of the hunters could follow her easily the drops of vivid blood.” (135) Later on, “Jack found the through and hot blood spout over his hands,” (135) as he slit the throat of the sow. Golding’s vocabulary choices were important to really imply that bit of power which really shined through as the boys’ true animalistic, hunter instincts come out during the killing of the sow, almost like the instincts of Ted Bundy. In the moment that the threshold between Jack and the boys and the choice to kill the sow or not was crossed, the boys’ instincts started racing through their minds; the adrenaline pumped through their veins and in that moment of decision they chose to kill the sow. They were not thinking about, “Oh well my mother taught me to do this,” or “My father wouldn’t approve of killing an animal like such a savage,” they were thinking about how good that pig would taste later. How good it would be to finally eat. There was no time to think about that, they just had to do what their instincts told them to do, and they did.
By analyzing the power of instincts through the lives of Bundy and Ogg, as well as Golding’s characters, we are able to see that nature’s force is much stronger than that of nurture. The way a human being is built is based off our instincts. A woman is made to be a mother, nature gives her all the physical necessities, however in that moment when she must embrace that motherliness, it is her instincts, her inner nature that will craft her life. Look at the moments in Kate Ogg’s life; her decision to follow her motherly instinct has changed her life forever, just like Ted Bundy and Golding’s characters. Our nature determines our lives as we are forced to make decision every day, whether life-threatening or simple, nurture cannot compete with force of nature.
