In this post, we have focused on the Lord of the Flies Summary. The novel “Lord of the Flies,” written by William Golding’s 1954; tells the story of a group of young boys who find themselves alone on a deserted island.
Lord of the Flies Summary
It does not matter how civilized human society is, because at the end of the day we are all savages. William Golding wrote this novel after the horror of the second world War. The novel talks about a group of English school boys. Their plane was shot down during the war. And through the novel, Golding wanted to show us human evilness, which he experienced in the second world war.
The boys on the island become hunters and savages from a member of a civilized society. Some of them wanted peaceful living. But people like Jack choose the path of anarchy, chaos and violence. Golding shows us a group of young children and their different ideologies.
The novel shows us how jack became power-hungry and wanted to snatch the leadership role from Ralph. And at the end, he finally challenged him for his leadership role, but the boys give their vote in Ralph’s favor. Jack was humiliated and left the group with their hunter boys, and started to live in “Castle Rock”.
Later he invades Ralph’s territory multiple times. He was also responsible for killing Piggy and Simon. Golding shows us the downfall of human society, our self-destructive instinct. It is human nature that we are always involved in a war.
In the past thousands of years as a species, we have always been involved in a war. Violence, chaos, and anarchy is our by-born instinct. The boys on that Island represent the entire human Civilization that as human beings how we are.
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Lord of the Flies Summary
Jack symbolizes dictatorship, anarchy, and chaos. On the other hand, Ralph symbolizes freedom of speech, freedom of expression, and democracy. “Lord of the Flies” represents the cruelty of the second world war.
Six million Jewish were killed in the gas chamber and the death of Piggy and Simon represent those things. This means Ralph represents the democratic alliance in the second world war and Jack represents Adolf Hitler in this novel. The novel shows us the dark side of human civilization.
We may read this novel purely as a story of the adventures of a group of boys marooned on an island. But the novel is an allegory and has a certain significance which we cannot fail to perceive.
Golding wanted to demonstrate that the evil instincts in a human being would rise to the surface and assert themselves as soon as that human being has been liberated from the restraints of civilized life.
One who is inherently good will remain good even when liberated from all restraints and from the fear of consequences; but one, like Jack and his followers, who is inherently evil would manifest the evil in him and would, in course of time, regress to the ways of savages.
The number of those who are inherently good is very small. The majority of people in this world are inherently evil. Evil is ineradicable, and it asserts itself as soon as it finds a favorable climate.
The favorable climate consists in the removal of the fear of law and in the removal of all those restraints that civilized life imposes upon human beings.
Author: Tonmoy Debnath
Department: English
Institution: Notre Dame University Bangladesh
Member of ‘Future Writers’
