Comparing Conscience In Macbeth And Lord Of The Flies By William Golding

In the two texts, Macbeth by William Shakespeare and Lord of the Flies by William Golding, the struggle between ambition and conscience is a significant theme that underlies the plot of the story. In both pieces, you can see this transformation within the characters who make choices based on their conscience first, but then slowly shift to their ambition. Although conscience has moments where it is much more influential, ambition comes out on top and causes the characters to make rash decisions in the end. This is demonstrated in Macbeth, through Macbeth’s actions as he devises a plan to become king. At first, he is skeptical and hesitant to go through with this plan, but later his ambition takes over and he starts progressing with his strategy.

In Lord of the Flies, this character is Jack Merridew. Jack’s transformation is very evident in this novel. When Jack is first introduced in the story, he is portrayed as an organized and disciplined child. He is in charge of the choir and when the rest of the boys ask to sit down, he refuses, making sure to keep order and discipline. He is even civilized himself, wearing his heavy cloak in the blazing sun and resisting taking it off until it’s too hot for him. It shows that despite Jack might have wanted to relax and be free, his conscience told him that it was wrong to break their discipline. A quote that demonstrates Jack’s state of mind is “They knew very well why he hadn’t: because of the enormity of the knife descending and cutting into living flesh” (Golding, 29). It clearly portrays Jack’s state of mind, because though his ambitions told him to kill the pig, his conscience didn’t let him. Even though his conscience prevails in the early stages of the plot, Jack soon lets his savagery and ambition take over. The once, neat and organized choir boy has now turned into a dirty savage with tattered clothes, long hair, a painted face and a craze for hunting. As the novel progresses, one can see even more of this transformation as Jack starts to want power and leadership over the other boys. He begins to promise the other boys to rid the beast and give them meat, but also makes some poor

Although these books are different in genre and style, they are still both affected by this theme, however I would argue that this theme is more dominant in the play, Macbeth. In Lord of the Flies, conscience vs ambition is very common, but there is also some influence from the theme, savagery vs order and civility. None the less you can see that ambition definitely has the more significant role in the stories. Apart from the few characters who are not affected by this conflict, both ambition and conscience affect all the characters. These specific characters also follow a similar trend, which is the transition from following your conscience to making decisions based on your ambitions. Overall, I believe that the more influential theme is clearly ambition as no matter how many considerable things conscience allows the characters to do, ambition always causes them to make the decisions that ultimately change the lives of the characters. This argument, although debatable in other novels, is clear, that ambition is the more powerful force in Lord of the Flies and