Dehumanization In Lord Of The Flies

A psychology professor Phillip Zimbardo once explained "people are seduced into evil by dehumanizing and labeling others." I believe this is true labeling and dehumanizing others can make it particularly easy to forget all of your moral codes amd forget about the goodness inside you. A lot of this is seen in William Goldings book Lord of the Flies, a story is told about a group of British school boys who are stranded on an island after their plane crashes. The boys are left without adults so one boy named Ralph steps up to power and leads them all. There is a struggle for power when a boy named Jack seeks to be leader, but he has different ways of leading then Ralph. Through Jacks leadership we see institutions of law being order ignored and swept under the rug, enabling the boys to become more primitive and

We can find an example of this when Jack is on one of his first hunts and he is down on all fours like a wild animal "Then dog-like, uncomfortably on all fours yet unheeding his discomfort, he stole forward five yards and stopped." Page (50). This moment is one of the first that we see one of the boys being changed by this island that has no adults or laws to keep them in line and away from a primitive nature. The discomfort Jack feels in this moment is not affecting him at all and it really shows that he is letting this wild side of him out and he's not afraid of it. We see another example of this when Jack is still on his same hunt when he hears noises coming from all around in the forest. " Jack himself shrank at this cry with a hiss of indrawn breath, and for a minute became less a hunter than a furtive thing, ape-like among the tangle of trees. Page (51). The way that Jack is described as an "ape-like" thing shows that Jack is becoming less of a hunter and more like a wild animal that is hunting for its next