A nuclear war displaces a group of English schoolboys on an uncharted Island in William Golding’s novel Lord of the Flies. Without adult supervision, the older boys must assume roles of power and authority in order to create a system of structure on the island. However, as Eric Hoffer in his article “How Natural is Human Nature” noted, “such power is never free from the tendency to turn man into a thing and press him back into the matrix of nature from which he has risen”(Hoffer). Lord of the Flies explores this “matrix of nature” through the symbolic essence of the war, and the downward spiral of the boys away from civility. Though life without adults at first provides a sense of liberation, this great vicissitude turns once-proper English …show more content…
Throughout their lives, the boys have been conditioned to believe that with maturity comes knowledge and superiority. Many of them perceive adulthood as a rite of passage to righteousness, and try to imitate adult behavior to maintain order on the island. Ralph and Piggy, two of the boys trying most to preserve civility on the island, hold a particularly glorified image of adulthood. However, as the first signs of savagery emerge, the boys begin to question their successfulness at modeling adult society and become exasperated at their inability to maintain order. They use their immaturity and ignorance to justify their failure. Piggy states, “‘Grown-ups know things’...the three boys stood in darkness, striving unsuccessfully to convey the majesty of adult life”(Golding 94). Here, Piggy suggests that a direct correlation relies between adulthood and knowledge, yet struggles to identify exactly what causes this link. Their belief in the “majesty” of adult life implies that they believe adulthood is something of grandeur, and as one matures they adopt a life of nobility. However, through the boys’ inability to fathom the “majesty of adult life”,