Superego In Lord Of The Flies

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“Which is better - to have laws and agree, or to hunt and kill?” (Golding 166) asks Piggy before his last breaths. In the novel, Lord of the Flies, the author, William Golding, writes about a group of adolescent British boys stranded on an island after trying to escape from WWII. On the island, the group of boys soon discover themselves to be cruel and murderous savages. In 1856, a man named Sigmund Freud was born. During his lifetime, he developed many theories including id, superego, and ego. The id is our source of motivation and it also includes our sexual and aggressive drives. The superego includes our morals and ideals and lastly, our ego is made up of a group of mechanisms, like reality-testing, judgement, and impulse control. On one …show more content…

One of which being Simon. Simon was a quiet boy, he did not seem to believe in ‘the beast’ and he also enjoyed nature. Aside from being a ‘nature lover,’ Simon was also a big superego and he enjoyed helping the littluns. “Simon found for them the fruit they could not reach… The littluns watched him inscrutably over double handfuls of ripe fruit” (Golding 56). In this quote, Simon helped the littluns get fruit because they could not get it themselves, Simon represents a religious symbol because in the Bible, Jesus fed people also. “Simon mumbled confusedly, “I don’t believe in the beast” (Golding 97). From the beginning of the novel, Simon did not believe in the beast. When the boys found the pilot, Simon went up onto the mountain and discovered the truth by himself. The next important death of the novel was Piggy. Piggy was the brains of the group, he was the person that could see what was right or wrong, and he also helped the littluns. Piggy is the one in the book who always tries to enforce the rules and follow them, just as what the superego is supposed to do. Piggy is the innocent good one that nobody wants to listen to because it is not fun to always follow the