Lord Of The Flies Civilization Essay

Lord of the Flies is a novel about a bunch of british boys who get caught on an island and have no adults so they are left to fend for themselves. They have to go through many hardships and sometimes struggle to agree but they need to learn to maintain and create civilization. They need to find a way to get out and stay alive. William Golding shows civilization is a struggle to build through Jack and the conch.

To begin with, in Lord of the Flies Jack proves many times how hard it is to create and maintain society. You need to be able to agree, not fight too often and be ok losing in a vote sometimes but if civilization is created it helps everyone much more. One example would be, Jack within the day of being on the island already decides

Near the beginning of the book Piggy and Ralph have the idea to almost start having a way of things and one of those things is when people hear the conch the other comes and whoever has the conch gets to speak. “We can use this to call the others. Have a meeting. They’ll come when they hear us—” (Golding 16). Piggy is saying that when the conch sounds all the boys will gather and come to meet, giving the conch lots of power. This gives the boys a small start to what civilization is like. This helps them because they all have something they all know and listen to too. This shows a start to civilization and power to the conch. “We don’t need the conch any more. We know who ought to say things” (Golding 101-102). Jack believes the conch isn’t that important and that the boys just need to listen to whoever is talking. He’s starting to think the conch is unneeded. The conch has already lost so much power in Jack's eyes. This starts an argument between Jack and Ralph meaning once the conch loses the slightest bit of power it already affects civilization. In the end the conch got destroyed. “the conch exploded into a thousand white fragments and ceased to exist” ( Golding ) The conch exploded and of course people cared they just couldn’t do anything about it making the conch much less powerful as it was broken into many pieces. The conch had absolutely nothing once it was broken and then people started talking over each other and there was not much of a way of civilization as the conch provided. The conch's power decreased majorly as civilization fell. Although the conch was always powerful it lost a little power in a lot of people's minds. While the conch lost power civilization slowly fell