Lord Of The Flies Psychological Analysis

Fear is a natural response that triggers specific behavior patterns in people. It is an emotion that signals how to react in adverse or unexpected situations when one’s well being or survival is threatened. Fear is what William Golding’s novel, Lord of the Flies, encompasses. When dozens of British school boys, whose ages range from six to twelve, are marooned on an uninhabited island, their true instincts are revealed. The boys’ dissipating morals result in a fight for power, the collapse of their civilization, and a phobia that causes two devastating madison. In Lord of the Flies, William Golding uses the psychology behind fear as the source of all the boys’ malevolence and primal savagery.

Basic emotions are natural instinctive states of

They ultimately profess beliefs and act out in ways they would never consider doing outside of a group. In social psychology, this is known as “mob mentality.” “When people are part of a group, they often experience deindividuation, or a loss of self-awareness. When people deindividuate, they are less likely to follow normal restraints and inhibitions and more likely to lose their sense of individual identity.” (Examining the Mob Mentality). This proves true with the boys in Lord of the Flies. Their time on the island is the first elongated period where the boys have not had an adult to guide them in making decisions. They start out with a civilized society, but it dissolved as the need to conform to Jack’s standards increased. Jack convinced the boys to have a short-term, one-track mindset. He had them only focus on killing pigs and returning with the meat. Though this fulfilled the boys’ need to eat, they completely neglected their other duties to ensure survival. The boys might have been cultivated people as individuals. But, they acted like complete savages as a group. “Groups can generate a sense of emotional excitement, which can lead to the provocation of behaviors that a person would not typically engage in if alone.” (Examining the Mob Mentality). Under Jack’s rule, the boys’ behavior was appalling. They phallically mutilated a dead sow, abandoned their chances of being saved, and brutally murdered the two boys they socially excluded and deemed