Mental Deterioration In Lord Of The Flies Quote Analysis

In life, we are expected to follow the guidelines and norms of society, but when there is no authority or rules to follow; individuals may lose control. The human mind is one of great mystery and in William Golding’s Lord of The Flies, we dive into the psyche of proper English boys: Ralph, Piggy, Simon, and Jack, who crash-landed on an island and are forced to fight for their survival. The boys are prime examples of the gradual mental deterioration that isolation and the lack of authority cause. Jack came to the island with a sense of pride and projected himself as a prim and proper leader, but as Jack began to realize the freedom he possessed, he changed. For two months, Jack and the boys began to truly express their inner savagery, due to

A civilized and proper society brings feelings of joy and safety, but when a civilization becomes corrupt with evil, the greed that resides in all begins to prevail and deter those from the prim and proper ways of their civilization. The gradual mental spiral is perfectly depicted in Simon when the boys killed him. Piggy, a nerdy intelligent kid, claims that “anything might have happened. It wasn’t what you said” (Golding, Lord219). The lack of realization truly shows the lack of mental stability the boys have retained due to the rigorous unsupervised months the boys have endured. The loss of Simon should have been used as a wake-up call, a way to realize what they have become. Instead, they used Simon's death as a beacon to ascend further into their savage

With isolation comes adaptation, a human's natural response to any situation. And through this process, individuals decisively group themselves in an attempt to mimic their civilized lives. Little do they know, attempting to form a civilization will only hurt them just as the famous Stanford Prison experiment by Phillip Zimbardo “degenerated very quickly and the dark and inhuman side of human nature became apparent very quickly” (Shuttleworth). Through the attempts of civilization came the abuse of power and greed. Their situation had caused them to feel almost on top of the world and they wanted to unleash their power on those beneath them. William Golding, a teacher and Navy WWII Veteran recalls “social chaos in many countries, and, left to themselves, these children found a kind of elemental cohesion in their viciousness” (Golding, “Why”). Through chaos individuals adopted isolation, and with isolation came the mental deterioration of the human mind. Children were left by themselves wondering if their fathers would survive another day in war the trauma that their situation put them through is the sole reason they grew up committing horrible crimes. A person's mind is not made evil, rather it is cultured by its surroundings and the trauma it