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Mentality In Lord Of The Flies

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Lord of the Flies by William Golding is a novel following a group of young schoolboys left to fend for themselves on a deserted island after a plane crash. Without any authorities to guide them, the boys soon learn to depend on one another for survival. The setting serves to develop the theme of pack mentality leading to dangerous situations as the group slowly starts to delve deeper into a twisted sense of unity. The novel begins with a "good" example of a community after Ralph is elected as the leader. While under his leadership, we see the camp flourish with safe housing and warm fires to prioritize safety. During this period, the group often pushed one another to remain optimistic, believing that rescue would soon come. Due to this forced …show more content…

This shows how, even at their best, the group still falls prey to peer pressure quickly and ruthlessly. The second half of the novel explores this theme more explicitly. With Jack Merridew taking charge, the boys succumb to fear and allow themselves to act wildly, egging each other on in their savagery. Under his guidance, the boys become less of individuals and more of a pack. The text itself references this on page 180, where the group is no longer identifiable as people but a single, complete identity, "Now Jack was yelling too and Ralph could no longer make himself heard. Jack had backed right against the tribe and they were a solid mass of menace that bristled with spears." (Golding) This shared madness continues until the end of the book when the tribe decides to set the island alight as a way of smoking out an outcasted Ralph. This joint decision to destroy their only haven in exchange for bloodshed eventually leads to the death of the last remains of their innocence and the final victory of the darkness in man's heart as Ralph and the others weep upon their rescue. From the kids fighting amongst themselves to the adults waging wars that placed them in that situation, the story serves as a cautionary tale of the dangers of pack mentality and its

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The novel suggests that even the most civilized individuals can become violent and dangerous when placed in a situation where they must fight for survival. Additionally, the fact that the boys are children suggests that the novel is also about the loss of innocence and the corrupting influence of power. While the choices that characters make regarding self-preservation versus moral code are certainly an important aspect of the novel, it is not the only theme that the novel explores. This is evident in the way that the boys' behavior becomes more violent and primitive as they become more desperate to survive. For example, the boys become obsessed with hunting and killing animals and eventually turn on each other violently and chaotically.

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The book revolves around the actions of Ralph, the boys elected leader, Jack, the controlling, and aggressive choir boy, and Piggy, the smartest of the group yet least respected. Throughout the course of the book we see the grip had Ralph has on the group and their humanity slip away from minor acts of rebellion, the progression of killing animals and their reasoning with the loss. With their struggle of adjusting to living on the island with no order, superior intelligence, or real authority we see without the control civilization imposes on us we revert to more savage beings.

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Jack’s savage ways start to change the children's perspective of life which lead to their lost of innocence. Jack has a hostile personality since day one towards others, especially towards piggy. Jack is one of the oldest kids there and is looked up to by the younger kids. Jack’s pugnacious manner is followed by the young impressionable kids.

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750 Words | 3 Pages

Jack, a hunter, splits off from Ralph’s group to become another group that stands for savagery, hunting, and eventually outnumbers Ralph’s group. This leaves Ralph with no alleged allies.

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930 Words | 4 Pages

The story follows the boys as they try to maintain some figment of society and order but in their attempts, they fail to do so. This struggle to maintain order is ever present in the 2 main characters Jack and Ralph as they fight each other to determine who has the proper methods for maintaining order. There attempt to make society

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664 Words | 3 Pages

he Lord of the Flies, written by William Golding, is about a plane of schoolboys getting shot down and crashing into an island, during an unknown time of war. The pilot had died, but most of the boys survived and they are now stranded on the island. Once on the island, they realize it was uninhabitable and they were away from adult supervision. The schoolboys have to try to survive and make a civilized leadership but they can’t shy away from barbarism. On the island they believe there is a beast lurking around and causing them to go into a state of fear.

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870 Words | 4 Pages

Ralph was the leader of the civilized group, and Jack was the leader of the savage and bloodthirsty hunting group. Important arguments between the civilized boys and savage boys come up in three important moments throughout the book: when the signal fire is allowed to go out and a boat passes by the island, when Jack leaves the civilized group to create his group of savages, and when the savages steal Piggy’s glasses to make their own fire. The first key moment near the beginning of the book shows the growing tension between civilization and savagery. It comes up when

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539 Words | 3 Pages

Should the boys’ savage and immoral behavior be blamed on the situation/environment or on the biological factors? I think that the boys’ savage and immoral behavior should be blamed on biological factors. Your decisions and behavior reflects your brain and your biological factors. In the novel, “Lord of the Flies”, by William Golding, he writes about characters who are lost on an island after their plane crashed.

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996 Words | 4 Pages

Fear of a dangerous creature on an island leads the boys to do unexpected things, from turning against each other to killing one another. Jack, a prideful boy, even took advantage of this to control others and guide them into making decisions to his benefit. The group of boys live in relative harmony, taking orders from Ralph, an elected leader, but when this new sighted beast shows up, Ralph witnesses the group falling apart with mass panic, “In a moment the platform was full of arguing, gesticulating shadows. To Ralph, seated, this seemed the breaking up of sanity. Fear, beasts, no general agreement that the fire was all-important: and when one tried to get the thing straight the argument sheered off, bringing up fresh, unpleasant matter” (Golding 88).

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1187 Words | 5 Pages

The Lord Of The Flies by William Golding takes us to an abandoned island, where there is a fight for leadership among boys. Jack and Ralph were friends but when civilization is tested. Jack turns to savagery. Ralph struggles to survive and bring back order and civilization.

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When the plane crash takes place and everyone ends up on the island, Ralph becomes the leader. This creates tension between Ralph and Jack because Jack wants to be the person in power. Eventually, all of the other boys team up with Jack and end up revolting against Ralph. The conflict is man vs. man in the power struggle between Ralph and Jack, "Which is better—to have rules and agree, or to hunt and kill?" Golding.

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Being stranded on an island can change you. Studies have shown that it can change you and your mentality. The Lord of the Flies is a novel written by William Golding, in September of 1954. It is about a group of young boys that get stranded on an island with no adults. Throughout the book, the boys’ go insane.

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From dinosaurs, to smart phones, to everything the future may hold, mankind has been around through all of it, providing so much of what everyone knows and loves today, almost providing all of it, but the way we treat and react to everything we love, and treat behave around everything is what is known as “human nature,” meaning the way everyone acts, feels, or behaves. It’s something all humans share, but it can be more obvious in others, or reveal itself more during stressful, joyful, or angering times. It all depends on the person in which it’s occurring. Like in the book, Lord of the Flies or the play, Julius Caesar. It is very obvious the human nature of these characters are not very… great.

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1560 Words | 7 Pages

Everyone, “even the tiny kids”, follow Jack without questioning his reasons for the orders. The people on the island lost their own sense of identity and instead they follow Jack and his behaviors. This passage from the novel proves that when people join a group or a mob, they lose their identity and follow the group's actions instead of their own. In the passage, all the boys on the island are following Jack and are forgetting about their own identity. The mob does whatever without even considering each individual’s

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1091 Words | 5 Pages

In Lord of the Flies by William Golding, young children are left stranded on an island during WWII without any adult leadership. Entropy increases on the island, and the boys soon fall into disarray despite the efforts of Ralph, the figurehead of civilization in the novel. They begin to follow Jack, who leads the group further away from society and creates more chaos. Their connection with civilization, at the start of the novel, is weak, and by the end, is nonexistent.

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