Savagery In Lord Of The Flies

All around the world, the society around people keeps them humane. In William Golding's Lord of the Flies, a group a school boys get stranded on an island after a plane crash without any adult survivors. The boys believe the island is their very own paradise and start to play and have fun. After some time on the island, and a few attempts to hold on to society, a few of the boys start to go savage and turn against the rest in an attempt to gain power and control over the island. The boys' savagery should be blamed on all of the situational and environmental factors. The island having no adults contributes to the boys' savagery. On the island, the boys are left with no adults around to help them. Adults are normally what keep children in check

The boys fight a lot over power but it is mainly between Ralph, a boy with fair hair, and Jack, a tall, thin, red-haired bony boy. Eventually, Jack creates his own tribe and when Ralph gets in his way he decides that, “‘They’re going to do [him].’‘They’re going to hunt [him]’”(Golding, Lord 265). When Ralph is getting in the way of Jack's power over the boys, Jack decides he was going to go out and kill Ralph so that nothing could get in his way. Jack is so hungry for power that he is willing to murder someone to keep all his power just like in the Stanford Prison Experiment when, “The experiment showed that one third of the guards began to show an extreme and embedded streak of sadism”(Shuttleworth). In this experiment, students were paid to play the roles of prisoners and guards. The prisoners played their roles as so, but the guards abused their power. The second these guards had power it was being used for evil acts that abused the prisoners in many ways. The power the children fight over causes them to do savage things to keep their power.
Some may say that the savage behavior seen the boys have is based on biological factors such as brain development and age. Now while these might prove that, the island makes the boy bloodthirsty because of their chant, “Kill the pig. Cut her throat. Spill her blood”(Golding, Lord 90). The boys have to kill pigs on the island for food but do it in such a way that is unnecessary. The boys kill the pigs in many terrible ways that make the pig suffer more than it needs to. Therefore, the savagery of the boys is caused by the environment and not biological