Deniz CINAR Prof. Aurore Bissières Literature 16 April 2023 Power Struggle Among Children Lord of the Flies is a well-known novel written by the English writer and poet William Golding in 1953. Set in an imaginary atomic war in the future, Lord of the Flies tells the story of a group of schoolchildren, aged six to twelve, who are stranded on a deserted island and lose their innocence to savagery. The novel has a dystopian tone as it questions the destruction of social norms and society created by the children. Lord of the Flies is more than just an entertaining story for children; it raises many questions about philosophy, politics, and theology. The confrontation between the main characters and the lust for power are the two main elements …show more content…
The society that Jack created after destroying Ralph's social order was so fragile and harmful. Ultimately, in order to destroy his enemies, Jack even risked killing everyone by setting a fire on the island just to murder Ralph. Because he was vulnerable on the inside, and he couldn't lose his identity completely, even though people were starting to call him “chief”: “I ought to be chief” (Golding, 24). Similar to dictators such as Hitler, Jack's strict regime, which focused only on the system of fear and ignored the welfare of the people, eventually collapsed when the rescuers came for Ralph. Writer, Yutaka Okuhata also mentions in his article: “Hitler gained strong power and formed a dictatorship in his country. In Lord of the Flies, Jack, like Hitler, becomes a dictator and starts to take control over the boys” (Okuhata, 13). In conclusion, William Golding's estimate is quite accurate as it draws the connection between the power struggles among the leaders and the evil side of each. When Golding states that man's capacity for greed, cruelty, and selfishness is hidden behind a kind of political pants, he ensures that his readers understand that titles and authority are obtained through underhanded games that scare people (Golding, UCLA, 86-87). After all, a system that does not take into account the interest of the people will never work, because it merely exists to satisfy the leader or