Even those who are considered to be the cultured members of upper society can crash back down into their former prehistoric selves through conflict. Lord of the Flies, published in 1954 by William Golding, establishes a realistic view of basic, violent human nature through the story of a group of British schoolboys who land on a deserted island and eventually turn into savages. The various conflicts that arise in this novel and assist in presenting Golding’s pessimistic idea of human nature are best explained through the identification of the incompatible Freudian aspects in each character. Jack and Roger are the provoking id characters, Simon and Piggy are the rational superego characters, and Ralph is the conflicted ego character. The id …show more content…
The superego “incorporates the values and morals of society” (McLeod). The superego’s job is to “control the id's impulses” and to hold society together as a whole (McLeod). However, society will fall apart if it cannot. Piggy is a rational planner and wants to think his way through situations before deciding to act. When the boys rush off to start the first fire, he follows them and yells at their impulsive, dangerous actions: “‘…give him time to think…you rush off, like, like--’” (Golding 45). He exemplifies thinking before acting and experimenting with consequences to present his prominent superego; the id characters who do not accept his reasoning always cut him off and reject his opinions. Piggy is the brains and not the brawn of this society. Nobody will admit his ideas to be viable opinions, though as Ralph claims “Piggy, for all his ludicrous body, had brains” (Golding 78). Since Piggy cannot establish his opinions to balance the id characters’, the id overtakes the superego and develops the island into chaos. Simon’s attempts at expressing his ideas are not met with much better responses. When he tries to convey his ideas about the beast (which actually prove to be more correct than others’ ideas), he is met with laughter and ignorance and shrinks back down to let someone else speak in his place: “Simon became inarticulate in his effort…the laughter beat him cruelly…” (Golding 89). If both voices of reason are left out of the discussion, the conflicts will grow more and more one-sided until the id takes over and the superego dies off. Simon, along with Piggy, literally does die off. They are killed. As Simon tries to reasonably tell the others about a fake beast that everyone worried about, he stumbles into an aggressive pagan ritual consumed by id: “Simon was crying out something…screamed, struck, bit, tore…Simon’s dead body moved out toward the open sea”