The Best Way To Survive In Lord Of The Flies

What would be the best way to survive on an island? Make rules and responsibilities for everyone to uphold? Enjoy the tropical weather and have fun? Split into groups and be more independent? Ideally, the best way to survive on an island is to all stay together. Have everyone take up a task for the day and help each other survive. However, as shown in William Golding’s Lord of the Flies, it doesn’t allows work that way. Responsibilities are deserted, people become more uncivilized, and there will most likely be a fight for leadership. Obligations, responsibilities, and rules are very important and needed for a civilization to survive; however, when there are no consequences to one’s actions, human behavior becomes more savage and less civilized

He called many assemblies in which he went over the rules, responsibilities, and jobs needed to be done. The fact that there was no adult with them and there were no consequences to their actions didn’t change Ralph's behavior. All Ralph wanted was to be rescued and get off the island and the only way, in his opinion, was to keep a controlled signal fire going. When the signal fire was let out and a ship came by, Ralph was livid. He called a meeting and told everyone the priorities on the island: “Look at us! How many are we? And yet we can’t keep a fire going to make smoke. Don’t you understand? Can’t you see we ought to―ought to die before we let the fire out?” (81). Ralph wanted people to care as much as he did about the fire. He knew they would never have been rescued if someone didn’t see the smoke from the fire. Throughout the story, he longed and missed his home more and more and missed civilization: “We’ll be like we were. We’ll wash….we ought to comb our hair. Only it’s too long” (172). Even though Ralph could get away with anything he wanted, he was just as civilized as before he arrived on the island and he understood that they needed rules and responsibilities to be