Unjust Beast Lord Of The Flies Essay

The Unjust Beast

Injustice can occur in varying forms, depending on circumstance. Lord of the Flies by William Golding explores this topic, when a group of school-aged boys get stranded on an island with no adult supervision. When the younger boys (littluns) start talking about a beast that attacks at night, it leads the older boys (bigguns) on a search through the jungle to hunt the beast down. Their pursuit to find the beast leads to the bigguns running into conflicts with both themselves and this supposed beast. Through the characters of Ralph and Jack, Golding suggests that self respect can lead an individual to making just or unjust decisions. Often, in stories there are two characters that are easiest to define, the hero and the villain.

To build shelters, and keep a fire running so that they can get rescued. Ralph starts running into problems with these boys, the littluns want to run off and have fun while the bigguns want to hunt pigs all day. The littluns start having nightmares about a beast, a creature that hides in the water and the trees, then attacks them at night. Older boys start believing their tales, when Samneric see a dead pilot on the mountain, whom they believe is the beast. This creates conflict between the boys, but notably between Jack and Ralph when Jack wants to hunt the beast and Ralph wants to be rescued. Jack and the hunters had one of their first successful hunts at this point, which is when a ship could have rescued the boys, but there was no signal fire. “Do you want to be rescued? All you can talk about is pig, pig, pig!” (Golding, 55). At this point, readers can note the frustrations in Ralph’s tone. He wants to return to civilization, and does not understand the sudden bloodlust that has overtaken Jack and his hunters. In various instances after this, tension is plentiful between the two boys, which eventually leads to Jack creating

“...the mask was a thing on its own behind which Jack hid, liberated from shame and self-consciousness.” (Golding, 66). The mask provides him many things, like shamelessness and liberation from self consciousness. Most notably, the mask provides Jack with a gateway to his new blood lust. He kills a pig for the blood, and with it, gets rid of his civilized nature. As Jack becomes more restless on the island, it is evident that savagery becomes satisfying for him. Almost like he needs to kill to breathe, like this was the missing piece of his life that he can now satisfyingly appeal to. “His mind was covered with memories…knowledge that they had outwitted a living thing, imposed their will upon it, taken away its life like a long satisfying drink.” (Golding, 74). Jack denies the ideas of the beast similarly to Piggy. He approaches it with a very interesting mindset, he believes that it is something anyone can easily kill. Jack was not a hunter in England, but the island presented an opportunity to create a new persona for himself. Perhaps, the savagery is some sort of sanctuary for him, away from scrutiny and just decisions. On this island, with a tribe of his own, he is able to create his own rules. The boys that blindly follow Jack give him something very valuable. They give him self-confidence, which he uses to create his own idea of what justice is. In his mind the just decision would be