Violent Events In Lord Of The Flies Research Paper

How are Violent Events in Lord of the Flies important to the novel?
Lord of the Flies is a novel by William Golding that relies on the theme of violence to carry the events forward in the story. There are many different reasons why this theme is important as it mainly illustrates the boys' change of behaviour on the island that they are stuck on due to the result of a crash landing of a plane.

One factor of importance that the violent events detail is the change of intention that the boys on the island carry to such actions. This is best illustrated through the change of Roger’s character, or rather the scale of the actions that he commits. For example, when Roger and the rest of the boys had begun settling on the island, Roger is shown throwing

For example, the first true act of violence that the boys commit is the murder of the pig. Whilst they are doing this, they create a chant that says " Kill the pig, cut her throat, spill the blood'. How the boys murder the pig is very gruesome and displays their overly strong feelings about killing this pig and savouring the sight of its blood. This is a case of the loss of their childish innocence in the novel and one of the first signs of them becoming more primitive in their behaviour. In addition to this, violence is again shown when the boys kill Simon on the beach. In this case, even Ralph has been affected by this tribal mentality and even though he always talks about being civilised. He too regresses into savagery as he was “fighting to get near, to get a handful of that brown vulnerable flesh. He also felt “the desire to squeeze and hurt was overmastering", which shows Ralph to be more drawn into inhuman actions, such as the murder of Simon and that his sense of civilisation had been lost at this moment due to the violence on display. Furthermore, the descent of the boys is finalised by Golding's description of them when he writes the quote "anonymous devils faces". This is because the boys are shown to have become unrecognisable from their past selves and by being described as devils, an image

One turning point that these violent events cause is the death of Simon. The boys were acting unlike human people when they murdered Simon and the only ones that realise this is Piggy and Ralph. Both of them now understand they are all that remains of order and are aware of the danger they are in as well as their disgust of what had just happened, as they say, "That was Simon, that was murder”, also aware of the descent of the others. In addition to this, the death of Piggy is also seen as a turning point for the characters in the novel, most notably Ralph. This is because the order has completely collapsed now, the symbolism of both Piggy and the conch being a representative of any civilisation still in the boys, is now gone. This is because of how "the conch had exploded into a thousand fragments” and how Piggy’s “head split open and stuff came out and turned red”. The two are very similar to each other, but both represent the distinct collapse of order and the loss of the boys' childish innocence in their behaviour. Finally, there is a turning point at the end of the novel where "Ralph wept for the end of innocence". The way that Ralph crying like a child is important is because his resilience has shattered and the reader can see how he has been traumatised by the violent events that have surrounded