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Articles: Lord of the Flies: Are our violent tendancies human nature? |
Posted by
BlueLinn on Sunday, October 14, 2001 - 04:40 AM PST
Lord of the Flies: An overly honest and opinionated Essay on Utopian impossibilities and downfalls in a rather morbid book.
When children go out and play in the playground or just in the living room. They create their own world of imagination. A place where rules and grownups are just a small memory in the back of their minds. Their entire imagination takes over and rules their minds with imaginary enemies and games. This is how the island was. The island in the Lord of the Flies, However, have you noticed, the longer you stay in the midst of a dream, the more likely it will become corrupt and change. Distorting the pleasant beginning to a horrifying scream in the night as you awake. The scream was the flames and reality was the soldier who awoke the children from their dream, their Nightmare. True Utopia has, and never will be accomplished and lasting, human nature is far too ruled by emotions and violence. Lord of the Flies began as the edges of a Utopian society, however through the eyes and minds of the Characters conflict and death destroyed that hope of happiness. Just as children imagine great acts of violence, so did these children act upon those instincts.
Although some points in the Lord of the Flies is questionable as to its credibility. We do not often think of a 10-year-old choirboy as a hunter who would carry a knife regularly. Although for the sake of the tale we shall say that Jack and the other's metamorphosis into the killers and "less innocent" children, breasts, if you will. Was crucial to identify how a child can change when its human nature becomes stronger and stronger, take control of the mind and body. Though Lord of the Flies seem rather morbid in its portrayal of a Utopian beginning and ends in savagery. We must look upon how the end result came about. Perhaps it is the characters themselves and how they change and break apart. Internal conflict and disputes about the leader seems to be the case. However, if you dig down to the basis of it, it is more or less a group of schoolyard bullies. Or if you would care to advance the definition further it would have to be… That Jack and his troupe represents a portion of Anarchy, that, which mixed with Monarchy could cause true horror. With no laws,{in the end} and death, there could never be hope for life.
The Characters display different aspects of a civilization. Their varied personalities are showed in how they interact with the others. Most of the characters represent deeper meanings, which become apparent later on in the story. And though they all have different ways to Interpret their meaning, here is merely one as follows.
As a leader, Ralph had begun as a carefree Individual who only wanted to lounge around and be alone. Perhaps his lack of guidance led him towards Piggy, as his own conscience perhaps. However all of Piggy's intelligence lead for naught when he was dashed upon the rocks. Perhaps personifying the blind and defenseless who die for nothing. "The hunters are strong and the rest are weak" or "you will die if you do not join the strong."
SamnEric were the twins who promoted what they see as the Beastie, or the decaying corpse of the parachuter. In their minds they do not view the decay and rotted movements as death, but as life, which would soon end their lives. Frightened they flee to tell the others of their dreadful vision. However when the "light' or the goodness of the group in the form of Simon is about to say what the physical aspect of the Beastie was, the hunters bashed him in, as though to suppress the reality that the Beastie was not in this world but inside themselves.
"Somewhere over the darkened curve of the world the sun and moon were pulling, and the film of water on the earth planet was held, bulging slightly on one side while the solid core turned. The great wave of the tide moved farther along the island and the water lifted. Softly, surrounded by a fringe of inquisitive bright creatures, itself a silver shape beneath the steadfast constellations, Simon's dead body moved out toward the open sea."
Roger was the violent underling who enjoys the more violent aspects of life. Daring to throw the rocks, but not hit until the mask of paint is placed upon his face. This is shown obviously in this excerpt.
"Roger gathered a handful of stones and began to throw them. Yet there was a space around Henry, perhaps six yards in diameter, into which he dare not throw. Here, invisible yet strong, was the taboo of the old life. Round the squatting child was the protection of parents and school and policemen and the law. Roger's arm was conditioned by a civilization that knew nothing of him and was in ruins." He had not the cruelty in the beginning, without the paint, to transform him into a monster. It is my belief that Roger and Jack are the more true physical aspects of the beast in society. A subtle change of power occurred when jack lost the kindness of the hunt and was left as a savage killer. He became what many children play in imaginary games, a beast.
In the beginning it could have been considered a Utopia. All of the boys were happy and innocent; however, there can never be a true Utopia, as our won human nature would not allow it. There is perhaps a deep carnal instinct that, we, as human beings must have violence. Never will we be able to attain everlasting peace.
Silence, peace, prosperity, these go hand in hand with rise. However there is also the downfall of war and violence and internal turmoil and conflict that will and has inevitably lead to the fall of each empire, and Lord of the Flies was no different. Though far younger than those who normally fight and die in war, these boys are stranded on a jungle like island. Though there is plenty of food and water, they do not have enough to satisfy their instincts. They elect a leader that would keep them safe and civilized to produce shelter and comfort. However their directive is not taken and talk floats wistfully away from their thoughts and cares. Then unity falls and fades away while jack turns their attention from civilization to savagery. Slowly but surely he lures and baits the others away from Ralph who plays more or less his alter ego and pulls them in towards the hunt. When he has them all clasped firmly in his control, he destroys the ends of Ralph's civilization, stealing the glasses, shattering the conch and killing conscience in the form of Piggy, as he crashes down the cliff already beaten and blind. The conch as the judges gavel, where laws are resounded, meetings called by it's thrumming sound. It was in the end, no more, and the glasses, fire and hope for rescue, yet in the end they too were destroyed and stolen. The hunters basically saying, "we give up, we enjoy fun and the hunt. Civilization is no longer our way of life."
Jack has found Ralph weak and with no followers and so sets off to destroy Ralph, light to his dark masked façade. However when society returned in the form of an adult, imagination, savagery and the time for false facades was over. Jack was only the leader of the other alternate world. Ralph was the leader here, where civilization flourished. However, Innocence is lost, where the Lord of the Flies is right. "Fancy thinking the beast was something you could hunt and kill." Only the beast is left, snarling and biting, as a savage with a painted face.
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Lord of the Flies: Are our violent tendancies human nature? | Login/Create an account | 6 Comments |
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Re: Lord of the Flies: Are our violent tendancies human nature?
by bettie_x (strangersangel@hotmail.com)
on Oct 14, 2001 - 06:39 PM
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Everyone knows my stance on instinct, so we'll tiptoe over that landmine.
Human nature is a totally different thing. ANIMAL nature is a totally different thing.
Human nature is how we are now, as dysfunctional and irratic as we are. Human nature is to be inquisitive, to think, the satisfy ourselves etc, to be social. It may have been something totally different centuries ago, but I speak of the here and now. Animal nature is what we DEvolve into when our comfy convenient lives are taken away and we are forced to survive. Though humanity through evolution and then to science has, in my OPINION, taken ourselves OUTSIDE nature and the laws of natural selection through the "miracles of modern medicine"...blah.
When we are put in a situation that is no longer OUTSIDE the laws of nature, after some time, adapt to the laws of the wild.
Chimpanzees are one of our closest relatives. Silver back gorillas are a ways off, though similar to, us. If you had a choice to fall headlong into the center of a chimpanzee reserve or a gorilla reserve, you better pick the gorilla reserve. They will posture, growl, but when they find you to be of no threat, they will either accept you or leave you alone.
If you fall in the chimp pit, you better have a living will already in place. As many zoo keepers will tell you, "Never turn your back on a chimp." Why? Because they are JUST LIKE US. Naturally ill tempered, cunning, and just down right mean. They cheat, they murder, they steal, they trick their family members for their own gain, and they have a short fused human temperment with the reasoning mind of a 3yr old.
The "lord of the flies" mentality can be seen in a small degree in prisons, in preschools, in highschool, and on the streets where violence and lawlessness prevails.
I have no hard time believing that the "lord of the flies scenario" is very likely if you put 10 innocent boys on an island, they become primal and tribal, and will need a leader as much as one of them demands to be followed. The healthiest, the strongest, and the MEANEST almost always wins out in the wilderness.
It's the kid that always gets to pick teams on the playground, the socialite leader of a popular clique, a battle scarred gang leader in a violent urban war zone who takes out whoever looks at him crosseyed.
We are animals without instincts, outside of nature, but with animal tendencies that are far too easy to call upon in touchy situations.
The urge to kill somone, no matter how ridiculous it sounds, when they bug you, or threaten a certain type of social standing.
It's socially unacceptable to claw to death a lesser woman who shows up in the same dress to steal the attention from you, or to throttle till blue a young corporate stud that's working or sleeping his way right up to your office door with a moving crew.
But in a battle for life as you know it? For breeding rights? For the safety of a tribe of whom you dominate for the time being?
Absolutely yes.
Unfortunately through the wonders of science we've bred genetic weakness into our herd over years and years and years. Sterile couples using hormones, passing their sterile genes on to another generation. Genetic birth defects and health disorders that would generally kill off the weak members of the herd being treated with a pill or a shot or a transplant, then having child after child with the same defect. so on and so on.
There may be some day that it is lord of the flies, when we populate and breed ourselves to death, and only the genetically strong, clever, and down right mean and nasty will have to vie for the right to live, lead, and dictate.
sheesh...you got me going didn't you.
It felt good, though, good. I'll limit my words after this, I swear on my big toe.
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