“Lord of the flies,” a novel by William Golding, is set on a remote island with a gang of stranded boys. It is around the time of the second world war and the boys were being evacuated when their plane crashed. There are no adults so the boys try to govern themselves. They vote a boy called Ralph, the main protagonist, to be the chief. A boy called Jack, the antagonist, is against Ralph being chief as he believed he should’ve been chief, because he was the leader of the boys choir. The little governance they had is quickly thrown out the window with the idea of a beast being on the island. The ‘biguns,’ older boys, dismiss the idea of a beast at first, but become slowly more paranoid about it. Eventually Jack’s disagreement with Ralph becomes too much and he starts a coo. All the boys bah Ralph’s closest friend Piggy end up following Jack’s tribe. Jack’s tribe turns savage and ends up killing two boys, Simon and Piggy, before the boys are rescued by a passing ship.
This book has lots of good messages such as how power lust can have fatal consequences. Jacks greed for power brews for the whole book till the point he calls for Ralph to step down. “I went on. I thought by myself-‘ The madness came into his eyes again. ‘I thought I might kill.” This brewing increases his blood-lust for pig hunting, turning him into a savage. His savagery is enforced by all the boys joining his tribe, and he ends up killing two boys. I can relate to power lusting, not in the intensity in which that statement makes it sound, through playing some video games. In one game I play, characters can escape on very little health which gets you annoyed. So you follow them under all of their towers trying to kill them, just one more hit. Your greed eventually kills you and they escape, which only increases your annoyance and greed till the point where you lose the game.
The theme of power lust reminded me of the play ‘Macbeth’ written by William Shakespeare. In this play the character Macbeth kills the King of Scotland so he could become king, and his ambition only grows from there. I have no spur to prick the sides of my intent, but only vaulting ambition, which o’erleaps itself and falls on the other. Macbeth’s power lust grows to the point where he kills his best friend as he thinks he is a threat but, eventually Macbeth breaks down in despair. This relates to Jacks power lust growing through the story till he kills two boys and becomes a savage. I’m sure after the boys are rescued Jack will struggle with the things he had done for the rest of his life.
A connection between the text and the real world would be the attempted government. “The world, that understandable and lawful world, was slipping away.” The boys try to govern themselves the way they new from England, through democracy. But, they were unable to keep the peace as Jack was too immature. Jack wanted to be chief, the leader, more then he wanted to be saved and get off the island. “We did everything adults would do. What went wrong?” They tried to do things like the adults but it eventually collapsed. They were trying to be like the English government but they are just kids, they couldn’t handle not having adults to tell them what to do.