How Does Golding Present The Environment In Lord Of The Flies

In his novel, Lord of the Flies, William Golding introduces a dystopian world in the midst of a war, where a plane crashes on a deserted island and the only survivors are a bunch of young, British boys. During their time on this island, the boys go from well-mannered boys, focused on surviving and trying to find a way off of the island, to savages who abandon the notion of civilization. Through a course of events, majority of the boys slowly lose their desire to get off of the island and instead succumb to the fact that there is no authority around, and with such a lawless state of life, they quickly transition from being hesitant to kill a pig to killing each other. The central concern of this novel is the struggle of two notions that rest …show more content…
Here, we have a group of boys that survived a plane crash, with no adult figure alive to steer them. They are stranded on an island, with nothing but water surrounding them. It quickly becomes evident that no one has any survival skills or information that they’ve read that can help them survive, so they act off of what they know. The discovery of wild pigs inhabited on the island is obvious to the boys – they will have to hunt some down in order to eat. As easy as it sounds, it becomes quite clear to them just how uneasy it is when they get the chance to capture one. Even poised, with a knife and everything, there was a pause, “long enough for them to understand what an enormity the downward stroke would be” (Golding 41). The hesitance, the revulsion to violence, the lack of desire to kill, even for survival, is still with them, which means that they haven’t lost their humanity yet. Yet being the operative word here. As time goes by, their desire for meat, as well as the desire to become hunters, takes over and Jack is, once again, poised over a pig with a knife, only this time, he does do a downward stroke. He seems to revel in this, as he runs to Ralph and proudly shares his victory, declaring “There lashings of blood […] you should have seen it!” (Golding 98). Slaughtering becomes easier for the hunters, especially for Jack, who seems to revel in …show more content…
Either they didn’t look to see if they could salvage anything from the plane crash or they did and couldn’t find anything, but either way, they were left with nothing but the clothes on their backs and what the island provided for them. No house, no electricity, no plumbing. They were forced to learn how to fend for themselves, such as build their own shelters, hunt their own food, make their own tools, etc. Other basic things, such as grooming and washing their clothes, were also noted. At first, the boys were eager to remain civil; they worked hard to build the shelters and keep a fire going, in the hopes that the smoke will get them noticed and rescued. However, after a while, they started to care less. Sleeping in the dirt grew easier night by night, as well as wearing rags to clothe themselves, and after a while, nothing at all. They didn’t care; who would make a fuss about it? They had no parents around to nag them to bathe, no police force to say that they had to be clothed in public. They could do whatever they wanted, and doing civilized things, such as washing themselves and dressing appropriately, grew less and less appealing until they stopped altogether. Sleeping on the ground, never bathing, wearing rags or nothing at all, always dirty and grimy – all of this was okay with them. Having no civilization around, no adults or parents or basic technology, made it easier for them to slip