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“The Lord of the Flies is a picture of our society today.” Discuss the
statement and show the way the statement applies The Lord of the Flies is about
a mini-society of boys formed by chance. Their isolation from adults forced
reality upon them and so they had to think for themselves and work together. As
a commentary of today’s society it does well to explain some of today’s issues
like violence, laws, pride, greed, fear, religious power and the conflict
between living in a civilized society or savagery. It is all about the choice
the boys made when life became real. In the beginning their lives were
controlled and protected by their parents, teachers and police officers. Jack
cannot kill the pig even though he can eat meat because of the “enormity of the
knife descending and cutting into living flesh.” (p 41). Roger cannot hit the
boys with the stones even though he could if he wanted to because he has been
conditioned by the society he used to live in. This is the type of society the
children live in. Everything is a game until the beast. The beast signals the
end of the games and start of reality. Lives are at stake in perspective of the
boys and survival must occur in any form. Our society is much like this as
today’s society is also about survival and what choices we make to survive. The
mini-society started off peaceful. The purpose was to set a signal fire and live
off fruit until help came. The conflict came when the fire and hunting could not
be committed to at the same time. As the fire was a 24 hour task and hunting
needed the whole party, the party started to take sides. Ralph’s fire would be
the sensible thing to do to get rescued however hunting would lift the standard
of living for all the boys and would also be a luxury, recreational event. The
fire was hard work and immediate results were none even though long-term results
would be better. The hunting side wins eventually. In Australia today we are
spending beyond our ability to afford this spending. This means we have a great
influx of goods and services but as a community we are cheating ourselves as
this leads to a current account deficit and the cost of living in this deficit
must be paid plus the deficit. In this book’s case, the deficit was their morals
and the interest was paid in life. The conch was the symbol of power and it
represented the order in the beginning of the book. It brought them together and
provided laws for the society. The main law being whoever holds it has the right
to speak without interjection or disrespect while he was speaking. It is much
like a policeman’s badge or even the mace in our parliament. However, the beast
held a greater power over the conch which was fear. It is used by Jack to gain
power over the rest of the group. His promises and rallies to kill the beast
eased the fear of the boys and hence he won over the group.
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