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Lord of the flies essay William Golding The Island is a microcosm of the evil
we produce in the world today. Greed, power, domination are all factors of evil
in the story line and in today’s society. The first human instinct is survival.
The fittest will survive, as in the book, and in today’s world. For example,
someone who is very skilled in math or physical feats may receive a scholarship
pertaining to their skill. Taller and attractive people seem to get the better
and higher paying jobs. Aborigines in Australia will eat grubs and insects to
survive. We may find this repulsive but human instinct rules when we have no
other options. Our human instinct also makes us frown upon people with
undesirable traits such as obesity, poor eyesight or deformities. These people
cannot fend for themselves as well as fitter people and die off so they may not
reproduce.
The fittest survive. The role of survival of the fittest was best
described on (pg. 8) “I can’t swim on account of my asthma”. Piggy was already
going down in the food chain of the island. Ralph was a tall attractive boy who
had very good leadership skills. It is no wonder that he voted in as leader.
Piggy can’t defend himself . An example of this is (pg. 17) “Shut up fatty.”
Another example is when piggy wants to come with them up the mountain,(pg. 20),
“ I’ll come.” “ your no good for a job like this” .The boys on the island
resorted to killing pigs with such savagery when they felt that they were
hungry. When there is no order chaos arises. There are many examples of this in
our society today. Riots happen when the people think they can get away with it.
The number of people outweigh the number of authority figures. People hurt other
people and steal. This is not something that would happen in an ordered society.
All these people know what’s right and wrong but their human instinct gets the
better of them when they think they can get always with it. The same thing
happened on the island. With no authority like the adults or (police) things
turned into anarchy. They were trying to kill each other and ran around like
savages just because they had no one to tell them they couldn’t do that. There
was a lot of emphasis that they were children and that is why this happened.
That is simply not true. Look at my example above, people that riot have no
authority to tell others to stop. You could compare that kind of behavior to
what children would do if they were put in charge of the world. Today’s society
is full of bad leaders such as “Sadam Husain” , “Slobodam Molosovich” , “Adolf
Hitler” and many more. They lead their people with false ideals and hidden
agendas. Their thirst for power killed thousands of people and caused grief and
suffering for millions. Hitler killed millions of Jews and that is something the
German people will have to live with for ever . Sadam Husain tried to take more
land for his country and failed and made more people suffer. Molosovich didn’t
want to give up his rule over the Albanians and killed alot of them in the
process. Jacks hunger for power grew just as these leader’s hunger grew too.
(pg. 140) “ I’m not going to be part of Ralph’s lot” , “ I’m going off by
myself..... Any one that wants to hunt when I do can come too”. Jack’s power
grew so great that he made the boys think that there was a beast which
ultimately killed Simon. He didn’t care when a big rock squished Piggy and to
make things unbearable he tried to murder Ralph. Also there were many great
leaders such as Bill Clinton (debatable), George Washington, Abraham Lincoln,
John A MacDonald and more.
These Leaders lead their people with great emphasis
toward the minority and fought for equal rights. Bill Clinton puts bad leaders
in their place, George Washington fought for the independence of America,
Abraham Lincoln freed the Blacks from oppression and John A MacDonald fought for
Canada to become a whole country. Jack was a great leader that kept the boys in
order and kept their one hope of getting of the island alive An example of this
is when it was Ralph’s idea to go search the Island (pg. 20) “ .....three of us
will go on [an] expedition and find out.... That’s what a good leader does, he
makes decisions quickly and makes them good. Ralph was the kind of leader that
wasn’t as smart as Piggy but had the leadership skills and personality to become
the chief. These are the kinds of leaders we want in our society. People in
today’s society control each other by fear. In communist Russia they used to
imprison people or even use the death penalty when they rejected communism. This
made people fear their government and made them not dare speak against it. Even
our own government controls us by fear. It makes us follow their laws and if we
don’t do so it punishes us. Even people in our society control other people by
fear. In some places the Mafia will tell store owners to give them money or else
they will trash their store. People will not dare go up against the Mafia
because they will do very bad things to you if you do. Jack controlled many of
the boys on the island by fear. At the beginning of the book he controlled the
choir with having a mean attitude and his trusty old knife which he kept
slamming into tree trunks. Then later on in the book he showed everyone that he
wasn’t afraid of killing when he hunted and killed a pig. The island is a
microcosm of the world we live in today. Greed, power and domination are all
factors today as well as in the story line.
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