Savagery In Lord Of The Flies

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The novel The Lord of the Flies, written by William Golding, recounts the story of a group of adolescent boys after their airplane crashes on an uninhabited island, leaving them stranded. The boys often found themselves in situations that not only tested their moral being, but also drove many of them into a primitive barbarity. The boys, with no authority figures as positive influence, asserted their own dominance and gave in to a beast-like savagery that took over their sense of logic and humanity. They lost their principles of morality as they turned into a ruthless horde of face-paint clad brutes, who continually chanted "Kill the beast! Cut his throat! Spill his blood!" as they ended up gleefully taking not only the life of the animals…show more content…
Over 800,000 men, women, and children were brutally slaughtered for their ethnic heritage. During the Belgian colonial rule, the Tutsi were seen as elite members of society and the Hutu were denied political and economic power. Later on, the Hutu blamed the Tutsi for the death of President Habyariman, and started a massacre. One can clearly see the justification for the tension between the two ethnic groups, but the reason for the savage retaliation may lie more within their subconscious than one might think. Joshua Kessner states in his article “During the genocide, Rwanda had imploded. A necessary element of any community’s claim to being worthy of respect and/or protection is that it endeavor to protect the basic human rights of all of its inhabitants” (Kessner par. 11). The Hutu were denied any jurisdiction and privilege during colonial rule, and based on Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, they were deprived of safety and protection. The death of their President may have tipped the scale in their psyche and led to a barbaric fury resulting in the massacre of the opposing ethnic community. The Hutu were butchering the Tutsi because they felt threatened by their presence in their society, and in all cases of the Rwandan genocide, records indicate that many of the Hutu obliterated the Tutsi with simple machetes and clubs, causing much more bloodshed and mutilation. This ferocity can be described as the awakening of a primitive need for the Hutu to finally assert their dominance to protect the safety of the Hutu community and eradicate anything that stands in their

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