Violence In Lord Of The Flies

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Violence Squared Jim Morrison, a poet and performing artist, once said “Violence isn't always evil. What's evil is the infatuation with violence”. The classic novel Lord of the Flies by William Golding chronicles the adventures of a group of British schoolboys who have been stranded on an island after an airplane crash. The boys try their best to organize themselves and find ways to get rescued, but ultimately the hidden evils within the boys take over the island and chaos erupts. William Golding illustrates how exposure to violence increases the intensity of violence over time through the novel’s development of the pig hunts. To begin, in the opening chapters of the novel, the idea of killing was seen as a sin, and all of the islanders were hesitant to partake in the hunts. During their very first assembly after arriving on the island, they all agreed that they would need meat, so hunting would be essential for their survival. The first time that the hunters saw the pig, Jack was hesitant to stab it as he held his knife at the ready. “The pause was only long enough for them to understand what an enormity the downward stroke would be.” (Golding 31) Before they landed on the island, the group of boys grew up in a sheltered and civilized environment where they never had to witness violence at all, much less killing. Since the boys were…show more content…
Slowly the hunters lost their moral opposition to hunting and killed pigs around the island on a daily basis without a second thought. Meanwhile, Jack was beginning to efface Ralph as the island’s chief through his promises of feasts and fun. “Find new quote” Jack especially had become desensitized to the idea of killing a living thing, so he suggested hunting as a solution to problems more and more often. (INSERT BEASTIE SUMMARY AND
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