William Golding's Lord Of The Flies

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“Lord of the Flies is a parable about modern civilization and human morality” (Slayton). William Golding explores a moral allegory that consistently persists throughout his acclaimed novel because the boys gradually lose their sense of civilization the more time they spend trying to survive on the island separate from any type of civilization except for the one they create. He effectively portrays his theme through his careful descriptions of the boys’ loss of values, digression of morality, and lack of clothing during their stay on the island. To begin, the boys’ gradual loss of civilization coincides with their loss of values. “Roger gathered a handful of stones and began to throw them. Yet there was a space round Henry, perhaps six yards…show more content…
Likewise, Maurice experiences the same revelation that on this island there is no adult around to chastise the boys for their wrongdoing. “In his other life Maurice had received chastisement for filling a younger eye with sand. Now, though there was no parent to let fall a heavy hand, Maurice still felt the unease of wrongdoing” (62). As the boys’ realization dawns over them that the island is a place of no authority with any repercussions for any of their actions. The values that are held at a high pedestal in their previous society no longer exist. In Lord of the Flies, Ralph, the boys’ leader, said, ‘“You didn’t ought to have let that fire out. You said you’d keep the smoke”’ (71). “They were socialized in, and were a partial microcosm of twentieth century English (or Western) civilization; and they brought that civilization, or what fragments of it they could remember, with them. Hence the values they possessed, the attitudes they displayed, the arrangements they established, and the practices in which they engaged, were all in some degree or other a reflection of the world in which they had been born and within which they had been educated and fashioned” (Spitz). Likewise, in the…show more content…
The hunters in charge of the fire neglect to tend to the fire in order to pursue a more fun activity, hunting. Moreover, the boys have come to understand that with no adults on the island, there are no longer punishments for breaking the rules and values because they no longer exist. “Jack and his gang can no longer recognize a moral code where law and cooperation is best and killing is wrong. As the author (William Golding) once commented, “the moral is that the shape of a society must depend on the ethical nature of the individual and not on any political system” (Themes and Construction: Lord of the Flies). As the boys distance themselves from civilization as time passes, their morals and values have digressed to an extent where they can no longer recognize right and

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