Human Allegory in ”Lord of Flies”

The human allegory in the story, “Lord of the Flies” is represented through the situation of a group of kids being stranded on an uninhabited island without any adults to take care of them. The reason that the author, William Golding, chose the characters to be kids and not teenagers nor adults is because of their innocence and lack of knowledge of the civilization that they came from. Before being on the island, they would not have had a chance to face great responsibility because they would have been taken care of; however, when they have to take responsibility for keeping themselves alive in the story, rather than living as individuals, they have to decide whether to stay together and work with each other to try to get rescued, or to have fun and selfishly enjoy their time on the island. What Golding is trying to show from the story is what a society would be like if people choose chaos and savagery instead of order and rules.

The story Lord of the Flies teaches us that a society without order and rules could be really dangerous and fill people’s mind with acts of selfishness, fear of the strong ones, and the denial of guilt. First of all,I can not believe if people lived without order and rules, they would definitely have selfish actions, because people would be eager to dominate others and benefit themselves. For example, in Chapter 3, p40, Jack said, “His specs – use them as burning glasses!”, then he took Piggy’s specs without asking. Also in Chapter 10, p.184, Jack didn’t Piggy’s permission to take the specs and also destroyed the huts. Both of these are selfish acts. Like the conch, in Chapter 5, p99, Ralph said, “Jack! Jack! You are breaking the rules!” He thought Jack should obey the rule that if a person had a conch, he should get the chance to speak, but Jack replies, “Who cares?” Also, on p110, Jack said, “Conch! Conch! We don’t need the conch any more. We know who ought to say things. What good did Simon do speaking or Bill or Walter?

It’s time some people knew they’ve got to keep quiet and leave deciding things to the rest of us –” This quote showed how Jack tired of the rules, and spoke with selfishness to tell his desire that the group should be in. Secondly, their fear was first created due to the existence of the beastie because they believed that the beastie had power that the kids could not overcome. For example, in Chapter 6, p109, Sam and Eric had met the beastie, and then they told what they saw to Ralph and Piggy. After that Ralph called an assembly, and this assembly discussed about the beastie and on p109, Golding writes “Jack sneered at him, ‘Frightened?’” Here, he was trying to tempt Ralph to show his fear to everyone, but in vain. The miserable feeling that the kids had in the story would also bring fear. In Chapter 9, p168, it states, “The beast was on its knees in the centre, its arms folded over its face. It was crying out against the abominable something about a body on the hill. The beast struggled forward, broke the ring and fell over the step edge of the rock to the sand by the water.

At once the crowd surged after it, poured down the rock, leapt on to the beast, screamed, struck, bit, tore. There were no words and no movements but the tearing of the teeth and claws.” This quote is referring to the death of Simon. In the story, he was in the cave and then found a body. However, when he was trying to tell Jack and the other kids, he broke into the dance that the kids were having, was mistaken as the beastie, and eventually got killed. This shows Simon’s death is because they had greater fear of the beastie. Finally, in Chapter 12, p210, Golding writes, “After a moment of silence, Sam spoke in a strangled voice. ‘You don’t know Roger. He’s a terror and the Chief, they are both terrors.’” This showed that the twins were afraid of Jack but did not admire him, which it should be. In the middle of the story, Ralph and Jack had the power struggled between them due to the fact that they both ought to be the Chief and have different ideals of what the group should be, which is either rules and order or chaos and savagery.

I think this means that that fear is not only towards the beastie, but also to the ones who had the great power and the darker side of themselves. Lastly, in the story the most significant problem that faced the kids is the denial of their guilt. In the story, Jack had stolen Piggy’s glasses several times and broke one side of the specs, in Chapter 4, p75, it said, “Ralph made a step forward and Jack smashed Piggy’s head. Piggy’s glasses flew off and tinkled on the rock. Piggy cried out in terror.” He was still being insulted by Jack but not getting any apology from him of breaking his specs. Also with the deaths of Piggy and Simon, the situation had gotten more serious, because they were not feeling that what they had done was wrong. They should have learned in the civilized place that it is wrong to kill a person, but Jack had leaded his tribe to hurt and make death to others.

In Chapter 11, p201, Jack said, “See? See? That’s what you’ll get! I meant that! There isn’t a tribe for you anymore! The conch is gone -” This showed that he was no regret of anything that he did to the dead ones. Even he and his tribes were trying to kill Ralph in Chapter 12, and on p221, it says, “A face. The savage peered into the obscurity beneath the thicket. In the middle was a blob of dark and the savage wrinkled up his face! The seconds lengthened! Don’t scream. You’ll get back. He’s making sure. A stick sharpened. Ralph screamed, a scream of fright and anger and desperation. His legs straightened, the screams became continuous and foaming. He shot forward, burst the ticket was in the open, screaming, snarling, bloody. He swung the stake and the savage tumbled over; but there were others coming towards him, crying out.” This described how Ralph was trying to escape from the savage kids, and he eventually saw a naval officer, who brought him away from the place that was filled with chaos.

In conclusion, William Golding described what a community without rules and orders would be like. It is similar to nowadays when people talk about the rights of how humans should have behaved in different regions. In the story, Golding rigidly told us the fact that people must have rules and orders to prevent the same tragedy from happening to us that happened to the kids on the island, and to create peace to the world.