question - Describe the beginning and the ending of the text.
Explain how the beginning and ending were connected.
In the novel “Lord of the flies” by William Golding the beginning of the text consists of a group of young english boys who have been stranded on an island following a plane crash, fresh out of a society where they’ve been forced to take orders their whole lives they instinctively vote on a leader, Ralph to guide them. The end of the text involves a group of the boys hunting down the original leader ralph with the goal of murdering him. The end of the story and beginning work together to portray a theory that humans primal savage instincts are only suppressed by a society that punishes such behaviours and with no figure of authority to guide people society would return to an uncivilised frenzy. This helps us to better understand uncivilised tribes the purpose of good authoritarian figures and societal norms.
At the beginning of the text we are shown a group of young English boys who have been stranded on an island. Immediately the boys decide “we ought to vote on a chief”, the author included this election to express the civility that lives amongst the boys due to their instincts to have someone to listen to. Golding also wanted us to understand that growing up in England During the 1960’s the boys have been born into a society where it is expected you go to school and listen to teachers then go home and listen to your parents and everyone is expected to listen to the government or else punishment follows.
Later in the novel we see a divide in power as Jack and Ralph form their own values and people are forced to switch sides. Jack represents a more savage and brutal way of survival that includes hunting and general disorderliness. Ralph is less concerned about hunting and more persistent that “me must keep the fire going if we want to be rescued” and he wants to keep orderliness. However those who chose to follow orders from Jack quickly become hunters and start to give less care to keeping order within the group. The author wants us to understand that people are easily swayed by authoritarian figures emphasizing the importance of a purpose of good authoritarian figures/ This also foreshadows the potential for Jack to descend into savagery along with his group of hunters with no one above him to stop him.
In the ending of the novel we are shown Jack’s group hunt down Ralph with the sole intention of murdering him. This exemplifies Jack’s complete transition from being a reasonably civilised English boy at the beginning of the text to being a complete bloodthirsty savage at the end of the text. Golding wants the reader to understand that Jack’s complete switch in personality from the beginning of the book till the end, is due to no adult being able to enforce rules on him. This is Golding’s theory that without civilisation, rules and government society would simply cascade into a primal frenzy with no civility, and humans would return to their primal hunter gatherer instincts. This theory can be seen in practise, there are hundreds of secluded tribes that aren’t part of human civilisation and have no laws to follow. These tribes often show hostile behaviours toward more civilised people, Jack and Ralph perfectly represent these two opposing groups.
In the novel “Lord of the Flies” by William Golding the beginning of the text and the end of the text portray the idea that without civilisation and law humans would slowly revert back to primal instincts and become uncivilised. This is best exemplified in the story by Jack’s gradual descent into savagery, bringing his group of hunters down with him. This descent into savagery helps us to better understand uncivilised tribes the purpose of good authoritarian figures and societal norms.
