Intrinsic Deterioration: A Study of Symbols in Golding's Lord of the Flies

Abstract

Lord of the Flies,a novel based on the short life of a group of English schoolboys, makes a case study of human nature as it manifests itself in and according to different circumstances. Human nature, as the novel exposes, is inherently prone to exercising the wild and instinctual drives rather than the rational and logical capacities. The world of the children in the novel is representativeof the adult world which is no better a place to live in if it were not for the presence of an enforced law, fear and reverence for God and a sense of ethics. The setting of the novel is an island in the tropics lying somewhere between Addis Ababa and Gibraltar. The island itself is a veritable symbolic object, for it is suggestive of the world where there is the absence of law and order, of established norms and value system. The inhabitants of the island, the school boys, are surrounded by water, the primary element out of which all lives are supposed to have sprouted from. The children are divided into two groups: those who want to get out of the island and back to the adult society, and those who want to stay there hunting and sporting. The group of Ralph is rational while Jack leads all the savage to be boys. The activities of the boys stranded in the island prove that human beings have the power both to do good and evil, to be rational and wild. But the brighter aspects of their characters shine out only in a controlled environment. In an otherwise milieu the dark side gets the better of the good self. The schoolboys testify to this proposition. Golding's prime aim is to present a bitter but realistic picture with the vision of human nature and also of the society and the world. Being a social critic and a student of human nature, Golding finds that human beings have animal instinct ingrained in their very bones from which they can never set themselves free.