
Lord of the flies essay
William Golding
The Island is a microcosm of the evil we produce in the world today. Greed, power,
domination are all factors of evil in the story line and in today’s society.
The first human instinct is survival. The fittest will survive, as in the book, and in today’s 
world. For example, someone who is very skilled in math or physical feats may receive a 
scholarship pertaining to their skill. Taller and attractive people seem to get the better and 
higher paying jobs. Aborigines in Australia will eat grubs and insects to survive. We may 
find this repulsive but human instinct rules when we have no other options.
Our human instinct also makes us frown upon people with undesirable traits such as 
obesity, poor eyesight or deformities. These people cannot fend for themselves as well as 
fitter people and die off so they may not reproduce. The fittest survive.
The role of survival of the fittest was best described on (pg. 8) “I can’t swim on account 
of my asthma”. Piggy was already going down in the food chain of the island. Ralph was 
a tall attractive boy who had very good leadership skills. It is no wonder that he voted in 
as leader. Piggy can’t defend himself . An example of this is (pg. 17) “Shut up fatty.” 
Another example is when piggy wants to come with them up the mountain,(pg. 20), “ I’ll
come.” “ your no good for a job like this” .The boys on the island resorted to killing pigs
with such savagery when they felt that they were hungry.
When there is no order chaos arises. There are many examples of this in our society today. 
Riots happen when the people think they can get away with it. The number of people 
outweigh the number of authority figures. People hurt other people and steal. This is not
something that would happen in an ordered society. All these people know what’s right
and wrong but their human instinct gets the better of them when they think they can get 
always with it.
The same thing happened on the island. With no authority like the adults or (police) 
things turned into anarchy. They were trying to kill each other and ran around like 
savages just because they had no one to tell them they couldn’t do that. There was 
a lot of emphasis that they were children and that is why this happened. That is simply not 
true. Look at my example above, people that riot have no authority to tell others to stop. 
You could compare that kind of behavior to what children would do if they were put 
in charge of the world.
Today’s society is full of bad leaders such as “Sadam Husain” , “Slobodam Molosovich” ,
“Adolf Hitler” and many more. They lead their people with false ideals and hidden 
agendas. Their thirst for power killed thousands of people and caused grief and suffering 
for millions. Hitler killed millions of Jews and that is something the German people will 
have to live with for ever . Sadam Husain tried to take more land for his country and failed 
and made more people suffer. Molosovich didn’t want to give up his rule over the 
Albanians and killed alot of them in the process. 
Jacks hunger for power grew just as these leader’s hunger grew too. (pg. 140) “ I’m not 
going to be part of Ralph’s lot” , “ I’m going off by myself..... Any one that wants to hunt 
when I do can come too”. Jack’s power grew so great that he made the boys think that 
there was a beast which ultimately killed Simon. He didn’t care when a big rock squished 
Piggy and to make things unbearable he tried to murder Ralph. 
Also there were many great leaders such as Bill Clinton (debatable), George Washington, 
Abraham Lincoln, John A MacDonald and more. These Leaders lead their people with
great emphasis toward the minority and fought for equal rights. Bill Clinton puts bad 
leaders in their place, George Washington fought for the independence of America, 
Abraham Lincoln freed the Blacks from oppression and John A MacDonald fought for 
Canada to become a whole country.
Jack was a great leader that kept the boys in order and kept their one hope of getting of
the island alive An example of this is when it was Ralph’s idea to go search the Island
(pg. 20) “ .....three of us will go on [an] expedition and find out.... That’s what a good
leader does, he makes decisions quickly and makes them good. Ralph was the kind of
leader that wasn’t as smart as Piggy but had the leadership skills and personality to
become the chief. These are the kinds of leaders we want in our society. 
People in today’s society control each other by fear. In communist Russia they used to 
imprison people or even use the death penalty when they rejected communism. This 
made people fear their government and made them not dare speak against it. Even our 
own government controls us by fear. It makes us follow their laws and if we don’t do so 
it punishes us. Even people in our society control other people by fear. In some places the 
Mafia will tell store owners to give them money or else they will trash their store. 
People will not dare go up against the Mafia because they will do very bad things to you 
if you do.
Jack controlled many of the boys on the island by fear. At the beginning of the book he 
controlled the choir with having a mean attitude and his trusty old knife which he kept 
slamming into tree trunks. Then later on in the book he showed everyone that he wasn’t 
afraid of killing when he hunted and killed a pig. 
The island is a microcosm of the world we live in today. Greed, power and domination 
are all factors today as well as in the story line.
<br><br><b>Bibliography</b><br><br>
I wrote this for a book study
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Words: 1008
