Warning: Spoilers ahead
The premise of Lord of the Flies is simple enough: a group of boys are stranded on a tropical island and must form their own society to survive. However, the group soon falls into chaos, and the boys literally end up at eachothers throats. Luckily for the survivors, they are rescued, but not before they have lost every semblance of a society. The reason that this spiral into chaos happens is the, in the end, their legal system is flawed. Within a short period after all of the boys meet each other, three individuals stick out. Piggy, who is the smart yet weak one, Jack, who is the cruel yet strong one, and Ralph, who is the charismatic and rational one. Overall, Ralph's logic wins him the position of leader. Overtime, as people become irritable with Ralph's instructions, as there is no say, they start to gravitate much more towards Jack, who finally leads a revolt. This same phenomenon can be seen throughout history, where governments that have become unaffected are replaced by ones that the common people prefer. Jack's betrayal hurts Ralph, who starts to rely on Piggy's intelligence much more. This gives Piggy a greater degree of influence over events, but, unfortunately, his lack of charisma leads him to his death. Each of these three characters represent different qualities that are essential to any working government, as well as their |
different uses in different scenario. The overall flaw of the island society in Lord of the Flies is that Ralph, Piggy, and Jack are not willing to come to terms with themselves as being equals. This leads to a series of attempts for control, but with only one of the three key aspects of government, all eventually fail.