Lord Of The Flies Essay Due 9/9/05

By Charles Margiotta

In William Golding’s novel Lord Of The Flies he wrote about the nature of

people’s reaction in extreme situations’, and he indicated that all men are born evil and

turn good if put in the right situation. The characters of Lord Of The Flies have different

reactions to the situation the land in and they are driven by their inner personality without

the rules they have grown up by and been obliged to follow there whole life. Several the

viscous acts of the children act is astonishing; how Jack can be so vicious and cruel to the

others while piggy tries to keep the rules and Ralph is in the middle trying to get for

every one to get along. Each child has a dominant personality that takes him over on the

island. All of them were either driven by there Id (evil and most primitive), the ego (the

balancer of the personality’s), or superego (or parent figure).

Ever since Jack saw his first Pig he only wants to hunt. Jack has become viscous

and has started to care for himself and forget about rescue and only think of pig. Jack

cannot even think of the future or even hope of rescue, only what he will allow into his

barmy mind. Two different times in the novel Jack specifically ignores the fact of getting

rescued to do things for himself. “I was talking about smoke! Don’t you want to be

rescued? All you talk about is pig, pig, pig!” “But we want meat!” (53 Hemingway).

Another time Jack only wants to catch pig and he doesn’t even want to be rescued. Jack

says “Rescue?? Yes. All the, I’d like to catch a pig first.” (Hemingway 53). Jack has

brought out while on the island an Id personality which means he can’t tell what’s right

from wrong and how or even how to act civilized. As Jack becomes crazier and crazier
he kills Simon, while Simon was running to tell everyone what the Beast really is. After

Jack killed Simon and then Piggy his next target was to kill Ralph. Jack threw his spear

at Ralph and hit him in the ribs blood started to ooze out. Then all the boys start on a

hunt to find and kill Ralph. Buy the end of the book Jack and Rodger and most of the

other boy’s had turned evil and their Id personality started to become obvious.

The Ego personality is the balancing point of ones mind; it allows the mind to

balance out the good and the evil. Ralph represents the ego or balancing personality, he

always is trying for people to think rational and civilized and to just try and get rescued.

Ralph walks over to Jack’s tribe to get Piggy’s stolen glasses back and all Ralph does is

say “If you would of asked I would of let u use the glasses for fire” (181 Hemingway)

demonstrate all he really wants is peace and to go home. Ralph becomes very angry at

Jack when he takes the hunters hunting and the fire goes out, they may of caught a pig

but they did something awful and let the fire die. The Id allows you to start doing

primitive things, but Ralph has his ego that helps hold back the evil thoughts and actions.

When all the hunters go hunting Ralph stays back for the fire and hasn’t gone over to the

dark side. Ralph’s ego keeps him acting humane until the end, even when the rules die

away and he is the only on left.

Piggy is the uptight parent figure that is good at heart and will always stay good.

His superego helps to control the boys for a while. He tries to keep the island governed

and he acts like there are parents on the island but in the end it turns out t be a tragedy for

him. Piggy said “I got the conch, let me speak” (82 Hemingway) meaning that he is
acting adult like. Piggy is always trying to act like an adult because he is different then

the other boys by his glasses and his physical appearance that why he tries to act older

and is more mature, “when you’re done laughing perhaps then we can get on with the

meeting.” Piggy also yells at the littuns. During the second meeting piggy yells at the

littuns to stop falling of the twisted log and to sit on the ground a then they wouldn’t fall

off. Piggy also despises Jack, “If Jack was chief he’d have us all hunting an no food!

We’d be here till we died” (93 Hemingway). Piggy was the person that helped to keep a

few things still civilized but when he and the conch died it was then breaking point.

By the end of this novel Jack, Roger and most of the other boys except had turned

bad and were mainly controlled by their ID. The Littuns, Piggy, Simon, and Ralph were

the few buys that had the inner good and even in awful times they still had what it takes

to stay above the line and not to fall below it. These boys were born evil and had to be

good because of rules set in place since they were born but when there weren’t any rules

you really understood what little heart they really had, they were ruthless scavengers.