Ministry of higher education and Scientific research ‫وزارة التعليم العالي والبحث العلمي‬

Al-Qalam University College ‫كلية القلم الجامعة‬

Department of English ‫قسم اللغة االنكليزية‬

Psychoanalytic analysis of Lord of Flies, A novel by William

Golding, base on change of identity

Prepared by:

Mohammed Abbas Wali

Abbas Fadhil Younis

Supervised by:

Mr. Hawar Sardar Ali

To

The council of the Department of English / college of education / Al-Qalam College

University as a fulfillment of the requirements of Bachelor of English language

2022
 DEDICATION

We dedicate this project to our beloved people who have meant and continue to mean

so much to us, first of all our families, whose love for us knew no bounds and, who

taught us the value of hard work. Thank you so much.

Also, we would love to dedicate it to our professor (Mr. Hawar) to his guidance and

knowledge of helping us to complete this project.

And we also dedicate this project to many friends and college family who have

supported us throughout the process. we will always appreciate all they have done.

Finally, we won’t forget the help and guidance of all our professors and lecturers in

our university (Al-Qalam University), without them it wouldn’t be possible to reach

this such a place.

Thank you all and you have special place in our heart.

I
 ACKNOWLEDGMENT

Before any one and above all we thank Almighty and merciful Allah for guiding us and

letting us live to see this day coming whatever we say we could never thank him enough

for his blessing. Countless people supported our effort on this project. Our adviser

professor (Mr. Hawar) who provided invaluable feedback on our analysis and framing,

at times responding to messages and questions late at night and early in the morning.

Several other professors gave helpful advice as we wrote. Our other professors for

mentoring and guiding us to the path of success.

Also, we would thank our precious friends and our second family for their support.

Lastly, our families deserve endless gratitude: our fathers for leading us to this place,

our mothers for always being there for us, no matter what, and our brothers and sisters.

II
 ABSTRACT

Lord of the Flies is a dystopian novel in which a group of young boys are in a

plane crash on a deserted island. The boys were leaving England, which is struggling

to fight an intense war. When they arrive on the island, they are forced to struggle

between the urge to maintain some order and structure, which they’ve known all their

lives.

So, this research is an attempt to understand the theme of lord of flies and analysing

the psychoanalytic theme in the novel through three sections.

III
 LIST OF CONTENTS

No. Subject Page No.

Dedication I
Acknowledgment II
Abstract IV
List of Contents V
1. Section One 1
1.1 Introduction 1
1.2 Overview 1
1.3 Themes in Lord of The Flies 2
1.3.1 The Repercussions of The War 2
1.3.2 Man Versus Nature 3
1.3.3 Savagery as An Opposite to Civilization 3
1.3.4 Loss of Innocence 4
1.4 Lord of The Flies Analysis 5
1.4.1 The Allegory of The Title 5
1.4.2 Lord of The Flies and Cold War 6
1.4.3 Significance of The Conch 6
1.4.4 The Conceptualized Meaning Of “The Beast” 7
1.4.5 Ending of The Novel 8
Lord of The Flies as An Allegory for The Fall of Man from
1.4.6 9
Eden
2. Section Two 11
2.1 A Psychoanalytic Approach To "Lord of The Flies" 11
2.2 Lord of The Flies: A Psychoanalytic View of Destructiveness 12
2.2.1 The problem 12
2.2.2 The novel 15
3. Section three: Conclusion 27
Bibliography 29

IV
 Section One

1.1 Introduction

Lord of the Flies is written by William Golding who is a Nobel Prize-winning

author and is published in 1954. This novel investigates the darker side of
humankind; the viciousness that underlies even the most civilized and cultivated
people. William Golding proposed this novel as a satiric tale of adventure of
children, delineating mankind’s inborn evil nature. He presents the audience with a
sequence of occasions driving a gathering of little fellows from hope to catastrophe
as they endeavor to endure their graceless, segregated condition until saved. It is
listed in the Modern Library of 100 Best Novels.

Lord of the Flies is a dystopian novel in which a group of young boys are in a
plane crash on a deserted island. The boys were leaving England, which is struggling
to fight an intense war. When they arrive on the island, they are forced to struggle
between the urge to maintain some order and structure, which they’ve known all
their lives. Instead, however, some of the more rebellious boys give in to their wild
natures earlier on and this spreads as a kind of hysteria among the boys. The novel
speaks to what can happen when structure is removed forcibly. (Ghose, 2018: 2)

1.2 Overview

Lord of the Flies is a short story by William Golding about a group of boys
who get caught on an island because of the crashing of a plane. Ralph and Piggy
are the ones who meet initially. (ibid: 3)

1
Then Ralph blows a conch shell that produces a horn-like sound, brings numerous
surviving boys young men come running and they all consent to remain together and
make Ralph their pioneer. They all stroll around the island gathering food and
making a sanctuary when Ralph and Jack get into a dispute about the initiative and
the monster they have been scanning for this entire time. At that point, they split up
into two gatherings and have a gigantic battle toward the end that truly executes
Piggy in light of a freestone hitting him. At last, all the boys all get saved by an
official of the Navy who sees the smoke from the enormous fire on the island.

1.3 Themes in Lord of The Flies

1.3.1 The Repercussions of The War

Lord of the Flies is to some extent a moral story of the Cold War. It is about
the negative impacts of war on the life of people and for social connections. This
novel is written in the era of the Cold War and it reflects the threat of the atomic war
between Britain and “the Reds.” Golding along these lines presents the peaceful
strains as coming full circle into a deadly clash in his novel against the perils of
ideology, or “cold,” fighting.

In addition, we may comprehend the contention among the young men on the island
is a representation of the contention between the Communist forces and the Western
Democratic Powers. Ralph, who stands for a democratic system, has a conflict with
Jack, who symbolizes military tyranny, for example, Joseph Stalin and Mao Zedong.
Jack is wearing a dark cape with blazing red hair, and this symbolizes his connection
to the “Reds” because the main color of the Reds was black and red. As the strain
between the young men goes to a wicked head, the readers see the hazardous results
of an ideological clash. (ibid: 4)

2
1.3.2 Man Versus Nature

Lord of the Flies presents the subject of man’s optimal relationship with this world.
The novel is set in the natural habitat of the island, in which there are no people
before the group of the boys, the boys expound various mentalities towards nature
that mirror their particular characters and ideological understandings. The boys`
connections to the normal world, for the most part, can be categorized as one of three
classifications: enslavement of nature, congruity with nature, and subservience to
nature.

The primary class which is an oppression of nature is typified by Jack, whose

motivation on the island is to track, chase, and murder pigs. He tries to force his
human will on the world of nature, enslaving it according to his wants. Jack’s later
activities, specifically setting the jungle on fire, mirror his extending scorn for nature
and exhibit his violent and savage character.

The subsequent class is harmonious with nature and is typified by Simon. He

discovers excellence and harmony in the common habitat as exemplified by his
underlying retreat to the place of seclusion in the jungle. For Simon, nature isn’t
man’s adversary however it is a part of the experience of man. (ibid: 7)

1.3.3 Savagery as An Opposite to Civilization

One of the main themes of Lord of the Flies is the contention between the human
motivation towards brutality and the principles of progress which are intended to
contain and limit it. All through the novel, the contention is sensationalized by the
conflict between Jack and Ralph. These characters portray savagery and civilization,
respectively.

3
The varying philosophies are communicated by the perspective power of every boy
towards power and authority. While Ralph utilizes his position to set up rules, he
ensures that the group is going to be beneficial and incorporates the good and moral
codes of the English society in the young boys but Jack is keen on picking up control
over different young men to satisfy his basic instinctive forces.

At the point when Jack starts leading the hunters and then the tribe, he asks for the
total subservience of all the young boys, who serve him as well as love him as a
leader. Jack’s craving for power proposes that viciousness doesn’t look like rebellion
to such an extent as an authoritarian arrangement of misuse and unlawful force.

The Lord of the Flies symbolizes the unification of the young men under Jack’s
leadership which is advocated through fear and punishment for those who do not
approve his orders. The obliteration of the conch shell at the location of Piggy’s
killing implies the total destruction of human civilization on the island, while
Ralph’s destruction of The Lord of the Flies portrays his own plunge into viciousness
and savagery. By the last scene, brutality has totally dislodged human progress as
the overarching framework on the island. (ibid: 8)

1.3.4 Loss of Innocence

The young boys on the island turn from polite and well-mannered boys to savage
hunters on the island. During this transformation from good kids to cruel kids, they
all lose their innocence of characters and morality which they all are filled with, at
the start of the novel. The naked boys with painted faces representing extreme
savagery in the final portion of the novel are not the same boys who can be found in
the early part of the novel.

4
They now search, torture and hunt not only animals but human beings as well. In
any case, Golding doesn’t depict this loss of innocence as something that is done to
these boys on the island; rather, it results normally from their expanding
receptiveness to the intrinsic insidiousness and viciousness that has consistently
existed inside them. Golding infers that civilization can moderate however never
clear out the inborn evil that exists inside every individual.

The den in the jungle in chapter 3 wherein Simon sits in symbolizes this going away
of innocence. From the outset, it is a position of common excellence and harmony,
however, when Simon returns later in the novel, he finds the grisly sow’s head
pierced upon a stake in the clearing. The bleeding offering to the brute has upset the
heaven that existed previously which is an incredible image of natural human
shrewdness upsetting the innocence of youth. (ibid: 10)

1.4 Lord of The Flies Analysis

1.4.1 The Allegory of The Title

The novel serves as an allegory for the instinctive nature of humans and
society. This novel presents the mythology of Judaism and Christianity to explain
the political and sociological perspectives. The title has two implications and both
the meanings have religious connotations.

The first meaning refers to one of the lines of King Lear by Shakespeare, “As flies
to wanton boys, are we to gods.” The meaning refers to the Beelzebub whose Greek
name is Ba`alzevuv meaning “Lord of the Flies” and it is simply used for Satan. For
Golding, the evil powers that constrain the stunning occasions on the island originate
from inside the human mind and not from the external impulses. Golding
accordingly utilizes a strict reference to delineate a Freudian idea of the Id that drags

5
the humans for survival regardless of ethical and moral implications. For Freud, this
Id is usually negative and it drags humans for its goals without considering the
circumstances. (Bufkin, 1965: 40)

1.4.2 Lord of The Flies and Cold War

This novel was published in 1954 in the era of the Cold War. The novel has
a strong base in concerns in sociopolitical aspects of the era. This novel implies the
Cold War struggle between liberal democratic countries and the rules system and
Communist totalitarian governments. Ralph shows a liberal convention of
democracy and before his taking up the total anarchic rule of leadership, Jack,
portrays the military autocracy that remains in the communist systems. It is eminent
that Golding sets the novel in what gives off an impression of reality of the human
future.

He represents the future which is in danger because of the atomic war threat.
Golding’s novel talks about the general fear of the public relating to the race of atom
bombs in the Cold War era because this race remained in vogue in the era in which
this novel got published. Golding’s negative portrayal of Jack, who speaks to an
enemy of majority rule political framework, and his recommendation of the truth of
nuclear war, present the novel as a motion of help for the Western situation
vulnerable War. (ibid: 47)

1.4.3 Significance of The Conch

In Lord of the Flies, William Golding utilizes a conch shell to symbolize a

civilized and an enlightened society that controls itself through the system of
democracy. At first, the young men utilize the conch to build up a community
suggestive of their commonplace British order of society. Soon after the conch is

6
found, Ralph utilizes it to bring different young boys on the island and assemble a
conference. The shell’s capacity is obvious, and the young boys promptly grasp the
possibility of a majority rules system. After investigating the island, Ralph
announces the young men will lift their hands in gatherings, as at school, if any of
them want to talk. When holding the conch every kid gets the option to communicate
his considerations without interference.

The young boys` underlying energy for the process of democracy procedure
permeates the conch with incredible force as a method of correspondence, as the
young men singularly concur that the conch symbolizes a commonplace and
beneficial perfect. (ibid: 50)

1.4.4 The Conceptualized Meaning Of “The Beast”

Golding utilizes the fear of boys from the beast to show that evil emerges from
outer powers as opposed to within the human beings. This fearsome brute captures
the imaginations of the boys as a snake-type creature. Later, the boys think about an
animal that ascents from the ocean or the more indistinct element of an apparition.
At the point when they detect the dead paratrooper who has arrived on the mountain,
the boys get assured that they have seen the beast and its proofs are there on the
mountain. Although a real beast roams around on the island but is not the beast the
boys have in their imagination.

Golding outlines the darker side of human instinct and mentions that every
individual possesses this dark person inside him. The young boys conceptualize the
origin of all their evilness as because of a beast. But in reality, there is no beast on
the island, rather it is the persona of the beast which these boys wear and becomes
beasts to be brutal and violent.

7
Golding passes on the identity of the beast through the strict activities of Jack and
his hunter group and through the dynamic idea which takes place in the vision of
Simon. Simon’s disclosure about the beast happens upon him after he observes the
death of the sow and then it’s beheading. Simon can understand the ruthlessness of
the demonstration because he observes when this drama takes place. The flies
capture the head of the sow to eat it and then duplicate themselves because they do
not feel any sympathy towards the dead sow. (ibid: 52)

1.4.5 Ending of The Novel

Lord of the Flies closes with maritime officials showing up on the island. His
initial perception of the boys is that they are engaged with pointless fooling around.
At the point when he gets the details from Ralph what has occurred on the island, he
is flabbergasted that children of Civilized British have gone to such a lower degree
of humanity. Ralph and the young boys take his scolding and begin to weep that
immediately become cries. They are crying over the loathsomeness of their
experience and alleviation over coming back to human progress. As the young boys
sob, the maritime official just watches out to the ocean to permit them to recover.

The maritime official does not understand the experience of the boys on the island.
His not understanding what has occurred on the island reflects his own failure to
perceive insidious inside himself and all humanity. At the point when he specifies
playing around, the reader is snapped back to the real world. These are kids who
ought to be guiltless and ought to mess around. Rather, they have become the truth
in every last one of us – not unreasonably of guiltlessness, yet of evil.

Ironically the maritime official while seeming to portray Civilization and rationality
of the society symbolizes evil which is inside the civilization as the boys have. He

8
is a warrior who battles wars, which is positively human progress even from a
pessimistic standpoint. (ibid: 55)

1.4.6 Lord of The Flies as An Allegory for The Fall of Man from Eden

Lord of the Flies, metaphorically, portrays the subject of the contention

between and good and evil. It is contention in which the evil gets its victory in the
first phase and afterward, goodness comes to the surface and defeats the evil and sin.
The boys in the novel symbolize bad or good characteristics. However, they are
simultaneously fit for development.

From the starting the bad and good are divided. Simon is loaded with human
characteristics in addition to his education and spirituality. He brings great natural
food for the littluns. He also gives credit to Piggy because he has been participating
in every job and the making of fire is only possible because of Piggy. His instinct
discloses to him that Ralph would endure towards the end. He is also very clear in
his understanding that there is no brute outside and that evil exists in the brain of
people.

The moaning of Ralph for losing innocence shows the subject of sin and
appeasement. He accepts that he participated in the killing of Simon. He reveals to
Piggy that the object which is killed on the mountain is much smaller than the beast
so it could not be a beast. He also reveals that the dying object wanted to say
something but it could not be heard because of the screams of the boys who were
killing him. This shows that the voice of goodness is a distraught cry of frenzy,
cruelty and superstition when Jesus is crucified. Later on, the individuals needed to
appease their transgression inborn in them so as to be spared. (ibid: 57)

9
Simon can also be taken as a symbolic representation of Christ. He actually finds
out that the beast is the dead body of the pilot. But he does not get the chance to utter
this to the boys because he is brutally slaughtered by the boys who are in a frenzy.
Critics are of the opinion that the death of Simon is a sacrifice and he is reference to
Jesus.

Notwithstanding to the sacrifice of Simon the appeasement of Ralph for his

transgression, there are other elements of Christianity in the novel as well. The most
significant is the picture of Eden and its Garden and the dream of the Lord of the
Flies. The island has all the highlights of the Eden. Golding in his novel suggests
that when a person is encompassed by different sorts of solace and extravagance and
without government and parental standards, it will prompt obliteration and
defilement. Thus, the young boys on the island have started to thwart everything and
they even murder their companions.

They also kill various pigs and put the head of the pig on a stick. The head of the
sow on the stick is called the Lord of the Flies and it is a reference to Beelzebub who
is also known as Lord of the Flies. (ibid: 59)

10
 Section Two

2.1 A Psychoanalytic Approach To "Lord of The Flies"

Ralph is the strong, persistent, kind, and fair chief of this tribe of children and
adolescent boys. He was voted chief by his peers because his obvious drive to get
them all rescued in a timely manner. He represents the persona. He is what any
mature adult would find the best suited to lead these boys and restore order to the
awaiting anarchy behind the unconscious of all of these pubescent boys. He is easy
for the children to identify as leader due to the standards set by society on leadership
and the qualities a leader should have. He is the persona of civil society. He is what
society would have any alien to earth view what society should be. Because he never
falls from this grace and is persistent in creating a society that is like that from which
they all came, he is undeniably a great representation of persona. Ralph also
embodies the warrior archetype in his persistence with the rescue-fire mission and
his drive to maintain order and general “good-doing”. (Dean, 2010: 1)

Jack is the equally strong, equally persistent, demanding, adrenaline/hedonia-driven

leader of the self-proclaimed “hunters” of the island. He was Ralph’s opponent in
the candidacy for chief. He never agreed with Ralph on any of his chiefly delegated
duties. He only wanted to seek the meat for the tribe. He only wanted to kill. He is
the shadow. He is the opposite of the persona. The shadow is the part of our psyche
that we hide, but is always unconsciously present with us. When we have an
unexpected fit of anger, the shadow can be found. It is the part of the psyche that
isn’t disturbed in our childhood until we experience an event that can introduce the
shadow to our awareness. Evil. While further inspecting the island early in the book,
the boys startle a pig and Jack hits the pig with his spear, but does not kill it. He
becomes obsessed and preoccupied with this control over the life of another creature.

11
This is not the split in the innocent childhood psyche, but the triggering of the
suppressed shadow and feelings associated. His thirst for blood and a hedonic utopia
on the island eventually surpasses Ralph’s structured civil society, so he and his
hunters move to the opposite end of the island. Later, when Piggy (the innocent fool)
is killed, Jack is not remorseful of the murder. This, in fact, fuels his bloodlust for
Ralph. He is everything Ralph does not want to embody, however, Ralph is
subconsciously half-shadow, as we all are.

Piggy is the innocent, adult-like, abandonment-fearing, Ralph-loyal member of the

group. He is codependent of Ralph in all of the things he does on the island. That is,
when he isn’t withdrawn from the activity due to his asthma. Unlike Jack and Ralph,
Piggy does not fully embody the innocent so I almost did not want to suggest that
Piggy represented the innocent fool archetype. He isn’t a fool and is sometimes brave
in the things that he says and does. I want to suggest him as the innocent fool because
of his endearing trust in Ralph and his idea of the fire-rescue. His constant optimism
is also a clue into the innocent fool archetype. Another reason I am hesitant in
suggesting Piggy as the innocent fool is that he is completely aware of the physical
weaknesses he has (visual impairment and asthma) and the lack of respect the boys
have for him because of his nickname. (ibid: 2)

2.2 Lord of The Flies: A Psychoanalytic View of Destructiveness

Lord of the Flies was William Golding’s first published novel and since its
appearance in 1954 it has become one of his best-known works. It is commonly said
that it shows how thin is the veneer of civilization and how readily we humans can
return to the state of primitive savages or animals and once again become blindly
destructive.

2.2.1 The problem

12
 Golding has described some of the background to his novel in an essay entitled
Fable (Golding, 1965):

Further in the same essay, Golding discusses his choice of the fable as the form for
his story, and his wish to contrast his vision with the nineteenth century optimism
portrayed in the other famous story of boys on a tropical island The Coral Island
written by Ballantyne. This was written says Golding at the height of Victorian
smugness, ignorance and prosperity.

"So, the boys try to construct a civilization on the island; but it breaks down in blood
and terror because the boys are suffering from the terrible disease of being human."

This viewpoint is at one with that of psychoanalysis, in that it requires us to look at

ourselves and at our inner life and organization rather than seek the problem in
others. And although Golding depicts children becoming painted, masked hunters
with sharpened sticks, apparently having become savages or head hunters again, in
fact he shows a complex process is taking place, and that a reorganization of the
group and of the individual boys is involved in the emergence of the destructiveness.
This is what psychoanalyst have found too, and we must reject the easy
simplification that evil is the manifestation of something animal or primitive. It is in
fact a complex human phenomenon.

Herbert Rosenfeld, working within the Kleinian tradition of psychoanalysis in

England, has formulated his ideas on destructiveness in a number of works
(Rosenfeld, 1971, 1987).

Melanie Klein’s work with small children had revealed a world of fantasy life very
different from adult thinking, or even from that of the older child as discovered by
Freud. The fantasies of violence, terror and omnipotence were unexpected and
alarming, but it was recognized that they resembled the content of the delusions and

13
other symptoms of adult psychotic patients. So, from the 1940s onwards, Rosenfeld
and others, fortified with Klein’s findings, began treating psychoanalytically
psychotic patients, and those with severe personality disorders of the borderline and
narcissistic kind.

Rosenfeld found that despite the apparent indifference or deadness of such patients,
and the impression that they formed no object relationship at all, in fact they formed
very powerful transferences. He coined the term "narcissistic omnipotent object
relations" to express his findings. He described the personality organization in which
the person uses other people as things or containers, into which they project what is
undesirable to themselves, or that which causes anxiety and pain. The person can
then feel all powerful and free from disturbance, and can idealize themselves and
their actions. Rosenfeld went on to distinguish between several groups with this
narcissistic structure, and highlighted those who were intensely destructive and
sadistic and proud of it. He called this destructive narcissism (Rosenfeld, 1971: 165).

Rosenfeld particularly noted that:

"The destructive narcissism in some patients appears often highly organized, as if

one were dealing with a powerful gang, dominated by a leader, who controls all the
members of the gang to see that they support one another in making the criminal
destructive work more effective and powerful. The main aim seems to be to prevent
the weakening of the organization and to control the members of the gang so that
they will not join the positive parts of the self or betray the secrets of the gang to the
police, the protecting superego, standing for the helpful analyst, who may be able to
save the patient. To change, to receive help, implies weakness and is experienced as
wrong or as a failure by the narcissistic organization which provides the patient with
his sense of superiority." (ibid, 1971: 169)

14
This is the view of the psychoanalyst with his individual patient, but the same
process can be observed in a group, where the members lose their individuality and
powers of independent thought to become subsumed in a new kind or organization.
We have only to think of the Mafia for example. We will hear more from Rosenfeld
later, but for the moment these few introductory quotations have helped us to define
our focus on this organized cruelty and destructiveness which is so uniquely human,
and not in the least animal.

2.2.2 The novel

Sir Kenneth Clark remarks somewhere in his writings that art springs from
those experiences we have that are felt to be so significant that they demand
elaboration.

"Ralph looks around him. Here at last was the imagined but never fully realized
place leaping into life." They all come together, they organize a leader and rules,
they set about exploring and arranging to keep a fire going so that smoke will ensure
their rescue. But by the end of the tale, Simon the visionary has been murdered by
the gang of hunters; Piggy has been flung to his death by a boulder rolled on him by
the hunters of Castle Rock, his precious glasses smashed and his brains exploded
over the rocks far below; and Ralph is running for his life, pursued by the hunters
and by the fire they have lit, which will not only flush Ralph out, but destroy their
island and their very source of life and sustenance.

How has this madness happened? This is the question that Ralph articulates for us.
We see the action largely through Ralph’s eyes, and with him we struggle to grasp
what is happening, the immense difficulty of conceptualizing and articulating what
is happening. Throughout the story Ralph struggles, and at crucial moments Piggy,
the almost blind, fat little asthmatic with the vital glasses, who has learned to see

15
more inwardly, helps him clarify his thoughts. Here are the three boys, Ralph, Jack
and Simon, going off to explore: "The three boys walked briskly on the sand. The
tide was low and there was a strip of weed-strewn beach that was almost as firm as
a road. A kind of glamour was spread over them, and the scene and they were
conscious of the glamour and made happy by it. They turned to each other, laughing
excitedly, talking, not listening. The air was bright.

Ralph, faced by the task of translating all this into an explanation, stood on his head
and fell over." As the anxieties of the littluns begin to break through and the glamour
fades, we hear Ralph again: "But there isn’t a snake." Ralph was annoyed and, for
the moment, defeated. He felt himself facing something ungraspable. Again, "But
there isn’t beast." And later, after the excitement of the first pig hunt causes a ship
on the horizon to pass by because the fire was neglected, Ralph sees the
wearisomeness of their life, their dirt and their constant worry, and again knows he
must do something about it. "He lost himself in a maze of thoughts that were
rendered vague by his lack of words to express them. I can’t think, not like Piggy.
Piggy for all his ludicrous body, had brains.

" The initial excitement and glamour of this self-contained paradise, this island of
no adults, where at last the boys can be free to look after themselves, begins to
crumble. Golding shows us that it is the nightmares and terrors of the littluns which
disturb the illusion that this is a good island, a garden of Eden. The littluns expressed
the fears and loss of their parents which the older ones tried to deny. "No grown-
ups" in fact means, no one knows where we are, we are not in anyone’s mind. The
nightmare is the infantile terror of being totally unconnected with the parent, and at
the mercy of the external world and one’s internal phantasies.

16
"My Father will come and rescue us" also contains the dread that "no one can find
us" or even that no one else exists, having been obliterated by atomic war. And it is
the boys’ reaction to the littluns which open up the rifts and conflicts that lead to
disaster. Ralph struggles to understand what is happening, and tries to maintain a
sensible adult world. He is leader, he encourages them to make shelters, to bring
fresh water from the stream, keep the signal fire alight and so on. He is impatient
and bewildered by the littluns fears of a snake thing and a beastie, but with the help
of Piggy and Simon, he tries to hear them and do something for them. Piggy has the
glasses which can light fire, but he also sees the littluns are afraid, and he sees the
rivalry between Ralph and Jack. Jack reacts to the fears very differently. He is the
leader of the choir, who become the hunters. At our first encounter with him in the
story, he has the image of uniformed authority, the hint of the role that a uniform, a
mask is going to play in this drama. Jack is contemptuous of "littluns talk" and
prefers direct action. He will hunt for food, he explores the island, he makes spears
and organizes his hunters. We are shown also that Jack reacts with hot shame when
his wish to lead is challenged, or if his courage or competence is questioned or found
lacking. This is the crux of the narcissistic organization that Rosenfeld described,
and which is now evolving in Jack and his hunters - the denial of anxieties and
limitations, the contempt for the idea that they need help or rescue, and increasingly
violent attacks on Piggy, Simon and Ralph who dare to question him. Jack must be
a hunter and Golding shows him being swallowed up in the compulsion to track
down and kill, shows the madness that slowly comes into his eyes and eventually
becomes permanent. (Bremen, 1985: 268)

This is a process which takes place within the individual, in Jack. It also occurs in
the group, as we see the boys dividing up on the one hand, into a gang of masked
hunters no longer individuals swallowed up in this narcissistic organization; and on

17
the other, into the few individuals who keep trying to understand what is happening.
Let me now itemize some of the features of this organization, and select aspects of
the novel which illustrate them. One of the main functions of this state of mind is to
discover an external enemy, a beastie who can be hunted, or placated with an
offering. The boys try to locate the source of their fears in the shadows, the snake-
like vines, in the ocean with its unknown inhabitants. When Simon haltingly
suggests that what they fear is "in us", there is a chorus of ridicule, and the meeting
rapidly disintegrates into laughter, talk of ghosts, fighting and insult. They are
unaccountably angry, "the world, that understandable and lawful world, was slipping
away". Unbeknown to them, the beast is already beginning to stir by way of this first
hint of violence. Jack at one-point shouts Ralph and Piggy down, yelling "Bollicks
to the rules! We’re strong - we hunt! If there’s a beastie, we’ll hunt it down! We’ll
close in and beat and beat and beat -". Let us observe in this the fate of the littluns,
the ones who voiced the nameless dreads, and cry out at night with dreams. (ibid:
269)

The first littlun to speak up, the one with the big birthmark on his face (that is the
one who spoils everyone’s illusions of perfection) is the first to die. He is lost in the
excitement of the first fire to be lit and is never seen again. The first pig to be caught
is a piglet, tangled in branches, but no one can face the enormity of plunging the
knife in. I think this is again a hint of the plight that the littluns voice, the tangle the
boys in fact are in. We note in passing that Jack is ashamed at not being able to kill
the pig, and furiously swears he is not afraid to do it, that he is a hunter. And again
later, one of the older boys enjoys tormenting a littlun by throwing sand at him. In
these ways I think we can see the persecution or neglect of the littluns, the ones who
express need and helplessness and fear. The narcissistic organization is partly
mounted against any such experiences. Let us now see how the beast grows and

18
becomes manifest. Jack, angry and humiliated by criticisms of his obsession with
hunting, goes off to organize his hunters. He experiments with camouflage, using
charcoal and clay. He looks at the results in a pool: "He looked in astonishment, no
longer at himself but at an awesome stranger. He split the water and leapt up
excitedly. Beside the mere, his sinewy body held up a mask that drew their eyes and
appalled them. He began to dance and his laughter became a bloodthirsty snarling.
The mask was a thing on its own, behind which Jack hid, liberated from shame and
self-consciousness." Here is the delicious liberation from self-awareness brought
about by the mask, by the spell of this narcissistic state of mind which makes one a
different person, utterly free from anxieties and self-doubts. The mask compels the
others and they hunt a boar. (ibid: 273)

In the excitement of the re-enactment afterwards, the game is not enough. They want
a real pig again, you have to kill it again they say. Jack says "Use a littlun" and
everybody laughs. The spell is working, and the group become close to losing the
distinction between game and actuality, and once again it is the littluns who are
contemptuously used. The final breakdown between Jack and his hunters, and the
others, comes shortly after. Jack, Ralph and Simon had fearfully gone to find the
beast on the mountain, that is the dead airman who was being moved back and forth
by his attached parachute. Full of dread at what they might find, having created a
nightmare beast out of their earlier efforts to investigate it, they approach. It moves,
they run in terror. Later, trying to tell the others about this beast, the familiar rift
opens up between them. They all think the beast is somewhere on the island, Jack is
determined to hunt it down, and Ralph scornfully says "Your hunters - just boys
armed with sticks". Instantly Piggy sees what has happened "Now you’ve done it.
You’ve been rude about his hunters". Jack is enraged, and we see clearly it is a
child’s rage and humiliation, that his mask of omnipotence and fearlessness is being

19
scorned and that limitations in him are being revealed. That is the end for him. He
screams in his hatred, refuses to have any more to do with all the rules and talk, and
takes himself and his hunters off to Castle Rock. This is a fortress of rocks at one
end of the island, and it expresses vividly the fortress-like mentality of outraged
narcissism, with its retreat into omnipotence and contempt for weakness. The
hunters, now all masked and organized with Jack as their new chief, set out on
another hunt, this time more violent and explicit than the last. I think it is significant
that they choose a sow, "Sunk deep in maternal bliss, the largest sow of the lot. She
was black and pink; and the great bladder of her belly was fringed with a row of
piglets that slept and burrowed and squeaked." The boys are like piglets, dependent
on their island of pink granite and black forest, with its fruit and animals to sustain
them. (Kohut, 1972: 358)

But masked in omnipotence, they are determined to deny all such vulnerability. They
charge the sow, wound her, and chase her through the forest. The hunters followed,
wedded to her in lust, excited by the long chase and the dropped blood. The sow fell
and the hunters hurled themselves at her. The dreadful eruption from an unknown
world made her frantic; she squealed and bucked and the air was full of sweat and
noise and blood and terror. Roger ran around the heap, prodding with his spear
whenever pig flesh appeared. Jack was on top of the sow, stabbing downwards with
his knife. Roger found lodgment for his point and began to push till he was leaning
with his whole weight. The spear moved forward inch by inch and the terrified
squealing became a high-pitched scream. Then Jack found the throat and the hot
blood spurted over his hand. The sow collapsed under them and they were heavy and
fulfilled upon her. Roger began to withdraw his spear and the boys noticed it for the
first time. Robert stabilized the thing in a phrase which was received uproariously
‘Right up her arse!’" This is no harvesting of food, a mere hunt, it is a violent

20
domination, full of sexual excitement and with pleasure in the cruelty and triumph.
This is the essence of Rosenfeld’s observation, that the narcissistic organization
gives the power to reverse roles, the child is no longer small and vulnerable,
dependent on the mother, it is now triumphant over the mother. This is done with
pleasure, the sexualizing and idealizing of the power acting as a mask. It is in this
state of mind that members of the group are capable of doing things they could never
do as individuals. (ibid: 360)

We also see that perversion is one manifestation of this narcissistic organization

within an individual. In the story Roger in particular becomes the representative of
this sadism. He is the one who shoved his point right up her arse. He is the one who
later becomes Jack’s enforcer. The boys offer the pig’s head as a gift to the beast so
it will leave them alone. "The silence accepted the gift and awed them. The head
remained there, dim eyed, grinning faintly, blood blackening between the teeth. All
at once they were running away, as fast as they could, through the forest towards the
open beach." The beast is becoming manifest, and it obscurely terrifies them. Simon,
the strange solitary visionary, has been observing the kill and the gift from his
hideaway in the bushes nearby. Hot and dehydrated, he watches the head, and it
watches him, and it speaks. "There isn’t anyone to help you. Only me. And I’m the
beast. Fancy thinking the beast was something you could hunt and kill! You knew,
didn’t you? I’m part of you. I’m the reason why it’s no go. (Symington, 1990: 470)

Why things are what they are. You know perfectly well you’ll only meet me down
there - so don’t try to escape! I’m warning you! We’re going to have some fun on
this island." This is the Lord of the Flies, and the masked boys, captured as they are
by the thrill of power and "freedom from shame and self-consciousness" are like
flies, mesmerized and enslaved by this god. "Lord of the Flies" is the literal
translation of Baal-zebub, the old Canaanite god of evil. But Simon knows it is inside

21
us, and he has just seen it in action, and he now goes further. He finds his way to the
mountain top, where the dead flier is still pinned by his parachute. Simon discovers
the true nature of this "beast", and releases the body, to be carried out over the sea
and away. He returns to the beach, and in the gathering dark and storm he stumbles
into the midst of the hunters’ feast, wanting to bring them his news and insight. The
tragedy that now takes place reveals the inner structure of the real beast, the
narcissistic state of mind. Ralph and Piggy have crept up to join the hunters and to
try once more to unmask them and return the boys to their co-operation and
awareness of their plight. These two represent the sane and appropriately fearful
parts of the personality. But Jack will have none of it, he is chief now, and jeers at
Ralph and Piggy for their fear, even showing them how much they need him and his
ability to hunt. Just then lightning flashes, the gathering storm breaks, the littluns are
terrified and now Ralph jeers at Jack "Who’s clever now? (ibid, 473)

Where are your shelters? What are you going to do about that!" Jack instantly
orchestrates a dance, and the hunters fall into excited re-enactment of the great hunt,
free once more from fear and awareness of their vulnerability and limitations. Even
Piggy and Ralph "Under the threat of the sky found themselves eager to take a place
in this demented but partly secure society. They were glad to touch the brown backs
of the fence that hemmed in the terror and made it governable." As the group lose
themselves, they go "Round and round as though repetition would achieve safety of
itself. There was the throb and stamp of a single organism." Here is the beast, and
its seductive illusion of safety even draws Ralph and Piggy in for a while. "The mob
forms a horseshoe shape, and into it stumbles Simon, who is unrecognized." They
have a real pig to kill, they have the beast at last. "The sticks fell and the mouth of
the new circle crunched and screamed." In this way we see the beast has swallowed
up Simon. Golding here captures the confused madness that sweeps away ordinary

22
reality sense, and leads to the murder of Simon. We see the beast at last, it is the
group itself, and the state of mind that captures them like flies. From this point, the
splitting between the two sides of the group, or within the personality, becomes
starkly apparent. The hunters retreat to Castle Rock, totally defended against
awareness of what they have done, while Ralph and Piggy struggle to retain their
sanity. Hardly able to believe it they say "That was murder. I’m frightened of us."
They try again to go and talk with the others. But the others are beyond reach in their
fortress. We can see that the retreat into omnipotence serves another function now,
it spares the hunters from seeing the horror of what they have done and from feeling
the guilt about it. Let me briefly summaries some of the features of this state of mind
as it now exists, this narcissistic organization that is so vividly epitomized by the
boys in Castle Rock. (ibid: 478)

Firstly, there is the splitting, this hardening between the hunters, and the few
stragglers Ralph and Piggy who attempt to preserve their sanity and understanding
of what has happened. For the hunters there is no struggle. They have in effect
evacuated and disowned any awareness or capacity to think of what they have done.
Secondly, we see that this is maintained by terror. There are hints that Roger
terrorizes the littluns and other members of the gang into preserving the mask of
them being hunters. They must revere the new chief, Jack, and obey all his rules.
Thirdly this is a very paranoid state of mind. Jack expresses his conviction that the
few remaining boys outside the group will attempt to spoil what the hunters have.
He reminds them that the beast came into their midst in disguise, on the night of the
storm. He is referring to Simon of course, in a paranoid suspicious way that denies
the murder. They somehow imagine that Ralph and Piggy can attack them. In fact,
the only attack that Ralph and Piggy can mount is the attack of reason, to make them
see what they have done and what is happening and it is this that is most terrifying,

23
in fact. Rosenfeld, like Bion and others since, has pointed out how much the attacks
mounted by this state of mind are against any possibility of insight. Knowledge itself
is the enemy. We know that in totalitarian states throughout history, the secret police
are thought police whose efforts are most vigorously aimed at their own populace,
to prevent them getting together to think, or gain information from the outside world.
It is this particular aspect of the drama that now unfolds. Ralph and Piggy approach
the fortress, in one last effort to stop the horror and bring the boys back to
themselves. They intend to retrieve the vital specs which the tribe of boys took from
Piggy in a raid, and at the same time to re-establish the order represented by the
fragile conch shell which Ralph and Piggy still have. Let us pause for a moment and
consider that Ralph and Piggy together, as a couple, are the representatives of
insight. Neither alone is adequate to the task, they need each other throughout the
story, and here at the last they are still trying to stem the tide, supporting each other.
It may be no coincidence that he is called Piggy, in that it suggests a link with the
mother sow who was brutally killed, and with the island itself which is the nourishing
sow to the boys. Piggy’s glasses and insights have been vital for the boys, and for
Ralph in particular. The two represent I think that psychic function which the internal
parental couple play in development, that of being the guardians of insight and of
the capacity for self-awareness and separateness. (ibid: 481)

Ronald Britton (1989) elaborates this theme in a recent work. The triangle formed
by the child and his two parents not only brings with it the child’s realization of his
parent’s relationship and traditional oedipal experience of exclusion and rivalry. It
also brings with it the experience of the child being seen by the parents, what
Golding expresses when he talks of the capacity for ‘shame and self-consciousness’.
One of the features of the narcissistic state of mind is the obliteration of the internal

24
couple as a functioning couple, who see and think about the child and facilitate self-
consciousness. (Britton, 1989)

So, Piggy is smashed, and Ralph must also be destroyed. Another aspect of the
importance of the internal couple can be found in Golding’s book The Spire, which
Hanna Segal discusses in her paper on Delusion and Artistic Creativity. So, Ralph
hides, having learned that he too must be destroyed. Jack decrees that Ralph must
die. Golding hints that Jack is aware of some indefinable link between him and
Ralph. There is a Ralph in him, who may, unless killed, make Jack think again of
what he has done. He must be killed. Hence the utter madness of the chase and the
burning down of the island. This madness is the implacable and relentless
determination to kill insight and awareness, even at the expense of destroying the
island they depend on. (Segal, 1974)

The final scene is Golding’s master stroke I think. Here is Ralph running for his life,
"He stumbled over a root and the cry that pursued him rose even higher. He saw a
shelter burst into flames and the fire flapped at his right shoulder and there was a
glitter of water. Then he was down, rolling over and over in the warm sand,
crouching with arm up to ward off. Trying to cry for mercy. He staggered to his feet,
tensed for more terrors and looked up at a huge peaked cap. It was a white topped
cap, and above the green shade of the peak was a crown, an anchor, gold foliage. He
saw white drill, epilettes, a revolver, a row of gilt buttons down the front of a
uniform." At this dramatic moment there is a sudden shift of perspective. Suddenly
through the eyes of the naval officer we see the island and the boys for what they
are. "Squirming a little, conscious of his filthy appearance, Ralph answered shyly.
‘Hello’. ‘Are there any adults, any grown-ups with you?’ Dumbly, Ralph shook his
head. He turned a half pace on the sand. A semi-circle of little boys, their bodies
streaked with coloured clay, sharp sticks in their hands, were standing on the beach

25
making no noise at all. The officer inspected the little scarecrow in front of him. The
kid needed a bath, a haircut, a nose wipe, and a good deal of ointment." (Steiner,
1990: 87)

26
 Section Three

Conclusion

Conclusion The use of a work of literature for psychoanalytic purposes is fraught

with hazard. We often see the venture take the form of treating the characters as if
they were real people, capable of being analyzed. Similarly, the author may be
equated with a patient in analysis, and analyzed on the basis of his work. In both
cases, the result is pseudo-analysis. It is a gross misrepresentation of what really
takes place between analyst and patient, and it does grave injustice to the relationship
between the reader, the experience of the novel, and the author. The writer certainly
draws upon his personal experiences and imaginative depths, his conflicts, his
dreams perhaps, to gather the ingredients for his novel. In this, of course, he draws
on the same human depths as us all. But he does work on the material. Henry James,
speaking from the heart in one of his prefaces, says the "effort really to see and really
to represent is no idle business in face of the constant force that makes for
muddlement". This work involves for example, selection of the material,
concentration of the action, ordering the events for dramatic impact, and resisting
the temptation to simply tell and explain, and allowing oneself to be open to surprise
from within. The analytic process is also, first and foremost, a lived experience.
Analyst and patient must work hard to allow the immediacy of the inner world to
find real expression and be felt by both, and only then to try to formulate the meaning
and significance of what is happening. The temptation to bypass this effort and settle
for second-hand explanation and theoretical formulations, to pretend we ‘know’, is
very great. A great work of art succeeds in just the way this analytic process does,
and for that reason the two can illuminate each other. Freud, for example, was greatly
in debt to Sophocles and the tradition of myths that nourished the drama of Oedipus;
he was helped to grasp the universal dimension of the phenomena he was coming

27
across in his own dreams and in the experiences of his patients. It is this aspect of
Golding’s work that I would like to emphasize in closing. What I found so striking
was the powerful representation Golding creates of the spellbinding effect of this
mask of madness which slowly creeps up on the boys. We, as readers, become caught
up in it and can barely see the steps until the final shattering shows us what has
happened. This is the same effect as can sometimes happen to us in the course of an
analysis or a therapy. We, as therapists, can be mesmerized and spellbound by a
defensive organization, can lose our own sense of reality to a degree, and in that
way, we too can become one of the members of the gang. The therapeutic struggle
is akin to the struggle of Ralph and Piggy to maintain their sanity, to know that
murder has been done, to be frightened of what is happening within us. And I think
the novel also gives us some understanding of why such tremendous resistance can
be mounted against this process of insight and awareness. Not only does the
narcissistic state of mind experience shame and failure if it is questioned or
threatened, but once it has gone, then the individual is put in touch with vulnerability,
dependence and the tremendous anxieties of childhood that the littlun in us all can
still experience.

28
 Bibliography

• Bufkin, E. C. “Lord of the Flies: An Analysis.” The Georgia Review, vol. 19,
no. 1, 1965, pp. 40–57.
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=f1b227d2ae7411eca0827edc2c62bd54>.

• Dean, Q., 2010. A psychoanalytic approach to "Lord of the Flies". [online]

The Music From Within:

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• BREMEN, E. (1985): "Cruelty and Narrow-mindedness". Int. J. Psychoanal.

66:273.
• BRITTON, R. (1989): "The missing link: parental sexuality in the Oedipus
Complex" in ‘The Oedipus, Complex Today’. Karnac Books.
• GOLDING, W. (1954): "Lord of the Flies". Faber.
• GOLDING, W. (1965): "Fable" in "The Hot Gates". Faber.
• KOHUT, H. (1972): "Thoughts on Narcissism and Narcissistic Rage".
Psychoanal. Study of the Child. 27:360.
• ROSENFELD, H. (1971): "A Clinical Approach to the Life and Death
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Psychoanal. 52:169.
• ROSENFELD, H. (1987): "Impasse and Interpretation". Tavistock
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• SEGAL, H. (1974): "Delusion and Artistic Creativity: some reflections on
reading The Spire by William
• STEINER, J. (1990): "Pathological Organisations as Obstacles to Mourning".
Int. J. Psychoanal. 71:87.
• SYMINGTON, J. (1985): "The Survival Value of Primitive Omnipotence".
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