Lord Of The Flies Personality Analysis Essay, Research Paper

When children are given the opportunity, they would rather envelop

themselves in pleasure and play than in the stresses of work. The boys show enmity towards building the shelters, even though this work is important, to engage in trivial activities. Af ter one of the shelters collapses while only Simon and Ralph are building it, Ralph clamours, “All day I’ve been working with Simon. No one else. They’re off bathing or eating, or playing.” (55). Ralph and Simon, though only children, are more mature a nd adult like and stray to work on the shelters, while the other children aimlessly run off and play. The other boys avidly choose to play, eat, etc. than to continue to work with Ralph which is very boring and uninteresting. The boys act typically of most children their urge being more interested in having fun than working. Secondly, all the boys leave Ralph’s hard-working group to join Jack’s group who just want to have fun. The day after the death of Simon when Piggy ! and Ralph are bathing, Piggy points beyond the platform and says, “That’s where

they’re gone. Jack’s party. Just for some meat. And for hunting and for pretending to be a tribe and putting on war-paint.”(163). Piggy realizes exactly why the boys have gone to Jack’s, which would be for fun and excitement. The need to play and have fun in Jack’s group, even though the boys risk the tribe’s brutality and the chance of not being rescued, outweighs doing work with Ralph’s group which increase their chances of being rescued. Young children need to satisfy their amusement by playing games instead of doing work. In conclusion, children are more interested in playing and having fun than doing unexciting labor.

When children are without adults to look to for leadership, they look for an adult-like person for leadership. At the beginning of the novel, when the boys first realize they are all alone, they turn to Ralph for leadership. After Ralph calls the first meeting, Golding writes, “There was a stillness about Ralph as he sat that marked him out: there was his size, and attractive appearance, and most obscurely, yet most powerfully, there was the conch. The being that had sat waiting for them.” (24). The boys are drawn to Ralph because of his physical characteristics and because he had blown the conch. The fact that there are no adults has caused the boys to be attracted to Ralph as a leader. The physical characteristics of Ralph remind the boys of their parents or other adult authority figures they may have had in their old lives back home. There is also the conch that Ralph holds which may remind the boys of a school bell or a teacher’s whistle. Finally, at the end of the! novel, the boys turn to Jack to satisfy their need for some much-needed leadership. When the boys are feasting on the meat of a freshly killed sow, the narrator says: Jack spoke ‘Give me a drink.’ Henry brought him a shell and he drank. Power lay in the blown swell of his forearms; authority sat on his shoulder and chattered in his ear like an ape. ‘All sit down.’ The boys ranged themselves in rows on the grass before him. (165)

In addition to seeking adult-like authority figures, children lose

their innocence and stray towards savagery when not around adult

authority. When the boys have been on the island for a short time, they start to show more violence, but when they realiz e what they have done they become contrite, embarrassed by their actions. After Maurice destroys Percival’s sandcastle and some sand gets in Percival’s eye, the narrator writes: Percival began to whimper with an eyeful of sand and Maurice hurried away. In his other life Maurice had received chastisement for filling a younger eye with sand. Now, though there was no parent to let fall a

heavy hand, Maurice still felt unease of wrongdoing. (65)

In conclusion, in the novel The Lord of the Flies, Golding succeeds in showing the actions, decisions and thinking of young children.

Children would choose to play and have fun rather than work. When

children need to look for leadership and there are n o adults around to provide this, children look for another child who has adult-like qualities for leadership. Children are disobedient, violent and lose their innocence when there are no adults to supervise them. A child’s life is a long and winding roa d in which they can be sidetracked quite easily.