Major Themes
Civilization vs. Savagery:
The central concern of Lord of the Flies is the conflict
between two competing impulses that exist within all human beings: the instinct
to live by rules, act peacefully, follow moral commands, and value the good of
the group against the instinct to gratify one’s immediate desires, act
violently to obtain supremacy over others, and enforce one’s will. This
conflict might be expressed in a number of ways: civilization vs. savagery,
order vs. chaos, reason vs. impulse, law vs. anarchy, or the broader heading of
good vs. evil. Throughout the novel, Golding associates the instinct of
civilization with good and the instinct of savagery with evil.
The conflict between the two instincts is the driving force
of the novel, explored through the dissolution of the young English boys’
civilized, moral, disciplined behavior as they accustom themselves to a wild,
brutal, barbaric life in the jungle. Lord of the Flies is an allegorical novel,
which means that Golding conveys many of his main ideas and themes through
symbolic characters and objects. He represents the conflict between
civilization and savagery in the conflict between the novel’s two main
characters: Ralph, the protagonist, who represents order and leadership; and Jack,
the antagonist, who represents savagery and the desire for power.
As the novel progresses, Golding shows how different people
feel the influences of the instincts of civilization and savagery to different
degrees. Piggy, for instance, has no savage feelings, while Roger seems barely
capable of comprehending the rules of civilization. Generally, however, Golding
implies that the instinct of savagery is far more primal and fundamental to the
human psyche than the instinct of civilization. Golding sees moral behavior, in
many cases, as something that civilization forces upon the individual rather
than a natural expression of human individuality. When left to their own
devices, Golding implies, people naturally revert to cruelty, savagery, and
barbarism. This idea of innate human evil is central to Lord of the Flies, and
finds expression in several important symbols, most notably the beast and the
sow’s head on the stake. Among all the characters, only Simon seems to possess
anything like a natural, innate goodness.
Loss of Innocence:
As the boys on the island progress from well-behaved,
orderly children longing for rescue to cruel, bloodthirsty hunters who have no
desire to return to civilization, they naturally lose the sense of innocence
that they possessed at the beginning of the novel. The painted savages in
Chapter 12 who have hunted, tortured, and killed
animals and human beings are a far cry from the guileless children swimming in
the lagoon in Chapter 3. But Golding does not portray this loss of innocence as
something that is done to the children; rather, it results naturally from their
increasing openness to the innate evil and savagery that has always existed
within them. Golding implies that civilization can mitigate but never wipe out
the innate evil that exists within all human beings. The forest glade in which
Simon sits in Chapter 3 symbolizes this loss of innocence. At first, it is a
place of natural beauty and peace, but when Simon returns later in the novel,
he discovers the bloody sow’s head impaled upon a stake in the middle of the
clearing. The bloody offering to the beast has disrupted the paradise that
existed before—a powerful symbol of innate human evil disrupting childhood
innocence.