The novel Lord of the Flies, by William Golding has already evolved dramatically since we first began reading it in class. At the beginning it was all fun and games; no parents, a whole island to themselves, just a bunch of innocent little boys, what could go wrong? Then it got a little more serious, they voted on an authority figure, (Ralph), and decided that certain precautions needed to be made, such as shelters, a fire on the top of the mountain to signal other ships so they can be rescued, a group for hunting (lead by Jack), and a specific spot for bathing. It first started to go downhill when Jack let the fire go out and there just happened to be a ship passing by. Jack, being irascible, did not appreciate the castigation that was obviously in his future if he didn’t appease Ralph, who was fuming at having lost a chance of being rescued.  The next thing to happen was more subtle, it was not noticeable at first but then slowly it was apparent that Jack was developing a very copious posse, the emaciated children were being drawn to the person they felt could protect them--since he was the hunter, and they were all jumpy about the talk of a beast on the island—and Ralph slowly started to devolve, losing his authority and becoming merely “the boy with the conch” as far as his authority was concerned.

The story started with a bunch of young innocent boys, who are not even slightly aware of the seriousness of their situation. It really reminds me of our prompt for the summer reading assignment, To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee. One of the topics for analysis happened to be childhood innocence, which is exactly what we are witnessing here.  In “TKAM” the main characters: (Scout and Jem) grow through the novel,  shedding their innocence, and learning the ways of society, however we haven’t--and most likely won’t--see any signs of this happening in “LOTF” due to the lack of parental guidance and supervision.  The children’s minds are derailing, and they are forgetting (or ignoring) all prior knowledge of social graces and more importantly, the difference between right and wrong.

I have chosen Jack as my character of interest for the assignment on William Golding’s characterization in the novel. Jack is very complex, starting off as an utter prick, head boy of his choir and obviously belongs to a high social class. Then we see his desire for being in charge, he wants to feel power over everyone else. Now just recently we have seen how he plans to gain that power: not through rationality like Ralph, but through fear, intimidation, and the promise of protection. By becoming the islands hunter, he gives himself an air of being able to fight anything, which comes in handy because the littlun’s are all worked up over the “beast.” Jacks sudden transformation into a hunter with more animal instincts than human, relate to the novel Life of Pi, that all students of Mr. Title’s had the pleasure (more or less) of reading. The main character, Pi, holds off for as long as he can before he is forced by starvation to kill his first living being--a little fish--but after that is over it becomes natural to him. His instincts for survival override even his faith in three religions. It brings up a very curious topic, how long does it take for someone to reach their breaking point, in which they resort to killing and going against God in order to stay alive? The human brain is, unsurprisingly, the most question generating part of the body. There is so much we still can’t even fathom about its inner workings. Like why don’t we use our whole brain? What would happen if we did? And then there is all the stuff it already does for us, like give us emotions, control our bodies, store memories and knowledge, etc. These studies have been going on since the times of Greek Philosophy; things like neuroscience, psychology, and sociology. The complexity of it all blows the minds of all those who care enough to read about it, it appears that we will never understand everything about this world, but where’s the fun if there are no mysteries in life?