�Environment and Human Values expressed in Golding’s Lord of the Flies�

Deepanjali K. Borse

Assistant Professor, Dept. of English

S.P.H. Arts, Sci. and Com. Mahila College,

Malegaon Camp.

Lord of the Flies by Nobel Prize winning author William Golding

• It discusses how culture created by man fails, using as an example a group of British school boys caught on a deserted island.
• uses the setting i.e. an isolated island in order to get across the fables moral.
• setting of the book made it remarkable to reveal the human nature and human values perfectly

• Ethics are closely associated to human moral values.
• Ralph, Jack, Simon, Piggy represent the real characters of the society having good and bad human values
• Ralph has proven himself a “man” of humanistic faith and action. Ralph’s insistence for an individual responsibility is praiseworthy. And it is Golding’s major concern- upon doing what must be done rather than what one would rather do.
• Jack is quick to anger, prideful, aggressive, courageous and tough, very cruel, merciless and arrogant

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• Piggy, Ralph and Simon helps to build up and sustain a social order. They care for the members of this society
• Piggy is practical and having intelligence and practical knowledge
• Simon is very co-operative. He likes to live in the company of nature

• The boys started to live like Primitives on the island. They use Piggy’s glasses for lightening the fire. Initially they rub two sticks for fire.
• Primitives were also living in jungle and make use of nature for their livelihood or daily routine. Here boys use coconuts shell for drinking water, leaves for building huts/shelter. They use one of the rocks as a lavatory. When the tide comes it cleans the rock.
• Environment/nature also helps the boys by providing fruits, water, swimming pool for getting comfort, pig’s meat and crabs, fishes, wood for fire and shelter etc. The island offers necessities to support life of these boys.

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• Golding’s Lord of the Flies can be interpreted as the following by Maria Fernkorn:

“ the island could represent the earth after an atomic war as the only place left which could function as starting point for a new world. This stage is similar to the biblical fall of Adam and Eve who got the chance to decide for good or evil, for God or the Devil through the gift of free will. In the novel too the same situation occurs. Mankind gets a new chance to live together after a great disaster. But just as in the Bible the Devil, who embodies evil, wins and the Paradise gets destroyed.”

• Golding chose children to emphasize that evil are inbuilt, that it belongs to human nature. Consequently, a society is needed in order to reduce conflicts. “Therefore one of the fable’s most basic and obvious themes is that society holds everyone together, and without these conditions, our ideals, values, and the basics of right and wrong are lost. Without society’s rigid rules, anarchy and savagery can come to light.”
• Golding seems to be conveying the message of human destiny and disintegration of the society. Ours future is gray due to loss of values, anarchy and violence. As mentioned by Coles notes-

• “At the end of Lord of the Flies, however, there is some hope for the future in the new knowledge that Ralph has acquired. He understands the conflict of good and evil, ideal and real that exists in man…. He will be a wise leader when he is an adult. He will be a man of reason, but also a man aware of the darkness lurking in the most innocent person. And he will have some positive effect on civilization.”
• The ending of Lord of the Flies is Golding’s warning for the real world to take responsibility and to do the good. Golding himself says the aim of his narrative is “to trace the defects of society back to the defects of human nature of the individual and not on any political system apparently logical or respectable.”