Lord of the Flies

The Lord of the Flies is about a mini-society of boys formed by chance. Their isolation from adults forced reality upon them and so they had to think for themselves and work together. As a commentary of today's society it does well to explain some of today's issues like violence, laws, pride, greed, fear, religious power and the conflict between living in a civilised society or savagery.

It is all about the choice the boys made when life became real. In the beginning their lives were controlled and protected by their parents, teachers and police officers. Jack cannot kill the pig even though he can eat meat because of the "enormity of the knife descending and cutting into living flesh." (p 41). Roger cannot hit the boys with the stones even though he could if he wanted to because he has been conditioned by the society he used to live in. This is the type of society the children

live in. Everything is a game until the beast. The beast signals the end of the games and start of reality. Lives are at stake in perspective of the boys and survival must occur in any form. Our society is much like this as today's society is also about survival and what choices we make to survive.

The mini-society started off peaceful. The purpose was to set a signal fire and live off fruit until help came. The conflict came when the fire and hunting could not be committed to at the same time. As the fire was a 24 hour task and hunting needed the whole party, the party started to take sides. Ralph's fire would be the sensible thing to do to get rescued however hunting would lift the standard of living for all the

boys and would also be a luxury, recreational event. The fire was hard work and immediate results were none even though long-term results would be better. The hunting side wins eventually. In Australia today we are spending beyond our ability to afford this spending. This means we have a great influx of goods and services but as a community we are cheating ourselves as this leads to a current account deficit and the cost of living in this deficit must be paid plus the deficit. In this book's case, the deficit was their morals and the interest was paid in life.

The conch was the symbol of power and it represented the order in the beginning of the book. It brought them together and provided laws for the society. The main law being whoever holds it has the right to speak without interjection or disrespect while he was speaking. It is much like a policeman's badge or even the mace in our parliament.

However, the beast held a greater power over the conch which was fear. It is used by Jack to gain power over the rest of the group. His promises and rallies to kill

the beast eased the fear of the boys and hence he won over the group. The killing of Simon as the beast but saying the beast was still alive, showed Jack had used the beast to keep his power as leader of the tribe. In a way, it became a religion as Jack's ritual of killing pigs for their heads to keep the beast happy. This was his method of promoting hunting. Other examples of this in real society are the Vikings whose promise of Valhalla made them among the best warriors of all time in the world. In today's society, religions can give power and money to many people. Fear of gods or protection from all fears in society can make person donate to a religious unit material goods or loyalty. Even traditional religions like Catholicism can allow the leaders to lead a life of