Prevent the Boys from Descending Into Savagery Essay

Compare the ways in which Piggy and Simon attempt to prevent the boys from descending into savagery. The Lord of the Flies shows a group of boys who end up in a plane crash, and get stuck on a deserted island for weeks. Here, we find different types of boys, ones that are good, and like to do the right thing; others will mess around, and try and mislead others into their bad doings. However, through the novel, the two major characters of the book, Ralph and Jack fight for leadership and as Ralph tries to sustain democracy along with his friend Piggy, Jack tries to lead us into savagery, misleading others to believe that they aren’t going to be rescued, and instead, are going to be killed by a ‘beast’, which Simon, another quiet and saint-like boy discovers is not true. Savagery is an act of violent or cruelty, or anything bad that is going to happen. During this essay, I will be talking about how Simon and Piggy acted maturely, and how they hindered savagery onto the island for a little bit of time. I will be analyzing how they did this, and what got the couple killed because of this. Firstly, we will look at Piggy and how his suggestions were undermined by the other members of the group, this is consistent in all the meetings that they have, he is failed to be listened to. Piggy’s physical appearance, his common sense and genuine thinking makes him the only mature and ‘adult-like’ child on the island. However, he doesn’t blend in with the others because of this. All the others want to play, while he says that you shouldn’t be playing when you’re in a life-threatening situation, but we have to survive, find food, make shelters, which is genuinely a true fact. When playing ‘kill the beast’, which one of the boys pretends to be, he spoils the game. This really furthers Piggy and the others, we are now seeing that Ralph sticks up for Piggy, and that Jack and Ralph further away from their ‘invisible light of friendship’. Everyone doesn’t listen to him, because they feel he is different to him, by appearance, abilities, thinking, e.g. ‘I was the only boy in the school what had asthma’. None of the other boys had this, they felt he was different to others, so they wouldn’t include him in most occasions, but as Ralph was leader, he had to be. To live on a deserted island, we have to build shelter don’t we. Well Ralph being leader assigned jobs, and people weren’t following them as they should’ve been. Ralph and Simon are at work building huts for the younger boys to live in. Ralph gets irritated because the huts keep falling down before they are completed and  because, though the huts are vital to the boys’ ability to live on the island, none of the other boys besides Simon will help him. As Ralph and Simon work, most of the other boys splash about and play, it shows a complete disobedience of teamwork and order; people weren’t doing what t hey were supposed to be doing. Simon, Piggy and Ralph seem to only be leading civilization, only Piggy and Simon offered to help, everyone else is messing around, and this would lead to savagery, because they are not paying attention to what the leader says, if this carried on for a long-term period, things would go crazy! Jack and Piggy don’t like each other at all. Right from the start Jack reveals a deep dislike for Piggy. This started at the first meeting everyone had when Piggy and Ralph wanted to know who everyone was, Jack shouted, â€Å"Shut up fatty you talk too much† offending Piggy greatly, Piggy started to dislike him now, he said, ‘it was always like this’. When the fire goes out, Piggy said to Jack that you said you would keep the smoke going, as Jack now felt dumb, he punched Piggy in the stomach, making him even more vulnerable to things like this. Piggy represents civilization and the world of thought and reason. Jack represents the savagery of the island; it shows that they don’t like each other because they come from two ends of the spectrum. Next, we all hear about this beast, it isn’t actually real. The beast represents the way in which people make something outside of them evil, so that they can maintain and image of themselves as good, this allows them to avoid the responsibility of looking inside them. The beast is actually the plane pilot, who goes crazy, and then wanders around the island; the boys think it is the beast. Jack gets his honour and order only because of the beast; if the beast wasn’t there he wouldn’t be the leader of his tribe. Simon being brave, finds out that it is the pilot, and there is no beast, he runs off to Jack’s tribe, and tries to tell them, but then they think it’s the beast, because it is night-time, they kill him, not knowing it was Simon, a big pa rt of the island’s democracy has gone significantly. Simon dies, and it is very significant event in this case, if the boys listened to him, they would be saved by savagery, and won’t have to keep on acting like animals. However, a storm was arising in the moment of time, so it could have been a mistake, but Ralph and Piggy knew it was him. The sea connected softly when it came in contact with the sea, it felt that there was a storm; the Bible stated this,  because the wind was very strong, Jesus died and took it very strongly. Same for Simon, the sea connected with him, so in some terms, he could be Jesus in the book. To conclude, I think that if the boys had listened to Piggy and Simon, and just did not act immaturely and disobediently, they would have escaped from Jack’s savagery. At the end of the story, savagery took over, and the boys were ruled by an arrogant chief. Comparing the end and start of the story, they were completely different, physically and mentally, they let their own feelings about this ‘beast’ take over them, when actually Piggy and Simon were speaking sense the whole time! Each step that Jack made, and the kids believing what he said, got them one step closer to savagery, and it didn’t end up too well when the story was ending. We have a massive decline of civilised values; look how many kids got killed because of some boys, especially Roger acting stupid. I guess you’re thinking what they would be like in their adult-ages.