William Golding's Lord of the Flies is a disturbing fable about how ordinary kids change to savagery when they are marooned on a deserted island. Golding's tale is about schoolboys from a private school who's plane crashes and they become shipwrecked and they swim to a deserted island where they must fend for themselves. At first they stick together and act reasonably, but then they divide into two camps. One group takes Ralph as the leader where he and Piggy represent the struggle for order and democracy. The other's pick Jack, who is in conflict with Ralph and inserts a sort of anger and savagery in the boys he leads. The two groups have great hatred towards each other and everything begins to fall apart, this shows how man must have rules in order to control his savage side. It also demonstrates what will happen in a world without rules. .
That war had greatly effected the thinking about man's essential nature. Before the war people generally believed that man was essentially good-hearted and society often was evil. However, the killing and hardships of the war made it impossible for many people to believe any longer in man's basic innocence. Goldings" works show his thinking of the influence of this.
Lord of the Flies can be compared to books like Alive and Hatchet. Hatchet is a story about a kid named Brian and his fight for survival on an island all alone, unlike the children on the Lord of the Flies, Brian learns from his mistakes and makes a better life for himself. Golding's Lord of the Flies is easily compared to these books, showing how kids react when there is no democracy or rules established.
