Ethical Trouble: Moral Changes in William Golding’s Lord of the Flies

William Golding’s Lord of the Flies was published in 1954, not long after the end of World War II. After graduating Oxford with a degree in English Literature, Golding eventually became a secondary school teacher, during which he observed the nature of young people. In 1940, Golding joined the Royal Navy and would eventually participate in the Invasion of Normandy, a hugely bloody battle in World War II. His service gave him a first-hand view of humanity and the evils it is capable of, both from what he saw but also, probably, from what he had to do. It is no surprise that after the war that he would go on to negotiate these truths through his book Lord of the Flies, a novel that seems heavily influenced by his experience of war and perhaps his understanding of young people as a teacher. Throughout the book, his character Jack devolves from an English schoolboy to a savage Chief who exercises power through violence. The values that he held, those promoted by English society, are eventually overshadowed by his innate instincts caused by the fear of death, shame and pride, and eventual de-civilization. Jack’s self-worth is based on the way others see him. Over the course of the novel, Jack keeps trying to win the boys’ respect and to maintain power, first by hunting the pigs, but after that fails, he turns to more sinister means. By the time he reaches this stage in his arc, his humanity is totally gone. In William Golding’s Lord of the Flies, to avoid shame and lack of control, Jack seems perfectly happy to change his ethics from those that mirror English society to what he thinks will allow him to maintain power while the boys try to survive in a state of nature. For Golding, Jack is representative of the flimsy nature of human ethics in the face of war, power struggles and anarchy, and through him Golding suggests we all have a tyrant waiting inside of us.

When the novel first opens and the boys have crash landed on this island, they scramble to secure order and to determine a leader to follow. Jack's need to be adored by others is immediately established when they go through this process. This is seen when he introduces himself as “... chapter chorister and head boy. I can sing C-sharp” (p. 22). Jack has learned from his British upbringing to value himself through the labels others give him, using this to define his identity rather than his own name. In this case, he is probably repeating what the adults said when they gave him the role of ‘Chapter chorister,’ believing this to be why he should be leader over anyone else. This reminds us that in the beginning of the novel, he is still a boy who has yet to mature. When Ralph is almost unanimously voted in as the leader, “...the freckles on Jack’s face disappeared under a blush of mortification” (p. 23). The use of the metaphor here strongly suggests he is embarrassed because apparently no one likes him. He is constantly looking for approval, and this is why it becomes easy over time for him to lose his morals. This scene foreshadows the fact that Jack’s self worth will be so determined by the way the boys see him that he will eventually take terrible means to steal their support. The embarrassment and shame that he feels, shown by the ‘blush of mortification’, drives him harder to gain the approval of others. 

As the novel progresses, and Jack keeps failing to garner the approval of the boys, his moral fibre wanes under his need to hide the shame and embarrassment that results. This is manifested when he rejects the democratic system upon which Ralph and the others are trying to negotiate life on the island. This is through the symbol of the conch. The conch represents democracy, enabling individual voices to have power, demonstrated through Piggy who says, “We can’t have everybody talking at once... I’ll give the conch to the next person to speak. He can hold it when he’s speaking.”(p.33). The conch is a lifeline, helping them stay in control and following the morals and rules of English society. In many ways, it gives them comfort so far from home. For Jack, though, the simple existence of the conch is a point of shame, his first failure, symbolising how he lost the election to Ralph. Because of this, he dismisses it and talks over it, and by extension, dismisses the values of English society. When he does so, it coincides with his increasing lust for power and respect. He snaps, eventually giving in to his inner ‘beastie’(p.35). He gains power through violence, and the boys are driven to follow him, hounded by the terror and fear that results from a person losing his morals. 

Jack’s transition from British school boy to savage beast in nature becomes obvious when he starts to wear a mask, thus reflecting the fact that he is being consumed now by his loss of ethics. When he returns from yet another failed hunting expedition, he smears clay and charcoal over his face to make a mask in an effort to blend in with the environment. Jack puts on the mask to hunt pigs, but in the end, the mask inspires fear and commands power over others, the opposite of the conch. This causes an inevitable conflict on the island between the mask and the conch and the breakdown of society and rejection of English morals. The mask completes Jack’s rejection of the values of the ‘old world’. Golding writes, ”He looked in astonishment, no longer at himself but at an awesome stranger (p. 63).” Golding shows that this mask, this simple covering of ash and clay, is enough to transform Jack into someone with the authority and power to compel the boys to follow him and, in turn, to hide themselves as well. Jack, looking down in the water, sees a different person, one stronger and “awesome”, which in this case means awe-inspiring, frightening, and powerful. His mask gifts him a new identity, allowing him to release his instincts of violence and gaining power through fear. Golding writes how, “... the mask was a thing on its own, behind which Jack hid, liberated from shame and self-consciousness (p. 64).“ Golding shows that the boys make rules based on what they are used to and what was the norm before. The “taboo of the old life” prevents Roger from harming Henry, the morals enforced by the “‘protection of parents and school and policemen and the law” (p.62). When Jack puts on this mask, he hides behind its anonymity and sense of power; he feels freed from the taboos and customs and right and wrongs of society. The mask that Jack wears is a metaphor for the return to a state of nature and compels others to follow it through fear. Eventually, that mask will come to reflect Jack’s near total loss of morals.

Jack’s rejection of ethics eventually encourages the boys to shed their inhibitions and join him in the decivilization of the group. Jack and his hunters who have now formed a separate group from Ralph and Piggy, are now moving towards the final phase of their character arcs from British morality to savagery defined by a loss of ethics. In Chapter 11, Piggy and Ralph head to Jack’s camp with the conch to ask if they can have Piggy’s glasses back, and by extension, the access to fire for survival. When they arrive, Ralph uses the conch in an attempt to call a meeting, as they had done before. This time, his call is responded to with “an imitation war-cry that was answered by a dozen voices”(p. 174). The boys have lost all individuality, blindly following Jack and his ethical-less attitude. As Ralph is trying to deal with the boys, Jack arrives back from hunting, and they begin to argue about the fire. Ralph still believes that they can be rescued, but Jack cares only about cooking and warmth - he does not care about getting rescued anymore. As the drama escalates, they begin to fight. Piggy manages to break them up, and as they listen to Piggy, a lever holding a boulder is pressed, and falls. Golding writes, “The rock struck Piggy a glancing blow from chin to knee; the conch exploded into a thousand white fragments and ceased to exist”(p. 181). The conch that represented democracy, civilization, that was their last tie to the English society from which they came is gone. Not only that, Piggy has been killed. Jack, instead of displaying any remorse or guilt immediately revels in this, screaming “There isn’t a tribe for you anymore! The conch is gone - I’m chief!”(p. 181). He has finally achieved his inner desire of power through fear, giving way to the pressure from the ‘beastie’ within him. Jack is now totally and utterly lost, and where ethics once repressed it, the tyrant within him explodes outwards.

At the end of Lord of the Flies, Jack has come full circle, once again a little boy, but is now, after the things he has done, a shadow of his former leading self. When the military at last finds the boys on the island, adults arrive to find the place alight with flames and a mob of young boys chasing Ralph. The boys are halted by this and the ‘grownups’ ask who their leader is. Interestingly, and rather surprisingly, Jack does not contest when Ralph says he is. Instead, Golding writes, “A little boy who wore the remains of an extraordinary black cap on his red hair and who carried the remains of a pair of spectacles at his waist, started forward, then changed his mind and stood still” (p. 201). In this description. Jack is described through the diminutive “little”, showing how he has lost his ‘awesome stranger’ and returned to being a small boy again. The black cap cements this, showing that he is, once again, the chapter chorister who can sing C#, but now, with the deeds he has done and seen,no longer takes the actions of a leader. The boys have lost a part of themselves on the island: their innocence, transforming them from a good English schoolboy to a mindless beast, driven only by fear and want. Jack starts forward, ready to challenge Ralph for the role of leader, but decides against it. The presence of the ‘grownups’ on the beach represent the return of society, of civilization, in which there is no place for the tyrant who ruled through fear that Jack had become. Still, Jack, and to some extent the other boys, don’t weep like Ralph. They show no remorse for killing Piggy or the chaos they have created on the island (or indeed for trying to kill Ralph). 

In the end, while the ‘grownups’ bring the boys back into English society, it seems as if they had fully rejected society and its morals when left to themselves. The Deus Ex Machina of the ‘grownups’ sudden appearance, saving Ralph from what would be certain death on the beach, feels almost as if Golding is robbing us of the ‘true’ ending of the story, where Ralph, the person who wanted to work together towards rescue, who tried his best to create a society with English morals, dies, killed on the beach, a martyr for democracy. The fire on the mountain top, started by the spectacles, begins as a small flame, grows and grows into a bonfire, then spreads over the island in a catastrophic fire, and then goes out. This is a metaphor for Jack as a whole. Jack, once an innocent, happy boy like the little flame, grows in power and fear to the huge fire that they built, and, as his failures continue to haunt him, explodes, hiding his pain, shame, and disappointment, spreading fear and hurt among the other boys. This completely consumes him as he becomes a maniacal dictator ruling through fear and violence. Through Jack, Golding shows us what truly lies within all humans, and that it is more likely that we will be a Jack in this situation than a Ralph. How utterly terrifying.

Works Cited:

Golding, William. Lord of the Flies. New York, Penguin Books, 2006.