Lord of the Flies Lab Report

Hypothesis: William Golding will use his novel, Lord of the Flies, to show that Hobbes was correct in that human nature is evil and based off of selfish desires.

Procedure:

1. Crash a plane that holds 20-25 British boys (none above the age of 12) and a pilot over a deserted island, making sure all but the pilot survive.
2. Have two boys find each other. One boy is called Ralph, is 12 years of age, and is a very attractive boy. The second boy is called Piggy, and is characterized by his circular glasses and pudgy appearance.
3. Drop a conch shell onto the Island, near where Ralph is swimming and give Piggy the knowledge on what it is and how to use it to bring all of the boys together. Have Ralph blow the conch to call a meeting.
4. Have all of the boys meet and give one of the boys, Roger, the idea to have a vote to decide a chief of their little “tribe.” Have the boys be engaged by Ralph's appearance of the strong older leader so that they will vote for him. One of the other boys, Jack, will be disappointed that he did not get the role, so have Ralph decide that Jack and his friends can be the hunters.
5. Put pigs on the island.
6. Have Ralph, Jack and Simon (one of the boys) climb the mountain and discover that there are no adults, that the island is actually an island, and that there are pigs that can be hunted.
7. Give the thought of a “beastie” to one of the younger boys and have him scare everyone with the idea of a monster. Give Ralph the idea to use a fire as a signal for rescue and have the boy's use Piggy's glasses to start the fire. Have one of the young boys disappear.
8. Give the boys the idea to build shelters to protect them but have only Piggy, Simon, and Ralph actually work on them. At the same time, make it so that Jack cannot kill a pig, and as a result Jack and Ralph will have an argument about the importance of the shelters, the fire, and the hunting.
9. Have Simon wander off on his own and find a beautiful sheltered place.
10. Have Jack find the clay and charcoal to make a hunting mask and give him so much desire to hunt that he decides to let the fire go out so that he can have more people hunting. At the same time send a ship by the Island that will not stop for the boys because they let the fire go out.
11. Have Ralph call an assembly with the boys and tell them everything that is going wrong. In the midst of this assembly, have one of the littl'uns say that they have actually seen the beastie. This thought will create more fear in the group but have Jack provide reassurance that if there were a beastie, he would have already found and killed it. Have all of the boys leave Ralph, Piggy, and Simon at the assembly place with feelings of turmoil and distrust in the air.
12. Drop a dead man attached to a parachute on the island and have two of the boys, Sam 'n' Eric, find the man and think he is the beastie. When Ralph finds out about this, he will go with Jack and his hunters to see if they can find the beastie.
13. On the hunt for the beastie, have the boys decide to hunt a pig. Although they will not get the pig, all of the boys, including Ralph, will get hung up in the excitement of killing and end up playing that one of the boys is a pig and will end up actually hurting him. After this, have Ralph, Jack and Roger find the beastie; they wont realize what it actually is and will run down the mountain to tell the others what they found.
14. When the boys reach the bottom of the mountain, have Jack call an assembly and tell everyone what happened and then call a re-vote for who should be chief. Have the boys be unwilling to vote for Jack instead of Ralph, and then Jack will storm off to form is own tribe.
15. Have Jack and the few boys who followed him kill a beast and offer a dinner to all of the boys from both tribes. Soon after this, have Simon find the head of the pig killed for the feast, fall faint, and start having a conversation with the hog's head.
16. Have Simon wake up and wander away only to find and discover what the beastie really is. After his discovery, have Simon bring the parachuted man down to Jack's feast where everyone is eating. At the same time, have the boys at the feast do a killing dance when Simon stumbles into their camp. Since Simon is their the boys will attack and kill him.
17. At this point, all of the boys will have joined Jack except Ralph, Simon, Piggy, and Sam 'n' Eric who meet the day after Simon was killed. All five of the boys will act like they had no part in the killing. Later that day, have Jack and his followers go down to Ralph's camp and attack the boys and take Piggy's glasses so that they can start their own fires.
18. Since Ralph needs fire, have him, Simon, Piggy, and Sam 'n' Eric decide to go to Jack's camp to get piggy's glasses back. At Jack's camp, a fight will start between Jack and Ralph. Jack will win, and Roger will kill piggy and torture Sam 'n' Eric into following Jack.
19. Have Ralph, who is now on his own, go to Jack's camp in search of Sam 'n' Eric. When he gets there, have Sam 'n' Eric give him food and tell him that the hunters are going to hunt him and to try and hide.
20. Have Jack set the island on fire so that he can kill Ralph.
21. Have a naval ship drive by as the fire is ablaze and come to rescue the boys. When this happens, have Jack back off and allow Ralph to assume responsibility for the boys.

Materials:

• Ralph-12 years of age, fair haired, appears as a leader, democratic views, not power hungry
• Jack- leader of the choir boys, runs a dictatorship, power hungry, Machiavellian, savage, blood thirsty
• Piggy- fatter boy, less book smart than the others but has more intellectual understanding, has asthma, loyal, low self-esteem, frightened by the other boys
• Simon-originally a choir boy, loyal to Ralph, hard working, kind, shy, has some kind of disease that causes him to have illusions, loving toward littluns
• Roger-choir boy, savage, evil, second in command to Jack, extremely blood thirsty
• Sam n' Eric- two twins who basically become one character, loyal to Ralph
• Littluns- group of younger boys, don't do much work, they play on the beach all day, always being picked on by bigguns.
• Conch- order and stability (provides structure at meetings, is a civil way of organizing meetings, assures the boys that they can have their say in matters,)
• Fire- hope (provides an avenue for rescue which sustains civility for a little while, gives the boys a reason to continue working, is necessary to maintain life because it cooks their food)
• Blood-Religion (spills each time a pig is killed showing their loss of good or religion in their lives, is seen often when boys are reflecting on human nature)
• Beastie- savagery (at the beginning, when the boys were civil, they were afraid of the beast but it didn't come up very often. As the book progressed, it came up more and more until the savages were worshiping it)
• Piggy's Glasses- wisdom (when you have it, you can survive, but without it you struggle greatly)
• Pigs- civilization (each time the boys kill one, they become more like savages, and towards the end of the book, they even shove a spear up it's butt symbolizing the total death of the boys civilized manner)
• Lord of the Flies-evil human nature (tells Simon that it always lives inside us and that we can never escape it, just like Golding believes of our human nature)
• Hunting Mask- appearance for power (gives Jack respect from the other boys, makes jack feel powerful, is feared and respected)
• Hobbes- He believed that there is scarcity in all things and that it governs human nature; therefore, human nature is evil because it is based on selfish desires. Hobbes also believed that humans have only one natural right, to survive- These concepts play out in The Lord of the Flies in the scarcity of fire (piggy's glasses) and in the nature of many of the boys, most of the boys end up turning to savages and only caring about themselves.
• Montesquieu- Montesquieu believed that power should be distributed to 3 branches to keep up checks and balances- When Ralph first starts his “government” he allows Jack to have some of the power. He allows him to manage the fire, hunting, and his choir boys, this division of power helped to keep Ralph from getting to much power and helped him to remember that the other boys had voices and opinions.
• Rousseau- He believed that man is generally good, but that his nature could turn him bad. Rousseau also believed that man needed society- Rousseau's views come to play in the overall actions of the boys. When they were first dropped on the island, the boys were not necessarily good, but they were behaved. Towards the end of the novel though, the boys felt the loss of their society and some of the boy's natures turned them evil.
• Machiavelli- Believed that a good leader should be feared, do everything in his power to remain in power and to always maintain an appearance that he is greater than his people- Machiavelli's principals are shown in The Lord of the Flies in Jack. Jack was certainly feared by the boys, he would string up random ones and torture them. He also maintained his appearance symbolically through his hunting mask; when he wore it, everyone saw him as extraordinary.
• Wollstonecraft- She believed that women deserved the same rights as men- Her ideas were not followed in the society of the boys if you compare the littluns to women. The littluns never had a say in what was going on about the island, and they were treated as if they had no potential and were useless. This treatment is exactly what Wollstonecraft was trying to stop.

Data

“They knew very well why he hadn't: because of the enormity of the knife descending and cutting into living flesh; because of the unbearable blood” (31, Golding).

At this point in The Lord of the Flies, Jack still has the influence of society on him. His morals and judgment told him that it wasn't okay to kill the pig. Golding was using this quote to show how our society influences our actions and can overpower our human nature. Since Jack grew up in civilized British culture, he knew that it wasn't okay for him to kill the pig.

“I agree with Ralph. We've got to have rules and obey them. After all, we're not savages. We're English, and the English are best at everything. So we've got to do the right things”(42, Golding).

This quote, spoken by Jack, shows the impact that society has had on who Jack is and the decisions that he makes. He has grown up English, and he knows that the English society would approve of setting up a civilized government. He hasn't thought yet about how his decision will effect him when his need to simply survive becomes apparent.

“He tried to convey the compulsion to track down and kill that was swallowing him up” (51, Golding).

This quote happens after the first quote, and though it is spoken by Jack, it is quite the opposite in nature than the previous quote. At this point in time, Jack's societal influences are starting to wear off; he is no longer governed by his morals and his human nature is now free to take over his actions. Golding uses this quote to give a glimpse into Jack's human nature.

“What are we? Humans? Or animals? Or savages? What's grownups going to think? Going off- hunting pigs- letting fires go out- and now?” (91, Golding).

When Ralph says this quote, it is just after Jack killed his first pig, and let the fire run out. This quote shows the turning point in the society. This is the point at which Jack determines that he no longer needs to be civilized, he just needs to survive by hunting. At the same time, Ralph is becoming more stuck in his ways and his opinion that the boys should not allow their societal ways to degrade and that they needed to remain civilized.

“Bollocks to the rules! We're strong- we'll hunt! If there's a beast, we'll hunt it down! We'll close in and beat and beat and beat-!” (91, Golding).

Jack's quote here occurs just after Ralph's quote above. Looking back to the beginning of the novel, Jack was the major supporter of rules, he thought that they would help the boys to do the right thing. Now though, since he no longer follows his morals and his conscience, rules have no place in his world, so he instead decides that the thrill of killing is more important than maintaining a civilized society.

“Don't you understand, Piggy? The things we did-” (157, Golding).

Golding uses Ralph's quote here to show how even the people who appear to do good and not to conform to evil ways occasionally falter and let their evil side take over. This quote is spoken just after all of the boys killed and attacked Simon. The fact that they could commit murder was hanging over the boys' heads and they realized that they too had let their darker side take over.

Conclusion:

Based on Golding's novel, I would come to the conclusion that Hobbes was correct in saying that human nature is selfish and based on scarcity. Throughout the novel, almost every character allowed evil to take over their decisions and ended up doing something horrible. The story shows us that when people are taken away from their society, they allow their human nature to take over their actions, and they do evil things. Taking these ideas into consideration, my hypothesis was correct; most of what the boys did in the story was based on selfish desires. They each wanted to get more power and enjoy themselves more while they were on the island. Taking into consideration the mood in which he wrote The Lord of the Flies I would come to the conclusion that William Golding supported Thomas Hobbes's ideas surrounding human nature; that it is selfish and evil. I disagree with Golding. I cannot force myself to believe that everyone is selfish and evil. I am a religious person, and I believe that God created man to do good and to help one another. I believe that human nature is good but that our environments, and events in our lives can turn us evil. I know that some people, maybe even many, are evil, but not all. When I look at people like Mother Theresa and Martin Luther King Jr, I don't know how people can call them evil and selfish, they risked their lives and gave up so much for the good of others. William Golding may have believed that human nature was evil, but I will never be able to come to that conclusion.