Savagery in Golding’s Lord of the Flies Essay Sample

When a human does something it enjoys, the brain releases a drug known as dopamine. Sometimes, fighting this feeling of pleasure caused by dopamine is the hardest part of resisting unethical behavior. Characters from Golding’s Lord of the Flies who represent this complication are Jack Merridew and Roger. Jack and his choir were a portion of the group of children who were stranded on an island due to a plane crash and had to survive with limited resources. Jack and Roger swiftly figured that they were going to hunt for pigs in order to feed the boys and satisfy themselves. After a few hunts alone in the forest, Jack and Roger became exceedingly comfortable with killing pigs for their meat, and the other boys followed suit. Very quickly, life on the island turned downhill the more comfortable they got with hunting. Even if the environment surrounding the boys was different, their emotional and brain development would not have changed and therefore their savagery should be blamed on the biological components.

It is obvious that Roger’s dive into ferocity is due to his drive to feel good and the pleasure of success.  Rodger was hunting for food with the rest of the boys when they found a pig run. It took a little while to find any pigs, but once they spotted an immense sow, every single one of the boys in Jack’s tribe attacked it. As the boys were chasing the pig through the forest “Roger began to withdraw his spear and the boys noticed it for the first time. Robert stabilized the thing in a phrase which was received uproariously. ‘Right up her ass’” ( Lord of the Flies 135)! Thus, Roger ends up finding the pig and hurling his spear at it which kills the poor sow. There is a lot of importance behind this because Roger is not only getting tremendously comfortable barbarically killing an innocent piglet, but he is finding joy in doing it. Whenever we enjoy anything, we want more of it, so we continue to do whatever the root of that joy is. On top of this, Roger has plenty more drive to do evil than the others so there is nothing that will step between him and the feeling of success after killing. Likewise, B.J. Casey of Cornell University tries to understand the drive to do different things that are unprincipled similar to the way the boys acted in Golding's novel. She has been experimenting in her lab using living people and tracking their reactions to different situations. Her conclusion was that “A major reason why teenagers often respond to those influences with irrational decisions is the presence of a brain chemical known as dopamine. The brain releases dopamine when something makes us feel good” (Mascarelli). Henceforth, even if something someone does is bad, if it makes them feel satisfied, their brain releases dopamine which makes them want to do it again. This is similar to Roger and his ruthless killing of the pig because when he kills the pig, he feels triumphant which makes his brain release the chemical, dopamine. This produces the drive to do it over and over again. Later in the novel, this urge to kill a pig eventually leads to an urge to kill a human which is otherworldly. Overall, there is nothing that the surrounding environment had to do with Roger turning savage, and instead, it was all due to an alter in his brain development. 

Jack Merridew’s descent into savagery should be blamed on a lack of brain development and the delight of killing sows to eat. After a long day spent pursuing poor piglets, Jack dropped by Ralph’s tribe and stole some fire for their feast. He tries to persuade some to come and join him with the rest of his tribe, but not many entertained this idea even though they were running on an extremely small amount of food. Before leaving, Jack informs the people of Ralph’s tribe “‘We’ve killed a pig and we’ve got meat. You can come and eat with us if you like’” (Golding qtd in Lord of the Flies 140). Furthermore, Jack spends large masses of time hunting down piglets to feed him and his tribe, so the reward feels a lot better compared to if he spent no time coursing. This means the reward of killing is worth it for Jack and continues to do it. It is common sense that the more work someone puts into something, the more up to the mark the award feels. In this situation, because he spends so much time and effort hunting, the reward feels so much better because, as stated above, our brain releases dopamine which is the chemical that makes us feel adequate. Some scientists were confused about the idea that it felt satisfying to do evil. In an experiment conducted by the University of Stanford, they tried to replicate what life was like for prisoners and how they were treated. It was set up in a basement and was replicated to look just like a prison. Everyone who took part in the experiment was told to play their role in order to get accurate data. Zimbardo, one of the scientists from Standford realized that “The experiment showed that one-third of the guards began to show an extreme and embedded streak of sadism” (Shuttleworth). Thus, the guards were told to play their role and did not expect much of it, but when they were locked in the prison, they started truly feeling the horrible feelings of a guard and began to do horrible things to make them feel better. This is just like Jack and his desire to do awful. He is killing poor piglets to try and cover up the fact that they are stuck on the island alone. He does this to satisfy himself and make others around him believe he is a powerful individual. 

Some may argue that the setting caused the boys to turn to violence as a solution, but this claim is incorrect as all of the boys did not turn into undomesticated beings. If the setting were the cause of their behavior, they all would have changed into immoral beings. Almost 40 years after writing his novel, Lord Of The Flies, William Golding writes about his stance on how people become bad, or, on the other hand, how they stay by their morals. He claims that “The truth must be that both components are of equal importance. We are born with evil in us and cruelty is part of this” (How Boys Become Vicious).  Therefore, there is always an evil somewhere within people, it is those people that have the power of bringing it out or sticking by their values. Similarly, the boys stuck on the island have a choice if they want to turn evil or stay virtuous. This is obvious because people such as Piggy and Ralph stay moral people, but Rodger and Jack turn evil. This was all because their brains developed differently which is what caused them to have different choices.

Overall, the boys’ change into savagery had nothing to do with the surrounding environment and instead was all due to their brain development and other biological factors. If it were not for the boys being stuck on the island alone, their brains may have developed differently with the supervision of their parents, but instead, they developed in the way of nomads which changed them into horrible people. A potato that is fully cooked is ready to be served on a platter and eaten, but a half-cooked one would not taste as good. This is similar to our brain. A fully developed brain is able to withstand the temptations of evil, just like Ralph, but on the other hand, if the brain is not fully developed, it is not ready to be on its own, and instead needs more development just like a half-cooked potato would need more cooking. In the real world, it is important to stay away from the awful because only one small event can lead to a whole new you.