Conflicts – Lord of the Flies Kirsch
The conflict in Lord of
the Flies is Character vs. Environment. This conflict begins with a group of
school boys stranded on an uninhabited island with no way off. The boys decide
to make a signal fire to attempt to get rescued. But the conflict changes in
the book when one boy in the group, Jack, who is tired of following orders of
the group’s chief, Ralph and rebels and makes his own tribe.
Now, the major conflict
has changed from Character vs. Environment to Civilization vs. Savagery. Ralph’s
tribe is civilized because they have rules and they respect human rights even
though there are no adults to stop them. Jack’s tribe acts like savages. Whatever
they do, whether it is hunting or just playing involves violence. An example of
this violence is, in the novel a boy disobeyed Jack and Jack beat him as punishment.
From now until the end of the book there are some small conflicts between the
civilized tribe of Ralph and the savage tribe of Jack.
There were other small
conflicts in the first part of the novel that led up to the major one; one such
conflict is the Boys vs. Beastie. At the beginning of the novel, the smaller
boys of the group think there is a monster lurking about on the island. At first,
the boys are scared of the beast but as the fear spreads amongst the group the
boys become interested in killing the beast. This conflict is a transition to
the major one because some boys are eager to kill the beast and some are not. This
conflict increases the violence being used in the group.
Another conflict that leads up to the major
one is, Piggy vs. Boys. In the novel some boys especially Jack, bully Piggy for
being fat and having asthma. The bulling escalates from verbal to violence when
Jack pushes Piggy and breaks a part of his glasses. This conflict was a step towards
the violence and barbaric ways of Jack and his tribe. In conclusion these are two
smaller conflicts that relate and lead up to the major conflict of Civilization
vs. Savagery.
