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.