" . . . But his soul was mad. Being alone in the wilderness, it had looked within itself and, by Heavens I tell you, it had gone mad . . . No eloquence could have been so withering to one's belief in mankind as his final burst of sincerity. He struggled with himself too. I saw it. I heard it. I saw the inconceivable mystery of a soul that knew no restraint, no faith and no fear, yet struggling blindly with itself."
Joseph Conrad in Heart of Darkness
The range of the fiendish acts of all the children in Lord of the Flies lead to their own moral degradation as they develop a savagery behavior and adopt a brutal nature which universally confirm the scathing and destructive conduct of man. Lord of the Flies is a stunning exploration of the deepest and darkest sides of the bestiality of the human being which is gradually revealed, in this particular case, in the apparent innocence of a bunch of children who are marooned on an isolated island. Hence, the loss of innocence turns into a diabolical and ruthless conduct as the children intend to coexist among each other along the whole novel. Unfortunately, their clumsy attempt to establish a civilization in the middle of wilderness makes them split until they ultimately set a barbaric tribe. Ralph, who is the only straight character that remains civilized until the last second of their painful adventure in the novel, is first introduced as an innocent boy. After their plane has been wrecked in the sea, he appears on the island picking his way towards a lagoon. He is described as "a boy with fair hair" who possesses the perfect physical conditions to keep himself alive. He is a strong and healthy child who is nimble to clamber heavily among the thick vegetation and the heavy rocks of the island. His innocence is remarked as he plays around the island without pondering about the real harmful consequences of being trapped at an isolated place. Equally, his innocent behavior is manifested when Piggy, the fat boy, reaches the lagoon. Ralph comments to Piggy that his father, who is a commander in the army, will come pretty soon to rescue them, so there is no need to be worried about. The inexperienced life of Ralph allows him to see his stay on the island as an easy and entertaining way which gives him the chance to be released from the authority of his commander father. He considers that being on the island is an occasion to be free from authority and rules. Therefore, he assumes that life over there is meant to do everything he was prevented from doing in the adult world. His blissful and heroic spirit fosters his expectancy to undertake an adventurous experience in the bewildering vastness of the island while he awaits the moment to be rescued. In fact, Ralph never imagines that he really is on the threshold of danger and death. As the author, William Golding, introduces Piggy, we also learn about his pure innocence. Piggy happens to be an overweight asthmatic boy who, in contrast to Ralph, lacks the physical skills to survive on the island. His whole life depends on his spectacles, and these facts immediately suggest that he would not be able to endure the obnoxious anarchy of the insane children later in the novel. He is also initially underlined as an outsider as he makes a great effort to obtain Ralph's sympathy and acceptance before the other children show up. Piggy is pathetic when he believes that if he confesses how he was called at school, then Ralph will become his friend and will not call him names. " 'I don't care what they call me' he said confidentially, 'so long as they don't call me what they used to call me at school.' Ralph was faintly interested. 'What was that?' The fat boy glanced over his shoulders, then leaned toward Ralph. He whispered. 'They used to call me Piggy' " (11). Ralph obviously laughs at this confidence and starts amusingly calling him "piggy, Piggy." In this particular instance, Piggy allows himself to enhance his pathetic condition of being ridiculed because of the shape of his body and his nickname. He was expecting consideration from Ralph, who seemed to be a different guy, but in return Piggy is subject of scornful mockery. In this way, Piggy demonstrates his level of innocence as he wrongly intends to trust a stranger. Ralph also emphasizes his immaturity here one more time since he is not still grown up enough to stop making fun of people. His laughter is just an expression of a childish boy who finds it funny someone called by that name, and that is why Ralph tends to be cruel with Piggy on the regular basis of children's normal cruelty. William Golding's expertness to develop the characterization of all the children from innocence to evil in Lord of the Flies, vividly comes into view since their first appearance. We can observe that while Ralph is an attractive, athletic, sort of a smart boy still in the state of innocence, Piggy, in spite of his small age, is the frightened outsider but intellectual boy. Piggy cerebrates the effectiveness of the conch and persuades Ralph to blow it in order to summon the first assembly so that all the children reach the lagoon. Although Piggy is still an innocent boy, he seems to have the precious gift for knowledge and is able to advise Ralph with brilliant insights to establish order. Piggy' s level of intellectuality determines a higher innocent maturity compared to that of Ralph's, whose first expression of cruelty takes place when he makes fun of Piggy's physical weaknesses. Ralph ridicules Piggy by telling him rude comments such as "suck to your untie" and "suck to your ass-mar" when Piggy affirms he cannot swim because of his asthma (13). Ralph also achieves to evoke contemptuous laugher from the rest of the children when he tells them that the fat boy is called Piggy, though Ralph would not have known this, unless Piggy himself had told him. From now on, the children thrive a harsh instigation against Piggy who is ridiculed for his fatness, his asthma, his spectacles and his limitations to do hard work. The embarrassment and the severe humiliation that the children cause Piggy at the beginning of the story overshadows the scathing brutality they are endowed with in the end of the novel. The loss of innocence is clearly initiated when Jack Merridew appears with the choir. He is an arrogant and onerous bully who exerts total power on the choir and who later becomes delighted with a taste for violence and severity. His lack of human compassion is first seen when he demands the children to stand still in line sweating in the sunshine and one of them falls down in the sand. His words, "He's always throwing a faint. He did in Gib,: and Addis; and at mantis over the precentor" (20) reveal the exploited uneasiness of his temper and his peevish coercion to people. Thus, when all the survivors are present and vote to choose the leader of the children, Jack makes haste to assure his leadership; " 'I ought to be the chief,' said Jack with simple arrogance, 'because I am chapter chorister and head boy' " (22) His authoritative attitude intends to force the children to elect him as the leader, and he even protests when they do not approve his will. Ralph is acclaimed by all except the choir which votes for Jack, and this implies the forcible restrain Jack brings upon the members of his group of singers. In this way, he also covets the attainment of the rest of the children under his repressive control, a goal he eventually achieves. At the moment of the elections, all the children are still in the realms of innocence since their benevolent and righteous behavior let them observe Ralph as the indicated leader for their new society. They are aware of the qualities of this boy; "There was a stillness about Ralph . . . there was his size, and attractive appearance; and most obscurely, yet most powerfully, there was the conch. The being that had blown that, had sat waiting for them on the platform with the delicate thing balanced on his knees" (22). Ralph is conceived as an intelligent boy with the natural inclination to do charitable acts for those around him and, as he holds the conch, he is considered as a chief who will rule with optimal principles of democracy as he pertains the interests and the participation of all the children. The election of Ralph as the chief undoubtedly emphasizes the boys' innocence because this action shows their urgent craving for establishing an island society based on the rules of democracy and civilization. Thus, the conch, with which Piggy instructs Ralph to summon the children, becomes the symbol of social order in the middle of wilderness among these immature boys who want to live in an organized and lawful community. Our concept of Ralph changes at this point. The first impression we have of Ralph when he mocks Piggy's asthma is that of cruelty since Ralph shows himself as an immature and insensitive boy to get along with Piggy. However, the method Piggy has used to teach him how to blow the conch and the concerns Piggy has exposed to him previous the first assembly, make Ralph acquire certain maturity. When Ralph says that his father is coming to rescue them, the immediate question Piggy asks is "How does he know we're here"(14). Piggy is indeed more realistic than Ralph and sees things as they are; "Did you hear what the pilot said? About the atom bomb? They're all dead. . . and this is an island. Nobody don't know we're here. Your dad don't know, nobody don't know. We may stay here till we die" (14). Since Piggy exposes their real conditions on the island, Ralph begins to assume a mature role. Therefore, Ralph learns from Piggy and is capable of becoming more aware of the atrocious outcome if they do nothing quickly to be saved. That is why when all the children get together by the lagoon, Ralph utters their first priority, "We've got to decide about being rescued" (22). So far, Ralph has learned to be more responsible and more understanding. We can observe that when Jack verbally attacks Piggy for the first time by shouting at him, "You're talking to much. Shut up, fatty.", Ralph answers back, "He's not fatty, his real name is Piggy" in defence of the person who has opened his mind to adopt a sense of responsibility and maturity. Lamentably, in his haste to defend Piggy, he lets everybody know what the overweight boy's nickname is, and this suggests that, although Ralph has started to change, he is still quiet inexperienced to deal with serious affairs. We can estimate that both, Ralph and Piggy, like most of the children, represent pure innocence and civilization. Piggy is the intellectual leader who measures the realistic conditions of their loss on the island and consequently provides reasonable solutions to their problems. Ralph, on his hand, has the necessary physical requirements and credibility to lead the children. So, both working as a team can assure their eagerness to be rescued. Unfortunately, their willingness to set a society is threatened by the disruptive and overbearing presence of Jack Merridew whose constant ambition for power causes friction between the leader and himself until he scatters the oneness of the children and besieges with a kingdom of destructiveness and beastly felonies. Therefore, William Golding's theme in Lord of the Flies refers to the truth of our vicious, depraved and belligerent human nature. Evil happens to be a ferocious inner force that endlessly operates on our human code as we are tempted to perform mundane and insane acts in order to destroy our own kind. Then, if we are naturally evil, we will never be able to reach real civilization. This is the central idea of the novel because just having "one" Jack in one society, it is enough to disintegrate civilization. We can witness that the collapse of the social order the children try to set in a wild spot of the island, is directly caused by, on the one hand, their own wicked personal limitations, and on the other hand, the diabolical machinations of Jack to achieve his macabre purposes. Then, because of their weaknesses, the boys of the island lose their innocence to acquire the inmost brutal level of degeneration. Along the action of the novel, all the limitations of the boys are clearly displayed. After the exploration of Jack, Ralph and Simon on top of the mountain to verify if they are on an island, the boys again summon an assembly in which they confront reality. They discover that their situation is cumbersome, and in this sense, they have to talk about priorities. They realize they are lonely; for this, they have to get food, find shelter to protect from the weather, adhere to a system of rules and the use of the conch, defend from the possible existence of a beast on the island, and most importantly, determine the way they can be rescued, which undoubtedly is their most urgent priority. These concerns let us see again that a society is being established by the boys as they have the mutual disposition of living together and organizing themselves to solve their inconveniences of loneliness, hunger, helplessness, defenselessness and rescue; that is to say, they are operating on a reasonable conception of civilization. However, we are about to see that their plans for bringing up a social system is going to be ruined by their own inconcinnities. In order to satisfy their necessity of food, Ralph empowers Jack to be the chief of the hunters, who are only those involved in the choir. Ralph already knows that Jack has been resented as a result of not having been chosen as the leader, so there is already a high rivalry between these two boys, although Ralph never intended to maintain such aversion. Ralph presumes his opponent is going to aggrieve and revenge sooner or later; in consequence, he is prepared to appraise Jack as a brave hunter to make him feel as an important adventurous chief for hunting and bringing food for everyone. Ironically, Jack is never satisfied of being promoted to a second position, and this suggests that he is plotting an intense offense against Ralph. This is of course, the first limitation of the boys because both authorities, the chief of their whole new society and the chief of hunters, hold an extreme opposition as they start a senseless struggle for power. Their second limitation resides on their failure to built shelter. First, because the children are not disciplined to help with hard work, and therefore, only Ralph and Simon end up building huts, which is a labor that goes beyond their physical possibilities. We observe that they can hardly erect two unsteady, quivering huts while a third one is in ruins. For instance, Piggy abhors doing hard physical effort so he rather prefers to hide in the weeds for not being involved in the huts construction. Second, because the chief of the hunters, Jack, gradually becomes obsessed for hunting until the point he is completely careless of building any kind of civilized refuge. He prefers to creep in the forest with his hunters to train themselves in view of killing piglets. At a critical moment when Ralph is indignant because of the boys' negligence, he says to Jack, "the best thing we can do is to get ourselves rescued". Then Jack replies, "Rescue? Yes, of course! All the same, I'd like to catch a pig first" (53). Jack's comment reveals that he is practically adjusting to his new life and does not need any kind of rescue as long as he can hunt pigs. In fact, he is severely disappointed with himself after a frustrating day trying to get any prey. In addition to these weaknesses, the rest of the children, the littluns and the remaining biguns, procrastinate all the time spending long hours lying on the beach or just playing around. The ideal of society is already broken up. This number of limitations demonstrates that these human beings cannot longer yearn for a society because they are entirely devoid of a sense of cooperativeness, responsibility and compromise, and without these basic human principles, they obviously cannot succeed in their enterprise. They are so immature and somehow innocent to harmonize and bring into agreement their various differing interests, their diversity of goals and their personal characteristics, that their intention to keep their human, civilized and social dignity becomes technically ineffective. Surprisingly, all the boys concern about their own business and leave all the responsibility on Ralph's shoulders. William Golding certainly wanted to show how easily our own society can collapse due to our carelessness, selfish purposes and corruptive actions, because after all, a social order consists of the mutual interests and companionship of every single human being in search of a common goal. It also seems that the author of Lord of the Flies wanted to give us a warning and a guideline to be aware of our own incendiary evil conduct in this modern society. Indeed, one of the major incidents that elucidates the failure of the boys to live in harmony, is when they let part of the island get aflame. Ralph announces that if they want to be rescued, they immediately have to start a fire. There is an instantaneous reaction; the boys split out following Jack in search of wood. Here, the boys demonstrate how unprepared they are to deal with those affairs related to their own survival. They collect a huge heap of firewood, but then they find themselves inevitably inept to light it up. Ralph shouts at Piggy, "Have you got any matches?" (40). This question indicates the absurdity of their plan to start a fire. To what extend could it be possible that a boy had any matches in the middle of wilderness after being wrecked in the sea? At a first sight, Ralph's question and the situation in which they are involved may look ridiculous and funny. However, this event clearly points out the pathetic condition of the children on the island because they are not suitable for these hard times as they lack the simple judgment, that for starting a fire, at least in civilizable terms, matches are needed. Thus, they will never be able to measure the consequences of their acts, and this remarks again the immaturity and innocence of the boys to pursue their goal of establishing a society. On the contrary, they progressively move away from social decency. Since they are incompetent to light the fire, the unbecoming reaction of Jack is to grab Piggy's glasses against his will. "Jack pointed suddenly. 'His specs- use them as burning glasses!' Piggy was surrounded before he could back away. 'Here- let me go!' His voice rose to a shriek of terror as Jack snatched the glasses off his face" (40). The rest of the children get excited about this unbridled outburst and as a sign of approval there are "pushing and pulling and officious cries" (40) which imply that all the boys perform the first aggressive physical assault to the poor Piggy who is, at this moment, totally blind without his glasses. Unfortunately, his physical disabilities make him fearful of attack, and Jack is wise to discover this. Radically, one of their brutal laws is here stated, only the strongest are those who have privilege to be respected, those who are weak are ineluctably compelled to be abused and sacrificed. As the children over-collect wood and are at the risk of starting a huge fire, Piggy, the intelligent and reasonable boy, holds the conch, which is the symbol of democratic participation, to have the right to speak in order to persuade them of their mistake, but they inexorably refuse his warning, " 'I got the conch', said Piggy indignantly. 'You let me speak!' 'The conch doesn't count on top of the mountain,' said Jack, 'so you shut up' "(42). Jack initiates his dominion of repression since he despoils Piggy to express his viewpoint on democratic basis. Paradoxically, Jack holds out his hands for the conch and proclaims, "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 thing" (43). In this particular instance, we can witness the immorality and dishonesty of Jack as a human being. First, he exercises all his detrimental despotism upon Piggy to not let him speak, breaking in this way the rules of social order with which Piggy has the human right to speak. Then, contradictorily, he publicly declares the others to follow the rules because they are not "savages". But indeed, his act of having repressed the asthmatic fat boy to warn them about the danger with the fire is a heightening expression of savagery. Therefore, Jack is a manipulator whose persuasive ideas have a misleading intention that affirms his fraudulent and corruptive nature. Deep inside, he strategically wants to stand out to gain status with his statement of following the rules due to the fact that he looks forwards for snatching Ralph's leadership and becoming the absolute ruler. The boys quickly discover that part of the island is on fire. The bonfire they have lit has gone out of hands and they are powerless to stop it. With this disgraceful accident William Golding seems to consider that our brutal stubbornness and our instinctual impulses devastate our civilized condition. Piggy's worries, which stand for the pure intellectuality of man, are destroyed by Jack, who represents our innermost inane and primitive bestial side. Once our bestial part has caused damage, it is impossible to remedy and restore things, because in many cases, like it is presented in this incident, rationality is so completely crushed by the ignorance of our own thoughtless actions that, in fact, there is nothing to be done in order to save civilization. Jack's limitation to maintain the fire going also needs to be carefully accounted. He himself compromises when he says "Ralph, I'll split up the choir - my hunters, that is- into groups, and we'll be responsible for keeping the fire going-" (43). However, he ignores his task when he starts developing an uncontrollable obsession for killing piglets. He knows that his act of killing not only grants his manhood, but strongly ratifies his dexterity to dominate nature, and in this way, to dominate every alive creature on the island. We can notice that the first time he sees a piglet he is ossified to stab the animal with his knife "because of the enormity of the knife descending and cutting into living flesh; because of the unbearable blood" (31). He is still quiet innocent and civilized to kill an animal, but he is instinctively turning into a savage primitive level because he believes that meat is vital to live; and to obtain meat, he must challenge himself to use his knife, which is the symbol of lustful rapacity. In this sense, as a wild carnivorous animal, his existence will be subsisted on live prey, so later he will be delighted to assume a predator animal role as a means of capturing piglets to maintain himself alive and subsequently, to victimize those of his own kind. Eventually, as soon as he accomplishes his fixed plan of hunting a piglet, he totally loses the remains of his boyish innocent behavior and starts to develop a spirit of riotous perverseness since he is convinced that the act of killing assures him the privilege to be honored and respected by the rest of the boys. He is aware that, in one sense, he is more powerful than Ralph because, while Ralph spends his time trying to built shelter, that is to say, concerns the priority of hiding from danger in order to survive, Jack, in contrast, bravely confronts danger in order to be the dominant and not the dominated, and for Jack's code, being a courageous warrior is the main requirement to be addressed as a chief. That is why he emerges as a bloodthirsty to start gaining power. A great significant revelation in Lord of the Flies is that the boys not only fail in their endeavor to set civilization on the island because of their vicious natures of selfishness, competitiveness, cruelty and irresponsibility; but most striking, because they also lack the traditional restraints of society that, to a certain extend, would have controlled their degeneration. For instance, they never adhere to any strong moral doctrine, to an ethical code, to a religious creed, to an intellectual disposition, to a legal system, or at least, to a conduct of good manners. It is meant that as soon as they reach the island, they distort all of the valuable elements they brought from their traditional, social and cultural English background. The fact that they intend to establish a democratic society based on the proper use of the conch but it does not work, clearly suggests their incapacity to maintain a close adherence to their previous coherent structure of social organization. Besides, as the boys experience a successive chain of frustrating attempts, they reach to the point of displaying the natural corruption every human being unconsciously holds inside. They realize that it is less complicated to act without restrictions than to depend on the traditional complexities of civilization. Once Jack has lost his innocence after killing a piglet, he manages to engage a fight with Ralph, proclaims to establish his new kingdom based on his own rules and persuades the boys to join his tribe. Jack adopts both, a mental perversion and a physical deterioration. He and all of the boys of the choir, who are now hunters, walk semi-naked in the woods, have already long hair, and have gotten their faces and bodies painted. They use white clay and charcoal, and are so transformed that they do not recognize themselves. Their decadent physical change is caused by the necessity of killing a prey so that the piglets will not sense them when hunting. Now that Jack is transformed into a savagery and his identity is hidden behind his painted face, he is "liberated from shame and self-consciousness" (66). This is the frightening truth about the human nature. Jack and his hunters become the antithesis of civilization since they acquire the attitude of primitive creatures who content with the simple satisfaction of eating meat. Their whole existence depends on the gratification to please their physical needs and appetites. Symbolically, Jack and his hunters are now survivors of the stone age bearing the row meat to their cave from the kill in the jungle. These events, therefore, introduce a tone of the total brutality which Ralph and Piggy are about to undergo. His obsession for meat leads Jack to kill a pig; however, the fire has gone out. Ralph, Piggy, and the other children go through an instance of agony and despair because they have missed the chance to be rescued. Meanwhile, the hunters, who should have kept the fire going, return with their first piglet as they boast over their heroic daring. Unavoidably, there is a direct defiance between Ralph and Jack. "Jack, his face smeared with clay, reached the top first and hailed Ralph excitedly, with lifted spears. 'Look! We've killed a pig- we stop up on them- we got in a circle-' . . . Ralph spoke. 'you let the fire go out.' Jack checked, vaguely irritated by his irrelevance but to happy to let it worry him. Jack spoke again, hoarsely. He had not moved. 'You let the fire go out.' This repetition made Jack uneasy. He looked at the twins and the back at Ralph. . .'The fire's only been out and hour or two. We can light up again-' " (70). This is the ineffectual encounter between reason and brutality. Ralph and Jack are two opponent forces from two opposite ways of assuming life. In the examination of this hostile conflict, it is indicated that Ralph embodies the whole reasoning capacity of man while Jack stands for the instinctual darkness of the soul. One is stronger than the other. With social restrictions, reasoning moderates brutality, but at a place like this saturated with debauchery; brutality completely surrogates reason. Jack does not care about his mistake, and the violence with which he reacts is the insane and untamed force of his evil perversion that limits the recognition of his own fault. When Ralph says, "There was a ship. Out there. You said you'd keep the fire going and you let it out. They must have seen us. We might have gone home", and when Piggy begins to cry out shrilly, " You and your blood, Jack Merridew! You and your hunting! We might have gone home!" (70), Jack is portrayed as a selfish, irrational individual who is only concerned with his beastly priority of meat and who disregards the well being of the rest of the boys. The author describes that Jack, in an wrathful impulse of anger, "transferred the knife to his left hand and smudged blood over his forehead as he pushed down the plaster hair" (71). This is a horrifying action Jack perpetrates as he denies his human dignity to confirm the deplorable deviation of his innate brutal self. Since he is obdurate to accept his big mistake, he also unreasonably "stucks his fist into Piggy's stomach . . . smashes Piggy's head" (71) and shatters his glasses while the rest of hunters laugh hysterically at this mischievous act. In this passage, we can notice that Ralph has already influenced the hunters to behave as he does, so the community of boys are becoming violent as well. The significance of the shattering of Piggy's glasses refers to the destruction of man's intellectual and reasonable side. Piggy has "only got one eye" (72) which means that the rationality of man is becoming blind to give way to the cruel monstrousness of mankind. Later we see that Piggy is completely blind, and for this, he cannot longer survive in this decadent and horrid world. It is relevant to bear the idea that after all, Ralph is powerless to stop Jack. Ralph holds a conduct based on dialogue, respect and communication, so he naturally cannot act in the same arrogant and abusive behavior as Jack's. Undoubtedly, Jack knows about Ralph's benevolent and righteous tendency, and for that, Jack takes advantage to do whatever he wants. He no longer respects Ralph as the chief and becomes an anarchist who advocates total rejection for those rules imposed by Ralph. In one of the assemblies, which is supposed to be a rational meeting in which a group of persons gather together for agreeing a common purpose, Ralph claims in sharp agony, "I'm the chief. I was chosen. . . The rules! You are breaking the rules" (91), when he sees how Jack's insane thoughts, the boys' detachment, and their current social instability are causing an unbearable chaos. But Jack rouses to revolt by saying "You shut up! Who are you, anyway? Sitting there telling people what to do? You can't hunt, you can't sing- Just giving orders that don't make any sense" (91). This fight is even more devastating because Jack proceeds to attack Ralph verbally, humiliates Piggy once more, and breaks up the assembly. Anarchy is then established in spite of the deterrence verbalized by Ralph in his hope for making things up. Immediately, Piggy and Ralph express a significant reality of the human being. When they say, "We're all drifting and things are going rotten. At home there was always a grownup. Please, sir; please, miss; and then you got an answer. How I wish! . . . I wish my auntie was here." (94), Both believe in the conception that the human being necessarily has to be controlled by rules because, without them, man displays the most unimaginable and lowest degeneration, which is innate as one part of our human condition. For Piggy, and in this way, for the author, every soul has a light part and a dark part. If our dark part is not regulated by rules and social restrictions we naturally become beastly creatures. That is why "grownups", in other words, the social laws, are those who educate and moderate man in conformity to an authoritative direction. Thus, without grownups to control the boys on the island, they lose their innocence and end up being pure savages. Jack's lavish obsession for getting meat keeps going and he becomes skilled in his trade. Having more power and counting on most of the boys' consent to treat him as the real leader, he decides to establish his dominion on the other side of the island at Castle Rock. Besotted with hunting, he enjoys the process of ending the life of piglets. "Jack began to clean his bloody hands on the rock. Then he started work on the sow and paunched her, lugging out the hot bags of colored guts, pushing them into a pile on the rock while the others watched him" (136). This exerts the credibility of the boys to be ruled by Jack and deny Ralph's authority. But Jack goes further than killing mere pigs. Since he is in contact with blood, he determines he is one who can decide if any creature on the island can live or die, so he starts being a diabolical force plunging the children into a demoralizing abyss of brute activities. One of his first and most impacting moral deviations is that after causing a total anarchism against Ralph's social system, he gains the power and makes his kingdom a dictatorship. He allows Roger, one of the boys who evolves as a terrorist, to lambaste and torture those who disobey his commands, like when Roger performs an arbitrary beating of Wilfred for doing a foolish thing. We see in Jack the abuse of absolute power with which he displays all the characteristics of a despotic ruler. As an overbearing tyrant he also forces the members of his barbaric tribe to engage in primitive rituals after hunting. These wild ceremonies consist of circling movements around their pray holding their spears and reaching a state of collective excitement as they yell "Kill the beast! Cut her throat! Bash her in!" (75). This is clearly the ratification of their bestial behavior. At this point the boys have driven away from civilization, and what is ever worse, they degrade themselves to a lower inhuman level when Jack commands some of their subjects to get in the middle of their ritual circle and pretend they are the beast, an imaginary creature they think remains hidden somewhere on the island. The excited emotion and the fun that this ritualism provides, lead the boys to entangle in a sort of satanic ceremonies. It is a matter of intense horror when a large pig is killed and Jack decides to sacrifice the head of the pig to the beast. The head is placed at the upper end of a wooden stick which is stuck in a clearing, right in the middle of the wild vegetation. " 'This head is for the beast. It's a gift.' The silence accepted the gift and awed them. The head remain there, dim-eyed, grinning faintly, blood blackening between the teeth" (137). This primitive ceremony bears revealing implications. Jack emerges as a messenger of the Devil addicted to the powers of darkness, murder and death. He finishes the life of innocent creatures to make demoniacal offers to the beast, who represents the Devil itself. Consequently, his devilish practices provide him with a satanic force to corrupt and destroy the boys' innocence. In fact, later, when Simon curiously approaches the head of the pig to contemplate its ugliness, we discover that indeed it is the demon. Simon, who is still one of the few ones allied to Ralph, has the gift of being a visionary. His religious orientation lets him posses the power of foreknowledge, and as a privileged mystic he experiences a visionary hallucination with the beast, which is the Lord of the Flies. " 'You are a silly boy,' said the Lord of the Flies, Just an ignorant silly little boy . . . You'd better run off and play with the others. They think your batty. You don't want Ralph to think your batty. Do you? You like Ralph a lot, Don't you? And Piggy and Jack' " (143). In a broad sense, the head of the pig, which is the materialization of the devil, simply mistreats Simon of being ignorant and silly, however, in a deep examination of this passage, we discover that this is a straight confrontation, not between civilization and brutality, but between good and evil. Evil seems to be worse than brutality because it is evil the diabolical force that has caused brutality among the children. It is a major impact to see that the head of the beast is the antagonist force of Simon, the innocent little boy that represents good. Since Simon is the benevolent religious and moral figure, the beast attacks him with offensive and obscene words like ignorant, silly and batty to remark that Simon, the sort of holy Saint, is completely unaware of the sinful ignominies that evil is causing. Further more, the word "ignorant" also ironically implies the plan that the devil has already made to deprive him of life. In fact, Simon never imagines that right after having an encounter with the Lord of the Flies, he is brutally assassinated. Therefore, The beast happens to be Simon's enemy because on an island harassed by depravation, degeneration and satanic practices, a saint figure obviously can not exist. The beast also says to Simon, " What are you doing out here all alone? Aren't you afraid of me? There isn't any one to help you. Only me. And I'm the beast" (143). The devil, who according to a religious viewpoint always deceives human beings, actually intents to lead Simon into an evil treachery. The Lord of the Flies' questions try to force the boy to feel fright and horror so that he feels the need to run away and find the other boys who will be in charge of his fatal fate. Moreover, the devil also says to Simon sarcastically, "You knew didn't you? I'm part of you? Close, close, close! I'm the reason why it's no go. What things are what they are?" (143). These words once more disclose the meaningful but scary idea about life. Evil is part of our human condition, it is part of us, we all human beings posses an innate evil force located in the inside of our souls. When the beast says "I am part of you", it is suggested that all the boys have actually become the embodiment of pure evil. The demon himself confirms this horrifying disgrace of the humankind through Simon's supernatural visionary experience. Defiantly, the Lord of the Flies also states that the boys' current wild madness and all of the bad fortune they have undergone on the island are a result of his mysterious force. Everything has gone wrong because the spirits of perverseness are on the island. Next, the beast expresses his total hatred to Simon, " I' m warning you. I am going to get angry. D' you see. You're not wanted. Understand?" (144). Due to the fact that Simon is the representation of the Christian religious faith, it is implied that he is the antithesis of the beast, and consequently, he is refused and destroyed by the violent forces of evil. Therefore, we are about to witness the deplorable slaughter of the innocent Simon. These frightening facts demonstrate how far the boys have gotten away from innocence; and remark in philosophical terms that we, the humanity, were naturally barbaric brutes if social restrictions wouldn't be established. It is noticeable that Jack and his tribe have developed to a great extent their destructive instincts and do not care anymore about society. That is why one of the most abhorrent depravities in the novel is the murder of Simon. As soon as Simon recognizes the existence of evil not only on the island, but inside the soul of the children as their inborn and despiteful force, and right after confronting the demon and discovering what the beast really is on the top of the mountain; he runs desperately to let the others know of the intense malignity that runs out of control among themselves. However, it is already too late. The boys are having a feast to celebrate their fulfillment in getting meat. As they are eating their prey, Jack urges them to conduct their ceremonial rites. They start moving in circles to begin their violent subhuman dance. At first, Roger pretends to be the pig and the others, at a moment of a mad and wild excitement, scream their motto, "Kill the beast, cut his throat, spill his blood" (152). Then the center of the circle is empty again, and it is right at this instance that Simon breathlessly crawls out of the jungle into it where he is brutally slaughtered because the crowd of boys believe that the creature crawling in the circle is the beast. "The beast struggled forwards. At once the crowd surged after it, poured down the rock. Leapt on the beast, screamed, struck, bit, tore. There were no words and no movements, but the tearing of teeth and claws . . . even in the rain they could see how small a beast it was; and already its blood was staining the sand" (153). This is a remarkable decline of moral degradation because Simon, one of the few survivors of civilization in the novel is murdered by the rude vehemence of savages. From a Christian and religious interpretation, Simon is in consequence, a martyr because he is force to endure an unfair death, but victoriously, the sacrifice of his own life points out the defense of his moral and religious principles. We deduce tha t this crime is committed by the evil inside the soul of the children and by the demon itself who tempts them to reject not only the morals of society, but the commandments imposed by God's will. We readers suffer an emotional shock with Simon's death because it is a sacrilege against our own moral code. Simon is probably the only holy character in the novel that stands for the high spirituality and the beauty of the soul that is inside of us, that is to say, the enlightening part that we constantly seek. William Golding may want to present that the real fight of man is his own personal struggle with his dark side and his spiritual side. Once Simon is killed, it is suggested that unfortunately our evil part is stronger that our good one, and then, the complete devilish chaos in which we all live is the outcome of our own corruptive actions. Therefore, the murder of Simon is an irreverent profanation performed by the demoniacal powers and the instinctual potential of the boys. They have killed Simon because they were having fun with their obsessive hysteria of killing pigs. Indeed, as soon as Simon is victimized, we regret why the group of boys were never able to depend on the simple set of rules they themselves intended to obey in the beginning. After this abusive contempt the bestiality of Jack and his tribe becomes limitless. They are a plague of hostile violators determined to finish the traces of humanity. Jack continues his sadists and oppressive dictatorship beating other boys, plans a conspiracy to go where Ralph and Piggy are hidden to steal Piggy's glasses and convinces the boys that Ralph is their enemy so they must destroy him. The tribe of primitives sidle up to where the four boys, Ralph, Piggy Sam and Eric are abandoned, to take Piggy's glasses so that they can start a fire. At this point, piggy, the intellectual boy, is completely blind, and in this sense, intellectuality and rationality are totally eradicated because from now on Piggy can not depend on his own. He is so physically and mentally isolated from the world that he cannot function appropriately any more. Sam and Eric are so afraid of being killed that they are forced to abandon Ralph and become new members of the barbaric tribe. Thus, Piggy, the intellectual, and Ralph, the democratic leader, are the remains of what could have been a dignified civilization. Surprisingly, although Piggy is scared and physically disable, he decides to go to Castle Rock to confront Jack. Piggy holds in his hands the conch, their symbol of democracy, as he is leaded by Ralph. He makes a speech about the urgency of coming back to the obedience of the rules, "I tell you I got the conch! I got this to say. You are acting like a crowd of kids. Which is better- to be a pack of painting Indians like you are, or to be sensible like Ralph is . . . Which is better- to have rules and agree, or to hunt and kill. Which is better, law and rescue, or hunting and breaking things up?" (180). But it is also too late for Piggy to make the irrationality of these savages turn into intellectual sensibility. The boys attack Piggy with indecent words and the perversity of Roger, the torturer, emerges when he levers a large rock on Piggy's head. Thus, religion, and intellect have been rudely eliminated from the island. Piggy, equally to Simon, dies in the name of his decent rational principles. The most abominable decision of Jack and the savagery boys is their determination to kill Ralph, who is the only one left from civilization. They set a human hunt to trap Ralph like a pig. This is their highest inhuman aberration because the boys are consciously aware of what their are going to do. Their unrestrained destructiveness have changed them, not only into brutal beasts, but into non-stop cruel murderers who desire to hunt not for necessity, but for mere pleasure. With this deviating plan, it is expressed the total loss of the human virtues and moral values. We can take for granted that if there had been more boys allied to Ralph, all of them would have been hunted just for the sake of pleasure, fun, and adventure. Here, the boys go to end the life of Ralph just because they want to enjoy, there is not other reason why. Once there is not respect for the human life, there is no respect for anything else in the world. This is the sin of the boys and the sin of man in general, man's inhumanity to man without logical reasons has always existed since the creation of the human race. That is why, The hunting of Ralph is also another impacting part of the novel as he struggles to hide and escape from his predators, and specially because he is so lonely to defend himself. While the savages have spears and hunting tools, Ralph is portrayed as a defenseless innocent pig ready to be sacrificed. Incredibly, what started like a game to hunt pigs, ended in the decadent passion to hunt real human beings. At this point, the boys have lost absolutely all their innocence to give way to all the evil spirit inborn in themselves. Fortunately, Ralph is saved by grown ups right at the instant he is about to be slaughtered. The presence of a naval officer that has come for rescue is the only lawful figure that can stop the boys from their merciless human hunt. It is concluded that only the social restrictions and the moral system imposed by the authority and the presence of adults can control the instinctual wild animal behavior of every child. The end of the novel leads also to conclude that we are naturally born savages, while civilization is acquired and learned by a constant daily training of those who have already been civilized. Because of all of the events discussed in this novel, we can observe the destructive and corrupt conduct of man. Lord of the Flies is a deep examination of the real nature of the social man. The boys parallel our actual modern civilized society, which in reality is not as civilized as we believe. Although we think our social order is efficient, there is an unmeasured variety of human vices such as selfishness, ambition, violence, exploitation, dishonesty, competitiveness, corruption, racism, discrimination, among others; and even the desire of murdering our own race. William Golding declares through his novel that, in spite of man's intention to live on civilized standards, we would never be able to be released from the innate intrusion of evil. That is why there are so many successive injustices and crimes in our society because of man's inhumanity to man. Therefore, we can easily identify with the characters of the novel. How many of us are fighters as Ralph? How many of us are isolated intellectuals as Piggy? How many are religious men as Simon? How many are sadists as Roger? And how many of us are brute murderers as Jack? What we must be sure about is that we definitely have a "Lord of the Flies" inside of us. It is the evil part that can emerge when least expected. Luckily, our inner instincts and impulses are regulated by the morals and restriction of society, but those norms are not always effective because in some cases even the most civilized person lets his spirit of savagery come out. The real truth about our human existence is that we will always intend to destroy everything we love, We love life, but we destroy life. This has been the big mistake of our dysfunctional society and that is why we will never be capable of achieving real civilization.
Notas
* Profesor Departamento de Lenguas. Universidad Pedagógica Nacional
