When an individual is put into a new environment, conflict will
transpire. In Willian Golding's novel, Lord of the Flies, a group of young
boys get stranded on a deserted island due to an airplane accident.
There
are three very noticable conflicts in the story. There is man versus man,
man versus nature and finally, man versus himself. In Lord of the Flies,
conflict is crucial to the effecivness of the story.The first conflict in the novel is man versus nature. An example of
man versus nature is when the boys find the berries.
They find the only
berries on the island and then realize that the berries make them sick.This is showing their fight against the island for survival. The boys had
to deal with the changing weather all the time. The storming wind at night
blew over their huts while they slept and ruined everything.
The sun was
blistering hot all the time and it gave them all bad sun burns and they
only had one pond to cool off with because they could not use salt water
surrounding the island. Man versus nature was not nearly as difficult as
man versus himself.The second conflict is man versus himself. Throughout the novel the
boys think there is a beast living on the island with them. They can never
seem to find the beast, but are still determined to kill it.
In this quote
" ' The beast is a hunter... we couldn't kill it.
' " is when the boys
realize that the beast is just their imagination. All the boys have to
deal with savagery. They are all slowly turning into savages and they are
all losing grip. When Ralph says " ' after all we aren't savages really
and being rescued isn't a game' " he is realizing that they are not savages
and what is happening is not right. The boys all fought with a number of
things, like fear and weather. It was a never ending battle.
The third conflict in this novel is man versus man. From the
beginning, Ralph and Jack have their disagreements. They struggle for the
position of leader, but in the end, they end up starting their own groups
and going off on their own. Slowly throughout the novel the children begin
to turn on Ralph.
The boys in Jack's tribe begin to steal from Ralph and
piggy. They attempt to steal Piggy's glasses to make fire. Jacks tribe
also fights with Ralphs tribe for the conch many times, Eventually killing
Piggy in effort to take the conch back. The boys faught with eachother
throughout the story, it proved nothing, and only caused problems.Throughout the whole story, the boys struggled with many things.They faught with eachother which led to the destruction of their society
and themselves.
If they learned how to cooperate with eachother and work
with eachother, they could have lasted longer, without their society
breakling and them having a war, the Naval officer would never have found
the deserted island and rescued the boys. Aside from the deaths,
everything worked out fine.
