Humans have an unfortunate habit.

That isn’t quite specific enough— humans have many unfortunate habits. Yet one unchecked tendency of theirs (among many others) is to assume they are the default and universal individual. Consider depictions of the most prominent religious figure in the world— Jesus Christ. In the West, Jesus is a white man in a robe. In Africa, Jesus has a high forehead and long, dark braids. 

Neither of these are likely factually correct; instead, Jesus was likely a Middle Eastern man (Shrenk). But each culture has a past of believing theirs was the “default.” Their lives and perspectives were limited to what was directly around them— those like themselves.

This logical fallacy rears its head in Lord of The Flies by William Golding. In the text, a plane evacuating a group of English private school boys from an unnamed war crashes on a small island. No supplies. No sustenance. And best of all, no grown-ups.

It seems like paradise at first. They elect a chief; they form a disjointed kind of civilization. But eventually, conflict stews. Friendships split. And finally, murderous violence rears its ugly head. Despite the best efforts of a noble few, the civilized English boys are shown to be monsters at heart.

High schools across America teach Lord of The Flies as a mandatory part of their curriculum. The message, many teachers claim, is that humanity is inherently savage. That seems clear enough. So tired teenagers consider the interpretation truth without a fight.

But that’s just another case of human fallacy— assuming oneself is the default. If the wealthy Western men in the book are inherently savage, why should that mean all of humanity is savage along with them? 

Consider women in Lord of The Flies— or the lack thereof. The word “boy” in plural or singular form appears 215 times in the text. Meanwhile, the word “girl” is only used twice. And that’s not all: both times, they use it as an abstract and derogatory term.

In the first, protagonist Ralph muses over the idylls of his childhood before he was so horrifically stranded. He remembers his old room and the books on the shelves, thinking, “There was the bright, shining one about Topsy and Mopsy that he never read because it was about two girls…. There was ‘The Boy’s Book of Trains,’ ‘The Boy’s Book of Ships.’” (Golding 112)  

Topsy and Mopsy are not even human girls; actually, they’re rabbits. One out of two of the quotes about girls is about fictional animals.

The second quote hails from a chat between Ralph and Piggy, an intelligent but bullied outcast on the island. They attempt to clean themselves up for a meeting with a rival tribe. The conversation reads, “‘We could find some stuff,’ said Piggy, ‘and tie your hair back.’ ‘Like a girl!’ ‘No. ‘Course not.’” (Golding 172) 

Despite not having it cut for months, Ralph refuses to tie his hair up because it would make him look “like a girl.” That is the extent of girls’ presence in Lord of the Flies— as in-universe fictional characters and a fleeting reference to hairstyles. 

Unless one counts the sow the boys brutally murder near the beginning, there are no female characters in Lord of The Flies. On the other hand, women constitute 49.7 percent of the population (United Nations). That begs the question: how can a novel’s characters symbolize evil inherent in the human race if the characters are not nearly representative of the human race itself? Why should a few fictional English boys’ poor behaviors show that everyone— girls included— is barely fighting off violent instincts and rotten deep inside?

William Golding had his defense for this. In an undated reading of his book, he chuckled that “one thing you cannot do with them [girls] is take a bunch of them and boil them down, so to speak, into a set of little girls who would then become a kind of image of civilization, of society.” He implied that if the characters were girls, they would form a quaint little civilization and never devolve into sticking pigs’ heads on sharpened sticks and slaughtering each other by the end, as the boys did. Whether that claim proves true is yet to be discovered. 

Whatever the case, the interview alone proves that Lord of The Flies cannot demonstrate the savage nature of humankind. How can it, when women are not included in the population sample— when the author himself said girls would not behave in the characters' conclusively violent ways? Therefore, Lord of The Flies doesn’t functionally critique the nature of all humans. It critiques the nature of human men.

Golding’s scope zooms in to focus on a more minute shred of the world population— the upper class. Lord of the Flies’ critique of the upper class is intentional, and the first quote describing a group of private school choristers demonstrates this. 

Golding writes, “Within the diamond haze of the beach something dark was fumbling along. Ralph saw it first, and watched til the intentness of his gaze drew all eyes that way. Then the creature stepped from mirage on to clear sand, and they saw that the darkness was not all shadow but mostly clothing.” (Golding 20) 

The author’s description of the group of boys as a dark “creature” rather than people, “something” rather than “someone,” proves to be crucial to the story. It is this very group of private school choristers that become hunters— and then a tight-knit tribe that uses torture as punishment and seeks to decapitate their enemies as sacrifices to a mythical “Beast.” In the words of innocent chorister Simon, "Maybe there is a beast. Maybe it's only us." (Golding 80) The upper-class boys, by a mark of their wealth (black, ornate cloaks), are likened to "the Beast"— the summation of all evil on the island. 

The reader finds this even clearer when they compare the pocketbooks of individual characters. Besides the presence of private school choristers, the boys show their wealth in numerous ways. Ralph’s father is a commander in the British Navy (Golding 13). A sensitive younger boy named Percival's address in a vicarage implies money (Golding 5). The one exception to the high-class society is the social pariah of the island: a boy called by the jeering moniker “Piggy.” 

Upon being questioned about his parentage, Piggy reveals his father is dead and conspicuously neglects to say the status of his mother. He admits, “I used to live with my auntie. She kept a candy store. I used to get ever so many candies. As many as I liked. When’ll your dad rescue us?” (Golding 14). 

The quick subject change reflects Piggy’s embarrassment at his situation of living off a small candy shop business. References to Piggy’s lower social class continue throughout the book, including through his distinctive accent (evidenced by phrases such as “yer” and “‘an” in place of “your” and “and”). Though he is by no means the only “good” character, he is one of few— and Golding’s association of economic power with bloodlust and economic poverty with polite civilization (in the form of Piggy) should not go unnoticed. 

Lord of The Flies, in its purest form, is about a group of almost all wealthy boys who try to create an upper-class-style society with a hierarchy. And then everything blows up, as social hierarchies tend to do. The boys with the heaviest pockets are the quickest to resort to violence. The one character labeled as “poor" represents intelligence and reason. Forgive the hyperbole, but Golding could not have made the story more obviously a critique of the upper class if he had taken a Sharpie to scrawl “THIS IS A CRITIQUE OF THE UPPER CLASS” on each page. 

Readers cannot logically interpret the story as claiming all man is inherently savage if the characters are homogeneously rich, except for a single lower-class boy who rattles off the rules and begs other boys to be civilized. That wouldn’t be an accurate portrayal of the human species as a whole at all.

However, in Lord of The Flies, neither the critique of the upper class nor male nature is as noticeable as the critique of England’s superiority complex. William Golding certainly had a bone to pick. Armed with his experiences as a disgruntled schoolteacher and traumatized World War 2 soldier, he challenges the assumption that English people (children included) are the most civilized of all. These quotes are quippy and ironic, beginning with one said by the head chorister boy and ringleader of anarchy himself: Jack Merridew.

As the boys first attempt to deliberate the rules of their new society, Jack declares, "We've got to have rules and obey them. After all, we're not savages. We're English, and English are best at everything." (Golding 42) 

This quote is simultaneously arrogant, nationalistic, and driven by insecurity-- exactly what Golding claimed England was at its core. Jack contrasts the English with "savages." He identifies himself and his group as superior. Yet at the same time, his desire for rules isn't driven by morals or decency-- but a thirst for power. For now, Jack satisfied his cravings through his status as "chapter chorister and head boy." (Golding 22) But what happens when society's external pressures disappear? What happens when something removes a decent English citizen from their cobblestoned streets into the humid jungles of a remote island-- much like those of the very "savages" they revile?

With Jack Merridew, murder happens.

Without the control he desires, he starts asserting power over people by threatening and hurting them instead. Or maybe it was really about that all along. The author sets up Jack as a proud English patriot who believes his own nationality is infallibly civilized, then traces the revelation to Jack's core nature as a power-hungry brute. 

By doing this, Golding spits at the feet of the English supremacists. He scoffs at The Coral Island and Swallows and Amazons. In fact, his own website (Presley) says the entire reason he wrote Lord of The Flies was to parody children’s adventure book The Coral Island. To sum it up-- Golding seeks to yank down the curtains and reveal the English superiority mindset as a fantasy.

Direct, yes. But also specific. Each country's culture and history is unique: replacing the English boys with Chinese or Brazilian ones would destroy the delicacy of the message. Therefore, Lord of The Flies' message of human savagery can only be applied to the precise cultural context of the English at the time. 

To tie the novel together, Golding reintroduces the English motif in the form of a naval officer in the very last chapter. While he is alerted to the boys' presence by smoke from the island, one has suffocated in the flames, and two have been killed-- plus, Ralph is about to join them. Just as the mob races down upon him, spears at the ready, the naval officer steps onto the sand with a rifle in hand. All action stops.

The officer first assumes they are only playing. But when Ralph reveals the kill count, his jovial manner evaporates. The book reads, "'I should have thought,' said the officer as he visualized the search before him, 'I should have that a pack of British boys-- you're all British, aren't you-- would have been able to put up a better show than that.'" (Golding 286)

Here, Golding condemns not human nature but British hypocrisy. The naval officer engaged in war turns up his nose at the boys' killing of another. But what makes him any different? 

Does the flag on his uniform or the gun in his hands somehow make killing okay? Is he better than the "savage" boys because they wield only sharp sticks and wear only the tattered remains of school uniform pants? His parallels with Jack's statement at the beginning suggest the answer is no.

Sure, like the boys in the first chapter, the naval officer believes the British should be able to leave civilization in their wake. However, they could accuse him of not putting up "a better show" either. The fighting on the island is merely a parallel and parody of the British war waging around them. The children themselves only evacuated in the first place for fear of an atomic bomb. Britain is falling apart just as much as the island tribes. So, who could that officer be to judge-- and in the name of British "superiority," no less? 

The popular curriculum teaches Lord of The Flies as a condemnation of humanity. However, despite the author's possible intentions, it cannot accurately represent the human race because of its premise and context. Firstly-- consider the lack of female characters and how their absence removes them as participating members of society. If a large portion of the human population is othered from Golding's analysis, then his characters' morals are not universal-- and thus, humanity is not inherently savage.

Secondly, the novel is an intentional critique of the animal savagery of the upper class. The more obviously wealthy boys are the first to give in to violent instincts (such as Jack), and the only noticeably lower-class boy is an island outcast who tries (and fails) to establish intelligence and civilization (Piggy). One of the first things the boys do is to establish a hierarchy, with "chief" at the top and "littluns" at the bottom-- and a private school chorister's battle for power with a naval officer's son is a central conflict leading to the island's downfall.

Finally and most clearly, William Golding wrote Lord of The Flies responding to the belief that the English are superior in civilization and dignity, present in popular children's books such as The Coral Island. The book follows a group of proper English boys descending into savagery as their country across the sea struggles in a war involving atomic bombs. Both English civilizations are collapsing-- Golding's denunciation of England's arrogance and hypocrisy is clear to see. 

William Golding didn't functionally critique human nature. Instead, he went for those society views as "default"-- Western, upper-class men. Thus, the author's barbed symbolism flies under the average classroom's radar. But that doesn't mean the book itself isn't valuable. As many teachers would agree, seeing a well-loved book from a different perspective can be groundbreaking; each page could hold a new and interesting meaning. 

And, reading Lord of The Flies while keeping context and demographics in mind, students may be less likely to end it in dreary pessimism and more likely to feel better educated about societal dynamics. Is that not, after all, the point of opening the book in the first place?

BIBLIOGRAPHY (APART FROM LORD OF THE FLIES BY WILLIAM GOLDING)

United Nations. “World Population Prospects - Population Division - United Nations.” United Nations, 2022, population.un.org/wpp/Download/Standard/Population/.

Presley, Nicola. “Lord of the Flies and the Coral Island.” William Golding, 30 June 2017, william-golding.co.uk/lord-flies-coral-island.

Shenk, Calvin E. “The Middle Eastern Jesus: Messianic Jewish and Palestinian Christian Understandings.” Missiology: An International Review, vol. 29, no. 4, Oct. 2001, pp. 403–416, doi.org/10.1177/009182960102900401. Accessed 7 Nov. 2021.