The Island is a microcosm of the evil we produce in the world today. Greed,
power, domination are all factors of evil in the story line and in today’s
society. The first human instinct is survival. The fittest will survive, as in
the book, and in today’s world. For example, someone who is very skilled in
math or physical feats may receive a scholarship pertaining to their skill.
Taller and attractive people seem to get the better and higher paying jobs.
Aborigines in Australia will eat grubs and insects to survive. We may find this
repulsive but human instinct rules when we have no other options. Our human
instinct also makes us frown upon people with undesirable traits such as
obesity, poor eyesight or deformities. These people cannot fend for themselves
as well as fitter people and die off so they may not reproduce. The fittest
survive. The role of survival of the fittest was best described on (pg. 8) “I
can’t swim on account of my asthma”. Piggy was already going down in the
food chain of the island. Ralph was a tall attractive boy who had very good
leadership skills. It is no wonder that he voted in as leader. Piggy can’t
defend himself . An example of this is (pg. 17) “Shut up fatty.” Another
example is when piggy wants to come with them up the mountain,(pg. 20), “
I’ll come.” “ your no good for a job like this” .The boys on the island
resorted to killing pigs with such savagery when they felt that they were
hungry. When there is no order chaos arises. There are many examples of this in
our society today. Riots happen when the people think they can get away with it.
The number of people outweigh the number of authority figures. People hurt other
people and steal. This is not something that would happen in an ordered society.
All these people know what’s right and wrong but their human instinct gets the
better of them when they think they can get always with it. The same thing
happened on the island. With no authority like the adults or (police) things
turned into anarchy. They were trying to kill each other and ran around like
savages just because they had no one to tell them they couldn’t do that. There
was a lot of emphasis that they were children and that is why this happened.
That is simply not true. Look at my example above, people that riot have no
authority to tell others to stop. You could compare that kind of behavior to
what children would do if they were put in charge of the world. Today’s
society is full of bad leaders such as “Sadam Husain” , “Slobodam
Molosovich” , “Adolf Hitler” and many more. They lead their people with
false ideals and hidden agendas. Their thirst for power killed thousands of
people and caused grief and suffering for millions. Hitler killed millions of
Jews and that is something the German people will have to live with for ever .
Sadam Husain tried to take more land for his country and failed and made more
people suffer. Molosovich didn’t want to give up his rule over the Albanians
and killed alot of them in the process. Jacks hunger for power grew just as
these leader’s hunger grew too. (pg. 140) “ I’m not going to be part of
Ralph’s lot” , “ I’m going off by myself..... Any one that wants to hunt
when I do can come too”. Jack’s power grew so great that he made the boys
think that there was a beast which ultimately killed Simon. He didn’t care
when a big rock squished Piggy and to make things unbearable he tried to murder
Ralph. Also there were many great leaders such as Bill Clinton (debatable),
George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, John A MacDonald and more. These Leaders
lead their people with great emphasis toward the minority and fought for equal
rights. Bill Clinton puts bad leaders in their place, George Washington fought
for the independence of America, Abraham Lincoln freed the Blacks from
oppression and John A MacDonald fought for Canada to become a whole country.
Jack was a great leader that kept the boys in order and kept their one hope of
getting of the island alive An example of this is when it was Ralph’s idea to
go search the Island (pg. 20) “ .....three of us will go on [an] expedition
and find out.... That’s what a good leader does, he makes decisions quickly
and makes them good. Ralph was the kind of leader that wasn’t as smart as
Piggy but had the leadership skills and personality to become the chief. These
are the kinds of leaders we want in our society. People in today’s society
control each other by fear. In communist Russia they used to imprison people or
even use the death penalty when they rejected communism. This made people fear
their government and made them not dare speak against it. Even our own
government controls us by fear. It makes us follow their laws and if we don’t
do so it punishes us. Even people in our society control other people by fear.
In some places the Mafia will tell store owners to give them money or else they
will trash their store. People will not dare go up against the Mafia because
they will do very bad things to you if you do. Jack controlled many of the boys
on the island by fear. At the beginning of the book he controlled the choir with
having a mean attitude and his trusty old knife which he kept slamming into tree
trunks. Then later on in the book he showed everyone that he wasn’t afraid of
killing when he hunted and killed a pig. The island is a microcosm of the world
we live in today. Greed, power and domination are all factors today as well as
in the story line.