irely been defeated. There is a running theme in William Golding's Lord of the Flies. Man is savage at heart, this is shown by Ralph in the pig hunt, and always ultimately reverting back to an evil and primitive nature. This is all shown by Jack and his group of hunters when they have the pig dances, the pigs head as a scarifices and, last but not least, they turn into a group of savages. Ralph and his common sense stays almost the same throughout the book, it's Jack and his hunters who change. To end, here's a quote from David Anderson's work entitled Nostaldia for the Primates: In this book Golding succeeds in giving convincing form to which exists deep in our self-awareness. By the skill of his writing, he takes the reader step by step along the same regressive route as that traversed by the boys on the island... Our first reaction are those of 'civilized' people. But as the story continues, we find ourselves being caught up in the thrill of the hunt and the exhilarat- ion of slaughter and blood and the whole elemental feeling of the island and the sea... The backing of Golding's thesis comes not from the imaginary events on the island but from the reality of the readers response to them. Our minds turn to the outrages of our century - the slaughter of the first war , the concentration camps and atom- bombs of the second - and we realize that Golding has compelled us to acknowledge that there is in each of us a hidden recess which horrifyingly declares our complicity in torture ...
