Insecurity In Lord Of The Flies By William Golding

Piggy could not see without his glasses, and the boys were not able to start a fire without them either. When they went to take them back from Jack, he would not budge, and an argument followed. "You pinched Piggy's specs," said Ralph, breathlessly. "You've got to give them back." (Golding 218) Piggy ended up getting killed, and Jack showed no remorse for his actions.

He uses it to compare the characters Jack, Ralph, and Piggy in the way each boy has different levels of respect from the boys. While at the top of a mountain on the island a heated argument breaks out between Jack and Ralph, “You’re always scared-yah fatty.” (Golding 38). Piggy is already established as fat and short and using this to his advantage Jack can bully Piggy with no repercussions. Earlier in the novel Jack is described as “Ugly without silliness” and the boys know not to mess with Jack based on physical appearance (Golding 20).

Jack does not like Piggy for some reason, maybe it is the way Piggy looks and acts. But Piggy cannot help that he stutters, has asthma, and wears glasses. Jack is one of those kids that has really high standards for other people, so if the other boys do not meet his expectations then Jack will put them down like he is doing to Piggy. Jack keeps telling Piggy to shut up every time Piggy goes to talk. This might be because Jack feels threatened by Piggy since he is a little bit smarter and is right about making shelters, and getting a list of all the boy's names.

They figure out how to use these glasses to make a fire which is then used to cook and make the signal which stood for civilization on the island. The one thing Ralph reiterates is the importance of the signal fire; however, Jack makes hunting as his only priority and this leads to tension among the two. During one particular scene, Ralph and Piggy chastise Jack for leaving the fire when a ship passed and there was no signal which could had led to their rescue and with that news Jack “smacked piggy’s head. Piggy’s glasses flew off and tinkled on the rocks” (70), He takes the opportunity to not only be the first person to physically hurt another boy, but he ruins one of the only source of technology the boys had available to them. Inevitably, when Jack makes his own tribe he needs everyone on the island to know he’s in charge and does the one thing

After that fight, Jack, who is now considering himself chief took Piggy’s specs. This is mentioned at the end of the chapter, “ He was a chief now in truth; and he made stabbing motions with his spear. From his left hand dangled Piggy’s broken glasses.” (Golding 168). This is obviously a huge deal for Piggy and the boys all know it.

In the book Jack is always making fun of Piggy. Jack was being rude to Piggy and saying his fat behind doesn’t do nothing to help while piggy was trying to talk. However some of the time Piggy stands up for himself, “I got the conch … you let me speak!”(Golding 33). Piggy illustrates how its not easy to have integrity. This is because whenever he tries to talk the others mainly Jack just tell him to shut up or take his glasses from him making him feel uncomfortable.

When Jack broke his glasses, it symbolized a partial destruction of civilization, although one lens was broken, it did not stop Piggy from being intelligent and providing the boys with ideas to survive on the island through Ralph. As the novel progressed, savagery had slowly overcome the intelligence of the boys. In the beginning, Piggy’s glasses represented intelligence and how he saw everything in a different view than the other boys. Even though no one took Piggy seriously, he still managed to get his ideas out through Ralph by being loyal to him and not joining Jack’s tribe. Later on in the Lord of the Flies, Piggy’s specs got damaged by Jack then also stolen by him to create fire for his own tribe.

Whenever Piggy threatens Jack, “Just you wait-” he said. “Jack mimicked the whine” (Golding 72), showing he didn’t take it seriously. Nevertheless, in a later chapter, it shows Jack, now the chief of a new tribe, ambushing Ralph and them and leaving, and “his left hand” is “dangled Piggy’s broken glasses” (Golding 168). The sentence proves the thesis heavily. As the reader knows, Piggy and his glasses represent intelligence on the island, and out of the boys, he is the smartest.

Piggy is fat, brilliant, lacking in social graces, and wears glasses, in other words the outsider on this island. Due to Piggy being such an foreigner, Jack feels that he is above Piggy, and feels better when he causes Piggy pain and sorrow. For example, “‘You’re talking too much,’ said Jack Merridew. ‘Shut up Fatty,’” (21). In this scene you can see power in Piggy’s lack thereof.

The matureness of his words made his somber message very hard to deliver, as the other boys would be shocked in despair with the idea of never leaving, and the boys would presumably be furious with Piggy for suggesting the idea . Later in the book, after Piggy’s glasses are stolen by Jack, Piggy confesses to Ralph that they must get the glasses back by confronting Jack. Jack, who is the “bully of the island”, is very intimidating to be around because he is excessively rude and extremely aggressive. Piggy continues to say to Ralph that they must look “…like we used to, washed and hair brushed…” (155), as he feels it is important to look nice to be taken seriously. Finally, after the signal fire goes out, Piggy decides to problem solve by having the signal on the beach instead of on the mountain: this

The boys took advantage of his weakness to make a fire but they also degraded Piggy. Piggy complains that he can’t see and that everything is just a blur and the glasses symbolize how the boys made him feel weak by taking them away from him. Finally, later on in the book Jack hit Piggy on the back of his head and that is when his glasses fell and broke on the rock. Then “Ralph made a step forward and Jack smacked Piggy’s head. Piggy’s glasses flew off and tinkled on the rocks”(71).

They had kept Piggy purely for his main attribute, knowledge; otherwise they would have ostracized him completely. When they had first needed fire, they had swarmed Piggy and taken them against his own free will, Piggy was always the kid who everyone picked on. So, when Jack was feeling humiliated in Chapter 4, he had taken it out on Piggy and broke the glasses. The treatment descended into further cruelty when Jack had attacked and stolen the glasses from him, at the end of chapter 10.

Part of Piggy’s appearance is his glasses, and they constantly get Piggy harassed or bullied, Without the aid of his glasses, Piggy is practically blind, and as a metaphorical aspect, Golding tries to tell us that Piggy is blind to the word if he isn’t wearing his glasses. When Jack constantly hits Piggy and ends up cracking the lenses of the glasses, Jack is breaking apart of Piggy; Jack is taking parts of Piggy and shattering them, making it almost impossible for Piggy to see what is going on around him. In another perspective, Piggy uses his glasses almost as a safety net, relying on them to help him survive and get through the rough times. When the boys realize this, they start taking his glasses from him to light the fire without even asking for Piggy’s permission, Jack starts slapping Piggy which breaks the glasses and causes Piggy to

Power and manipulation takes over people’s minds and turns us into egotistical people without even knowing and the sense of having control or authority can brainwash us into the people who we despise. William Golding fabricates his ideas around the time period 1933 after he received his English degree where he mostly wrote poems. Golding’s world consists of writing novels, pulling ideas from the real world into his own creative words on paper, this is where he developed his most famous book, Lord of the Flies, throughout 1954. The perspective of Lord of the Flies is through the eyes of the Second World War and since he was in this war, his point of view on violence changed and gave him a different outlook on society. In the Lord of the Flies

Everyone has this underlying darkness within them that is hidden away deep inside the nooks and crannies of their hearts. Golding demonstrates this through the use of his major characters, Ralph and Jack. In the novel, Lord of the Flies, the author William Golding utilizes character development to suggest the idea that when individuals are separated from civilization, dark forces will arise and threaten unity and harmony. Golding presents the protagonist, Ralph, who is decently intelligent and completely civilized, to demonstrate how once individuals are pulled away from civilization, the dark forces within them will arise and change how they are for the time being.