Lord of the Flies In the Lord of the Flies, by William Golding there is a theme of loss of innocence that is played out all through the text. The loss of innocence was cause by the absence of authority figure, disorganized community, and the survival of the human needs on a deserted island. The loss of innocence is created by the absence of authority allowed the children of the plane crash open to the ability to become savage like and have chaos among the island. The conversation between Jack and Ralph during the first assembly: “aren’t their any grown-ups? , “no”,” then well just take care of ourselves”. The conversation is the first broad realization that the children would have to survive on their own and there would be no adult help. When they take care of them selves they leave themselves open to the slow but effective transfer from school boys to savages who have lost all their childish innocence. With the adult figure on the island the children have no sense of goals or task. The disorganization of their community helped establish the loss of innocence even early in the text.
The school boys are only children so they have no idea of responsibility, making the orders given by the chief not fully accomplished or even bothered with. The disorganization started with the building of the shelters, “they keep running off, you remember the meeting? How everyone was going to work hard until the shelters were finished? ” The un-centralized community cannot focus on the task a hand making only a couple build the shelters while all the other play and bath.
This inability to have an organized and commutative society made the loss of innocence spread faster and wilder one the island rather then not spreading at all. The spread of loss of innocence was mainly contributed by the human survival and the nature of savagery that comes with surviving on a deserted island. The hunting of pig on the island started this savage like behavior by using the chant “kill the beast! , cut his throat! , spill his blood! ”. The chant signifies the barbaric ritual that the hunter proceed on every hunt when the come upon an animal worth of hunting.
The hunting allowed the mind of a child escape the school boys minds and allowed a more savage set of mind enter, making the childish innocence lost with the digested meat. Near the end of the book the realization of the loss of innocence finds Ralph, “Ralph wept for the end of innocence, the darkness of man’s heart. ” Only when the adults came to the island to rescue the savage like school boys does the true nature of the island’s inhabitants revealed. The actions on the island made the innocence disappear from the remaining school boys, and not letting them forget the true evil in human nature.
