Lord of the Flies and Psychology

William Goldings Lord of the travel, narrates the story of a group of English boys as they struggle to survive on an uncharted, uninhabited island. The boys airplane crashes into the island and eliminates any adults on board leaving the boys to fend for themselves. Ralph and loutish meet each separate first and, upon shoats counsel, Ralph decides to call a meeting of all the boys by blowing on a conch shell. The boys quickly begin to form a society in which they elect Ralph as their leader.A boy called diddly-shit quietly disagrees and believes that he should lead the group. As times passes, shucks and his choir be seed hunters for the tarry of the boys and they begin to enjoy the itinerarys of a predator. As Jack grows more savage, he becomes unhappy with the vogue that Ralph leads the boys and decides that he will go to the other side of the island and start his own commonwealth. Boys slowly begin to pass Ralph to join Jack. The boys become so savage that they kill t wo boys and they plan to kill Ralph.Just as Jack has cornered Ralph, a naval officer appears and rescues them all. Golding depicts non only the struggle of the boys to survive, but excessively the psychological reasoning that leads the boys to abandon the civilized nature that they know. Through characterization and setting Golding pretends in his novel, an exaltation forum for validating psychological principles introduced by Sigmund Freud, Alfred Adler, and Carl Jung. Sigmund Freud was a psychologist who pioneered the thought that the mind contains three disparate levels, the id, the ego, and the superego.The id bases itself on the pleasure principle it meets basic contracts. The id wants a quick satiation of needs and has no consideration for the pragmatism of a situation. The ego bases itself on the veracity principle, it understands that other people have needs and desires and that impulsiveness or selfishness plenty cause harm in the future. The ego meets the needs of the id, while taking the reality of the situation into consideration. The Superego develops imputable to the moral and ethical restraints placed on a child by influential adults in their lives. sensation could compare the superego to the conscience, as it dictates belief of right and wrong. Golding acknowledges these different states of consciousness within his novel by use characters to represent each one. For instance, Jack represents the id. Jack never get bys into consideration the best thing for the group or himself in the long run and he holds himself accountable to no set of rules or any code of ethics. Bollocks to the rules Were strong we hunt If theres a living organism, well hunt it downWell close in and produce and beat and beat (91). Jack addresses the issue of a beast believed to inhabit the island by filling his thirst for power and neglecting to take into consideration that confronting a beast will most likely lead to danger. Jacks reasoning involves selfish mo tives he wants to get rid of the beast, he wants to kill, he does non care that he has potentially placed the others in a dangerous situation, nor does he realize the ludicrousness of the beast, Jack has neglected reality entirely. Piggy represents the ego.He constantly tries to reason with the other boys, when he and Ralph first meet, Piggy understands that the other boys as well landed on the island and psyche needs to find and help them. We got to find the others. We got to do something (14). Piggy as well as realizes that the boys will most likely stay on the island for a while before someone rescues them if someone ever rescues them at all. Piggy understands the boys while staying in touch with reality and he knows that if he does not find the smaller boys and take care of them, they will die.Piggy comprehends the seriousness of their predicament and realizes what it will take to keep everyone in order and alive. Simon represents the superego because he adheres to the prin ciples instilled in him by society and civilization. After Jack has killed a pig for the first time, he and his clan approach while chanting, Piggy whimpers and Simon hushed him quickly as though he had spoken too loudly in church (69). Simons conscience keeps Piggy in line even when dealing with savage Jack.Towards the end of the novel, the other boys savagely murder Simon when the boys kill Simon they also kill their conscience, they kill the rules and implications set upon them in order to keep society civilized and from this loony toons until the boys get rescued their savage nature completely takes over and nothing holds them back any longer. Alfred Adler believed that personality difficulties are rooted in a feeling of inferiority. He also believed that people focus on brinytaining regard over their lives.Golding shows these ideas in his novel. Piggy, Ralph, and Jack all have issues with inferiority and chasten, in some way each of them feels inferior and each them strives for control. The other boys consider Piggy substandard to them because physically he is not their equal, Piggy realizes that the other boys perceive him this way and tries to make up for it with his intellect and emphasis on the rules, which leads into Piggys control issue he tries to use control to counter act the feeling of world out-classed.Jack al slipway strives for favorable position, from the very beginning Jack feels that he should be chief instead of Ralph. Jack crumbles underneath his need to become more superior than Ralph and decides to takes control of his situation and forms his own tribe. Jack tries to control his life by getting his way and convincing other boys to get his way as well. Ralph fears inferiority, lead thrusts itself upon Ralph but he holds his position in very high regard. As Ralph loses support from his tribe, he loses his superiority and he begins to lose faith in himself and become more nervous.Ralph does not like the loss of control in his tribe or in his life, the signal fire and getting the boys to help him make shelters was so important to him for this reason. Adler studied various types of people and he came to the conclusion that there are the four main types of people The ruling type that tries to control others, the getting type that tends to go along with others ideas, the avoiding type that tries to single out themselves to avoid defeat, the socially helpful type that values having control over their lives and strive to do entire things for the sake of society.Jack represents the ruling type with his demand that the boys do as he says go on the two savages looked at each other, raised their spears together and spoke in time. The chief has spoken (141). Jack thrives off of ruling and absolute power. Sam and Eric fit into the category of the getting type, they tend to go along with and do what others tell them to do. Whenever Ralph is their chief they listen to him and go along with what he says, and then when Ja ck captures them and takes them to his tribe they adhere to his code and do what he says.Sam and Eric follow they do not contribute to originative thought but they willingly take part in its aftermath. Simon represents the avoiding type, he largely keeps to himself, and he goes and finds a secret place where he can sit alone in the quiet with his thoughts. Ralph represents the socially useful type, he likes to have control of the boys but, unlike Jack he wants them to do things for the betterment of the group. Adlers ideas come to life in Goldings Lord of the Flies.Psychologist Carl Jung believed that symbol creation was a key in misgiving human nature. Symbols express something essentially unknown in the best way possible. The boys in Lord of the Flies create a symbol for their fear, at times the boys feel afraid and they cannot exactly express why. The boys create the symbol of the beast because they cannot touch or see their fear and so they imagine a beast that they could tou ch and see. Whenever Simon recognizes that the thing to fear lies within the boys he also creates a symbol, the Lord of the flies.Jung also believed that the introvert and the extrovert make up the main components of personality. The introvert, like Simon, tends to keep to themselves, and find more interest in ideas than in people. Simon paused. He looked over his shoulder as jack had done at the close ways behind him and glanced quickly around to confirm that he was utterly alone (56). The extrovert however, is outgoing and socially oriented. Both Jack and Piggy fit the description of extroverts because, they both freely express their ideas and long for others to take heed and admire them.According to Jung a person that has a healthy personality can realize these black eye tendencies and can express each. Ralph most closely adheres to Jungs theory about healthy personality. Ralph has a need for socialization but, he also knows when he needs time for reflection and thought, many t imes Ralph wishes that he had time to gather his thoughts before he had to go and present them in front of the rest of the tribe. When interpret Lord of the Flies some readers may miss the latent meaning and only focus on the manifest.Readers who do not take in deeper psychological nature of the novel would attribute the boys different reaction to the island, to differences in personality and background instead of the boys taking on the image of the different levels of consciousness. This reader might think that they could not keep order simply because they are just spring chicken boys when their real motives were their subconscious need for superiority. The entire novel deals with the psychological principles set forth by Freud, Adler, and Jung it could be considered a case study that verifies the very things that these psychologists believed.