But big questions aside, primitively in Lord of the Flies means hunting, the desire for food, the desire for power, bloodlust, violence, sadism, and a general inability to distinguish between man and beast. The loss of innocence is a major theme in Lord of the Flies. The boys stranded on the island at just the age (between six and twelve, roughly) to leave the idealism of youth and face the actuality of the real world. And what better place to do so than an uninhabited island free of rules, restrictions, and adults?
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Because of their circumstance, the boys leave behind not only youth, but civilization, and the reality they face is not one of adults, but one of untamed human nature. The novel ends with its main character, Ralph, weeping for “the end of innocence, the darkness of man’s heart. ” At the heart of this novel is the question of whether the problems of society and all its ills can be traced back to the defects of human nature. Golding seems to be saying that yes, this is the case.
The ethical nature of any society depends ultimately on the morality of its individual members, and in Lord of the Flies, humans are basically corrupt and inherently evil. It seems that rules and order are the only boundaries keeping people from their true, violent natures. As soon as you take those people and put them outside of a system with punishments and consequences, they will revert to primitive attitudes and actions, and destroy themselves in the process.
Man needs the structure provided by civilization. Power is often a source of violence in Lord of the Flies. The desire for power breaks down the boundaries set by rules and order, causes strife and competition, and governs the actions of many of the boys on the island. Once achieved, power has the ability to either improve or corrupt its holder. Ralph, the more noble of the two leaders on the island, is bettered by his position as chief; whereas Jack, the usurper, abuses his power for personal gain.
As the boys in Lord of the Flies grow more violent, they begin painting their faces with clay, supposedly so the pigs won’t see them, but in reality to make themselves feel better about their atrocious acts. As the boys grow more savage and less like their normal selves, we see this change manifest itself physically in their appearances. Unsurprisingly, the looks match the insides: the boys are becoming more primitive, so they shed their clothes and decorate themselves with war paint.
It’s also important that the paint makes them look very similar to one another; they no longer have names or individual identities of their own. This allows them to shed their civilized selves and become nameless creatures that kill and murder. They feel no need to control themselves, since they no longer have “selves” to control. Lord of the Flies can be read, at least in part, as a religious allegory. It features the character Simon as a Christ-figure who is killed by the other boys.
Following this train of thought, the island can be seen as the Garden of Eden, before it was corrupted by mankind and his evil activities (as represented by the beast) (the “snake-thing”). On a less complex level, there are many generally religious or superstitious images in the novel: Jack as the god, garlanded and sitting on a log as he presides over his feast, the name “the Lord of the Flies,” the rituals that the boys engage in as they replay the pig hunts over and over, and the sacrifice that they leave for the beast.
The pig head, impaled on a stake, seems to be a kind of god itself. Scholars disagree as to whether the novel argues for Christianity and civilization, in opposition to “primitive” rituals, or whether Lord of the Flies criticizes any kind of religion, organized or no. Knowledge in Lord of the Flies is more about awareness and wisdom than anything else. There are certain important truths that some characters are privy to and others are not.
The characters that are “in the know” seem to have possession of these truths innately, as though by some spiritual means. The boys left in the dark are simply at odds with their more savvy counterparts; they fail to understand these wiser children (like Simon) and instead of trying to learn from them, violently lash out at them. It seems then, that the wisest boys are sacrificed, made martyrs for the very key knowledge they possess. The irony is that, by killing these knowing boys, the naive characters are keeping themselves in the dark.
