The following piece of writing will be an essay I wrote in the past year on the book Lord Of The Flies, published by William Golding and will use most of the things that we learned over the period of this program.
Lord of the Flies Final Writing Assignment
Prompt # 3
In the book, Lord of the Flies byWilliam Golding, the reader follows a group of British boys who were stranded on a deserted island, as they try to survive. The tendencies of the children have been shown through real life experiments. The three most notable ones are the Stanford Prison, Milgram Shock, and Asch Conformity experiment. These three experiments set out to find different behaviors of the human mind and how it reacts under certain circumstances. The specific experiment that matches the behavior of the children on the island best is the Milgram Shock experiment. The boys start off as sane and “proper” children, but as the story progresses, the characters start to let go of their morals and lash out at each other. There are four people that the book tracks throughout the entire story, those being Ralph, Piggy, Simon, and Jack. Early on in the book, Ralph is designated leader by the majority of the boys on the island. His reign as leader would not last the whole story, though, as he would be “dethroned” by Jack in a later part of the book when he persuades the boys to his side using food as his weapon against Ralph. Piggy would prove the most loyal to Ralph, staying with Ralph until his bitter end.
The image on the left is an example of questions presented in the asch conformity experiment, a psychology study done to see how willing people are to conform to leadership authoritative figures.
The Milgram experiment was a controlled experiment in which 500 people were tested on whether or not they would obey a person of higher authority, no matter how daunting or dangerous the task would be. In this example, subjects were tasked with asking a person in a different room the answer to a string of words. If the other person failed, the person at the control panel would have to pull a lever, giving a controlled shock to the “second person”. The “second person” was actually an actor and did not receive any of the shocks. It was estimated that about 65% of the participants would go on and pull all of the levers, which would have killed the “other participant”, due to the fact that a person of higher authority told them to do so.
The image on the right is the cover of the novel Lord Of The Flies, by William golding
The Milgram Shock experiment resembles the events of the book the closest as the characters tended to slip into the traits most defined by the Milgram experiment. In chapter 9 of the book, Jack and the newly formed tribe of boys are having a feast. As this is happening, Simon walks through a bushy part of the territory and is mistaken for the beast. Unfortunately, this mistake would cost him his life, as Simon was repeatedly stabbed to death. This was all done due to Jack telling the boys, just one time that the beast was there. This is clearly depicted in the Milgram experiment as the participants had accomplished the task given to them only because someone of higher authority told them to do so. At this point in the book, Jack is the leader of almost every kid on the island. Everyone was convinced to murder Simon due to the tellings by their leader. The lack of adults on the island or set up rules and laws, forced the children into believing whatever the oldest kid said to them. And Jack met this criteria as he had provided food for the children and fun, the two aspects of life that almost any young child enjoys. Another telltale sign that proves that the Milgram experiment has the closest relationship to the behavior depicted in Lord of the Flies would be in chapter 10. This moment was a turning point in the story as there are now only four people left in Ralph’s tribe, those being Piggy, Ralph, and Samneric. This was the defining chapter as Jack attempted to steal Piggy’s “specs” to create fire back at Castle Rock. The simple requests that Jack makes throughout the story are simply carried out by the boys on his tribe without even being thought over. Jack was able to give the boys shelter on Castle Rock, which led the boys into believing what Jack was telling them, as they felt obligated to listen to their leader. This is essentially how the test subjects reacted to shocking the “second person”. The hatred of Ralph and the blindness following of Jack would continue through the end of the book as Jack, in chapter 12, requests the murder of Ralph, calling it a sacrifice to the beast.' '—and we've got to be careful and throw our spears like at a pig." "We're going to spread out in a line across the island—— "—we're going forward from this end— "—until we find you." "We've got to give signals like this" (Golding, 232). Samneric has been forced into Jack's tribe to kill Ralph, showing the assertiveness of Jack and the extent of his power. This show of strength proves that Jack is the “higher up” on the island and continues to prove that the Milgram experiment relates to this island. The power that has been defined is the novel is equivalent to the power defined in the Milgram experiment, that aesthetics and speech are the overarching presence of power and authority.