Equilibrium

Many believe that adults are more civilized than children, because adults are able to control themselves, since they have more of a matured state, and have the ability to calm themselves unlike when children cannot, and start throwing tantrums. However, in truth children and adults are equally savage because adults are just as capable as children of doing bad things.


Lord of the flies has very few examples since it’s about the kids, with barely any adults involved, but that is also something savage about adults. At the beginning of the book, one of the main characters “Piggy” noticed something was wrong. “there was that pilot. But he wasn’t in the passenger cabin, he was up in front.”(8) The pilot just jumped out without any warning, telling us that he wanted to save his own life instead of trying to guide the passengers or made their protection the pilot’s. There is also a radar that has the plane’s location or coordinates, and as soon as the plane crash, or at least not move for a good 10 minutes, the adults should’ve noticed and signaled an emergency and rushed over there, to rescue survivors of the crash.


Not only is that an example of savagery from adults. At the time, there was a war going on while kids were stranded on the island, and they haven’t mentioned about any adults noticing anything about the kids being stranded, even though they should’ve made it one of their top priorities. A kid noticed a body in the sky. “There was a speck above the island, a figure dropping swiftly beneath a parachute, a figure that hung with dangling limbs.”(95) This tells us that someone tried to survive a plane crash but failed, letting the kids see something horrific.


Because there isn’t any adults in the book to talk about how children are equally as savage as adults, I’ll talk about how the children in the book are not as savage as you think. In the book, a group of kids are stranded on an island, and there are kids who wants to have power, kids who wants to survive, and kids who want to be with those who have power. Piggy is a kid who is made fun of because he is fat, and he wanted everyone to work together to get rescued, which is not savaged at all, but there are kids who doesn’t listen to him because of the way he looks like, so they have a vote on who would be leading. “Who wants me? Every hand outside the choir except Piggy’s was raised immediately. Then Piggy, too, raised his hand grudgingly into the air. Ralph counted. “I'm chief then.”(23) Although Piggy do have the specs of being a leader, there is also Jack, who leads the choir, and the type of person who wants power. Ralph who has the conch, on the other hand, just wants to survive and be able to get to safety, and also cares for others. During the vote, Ralph was appointed as leader, but Jack was irritated, so Ralph also gave some of the power Ralph was given to Jack, to make him happy, which is also not savage.


There are times where the group gets out of hand, and starts to go crazy since they are stranded and out of their comfort zone. Especially, the time where simon was the “pig” and the group were beating him, dancing, and singing “Kill the Pig. Cut her throat. Bash her in.”(75) In which is savage, but it is inevitable because adult or children, they cannot stay stranded on an island out of their comfort zone for long, without losing sanity. Which leads to a real world situation where a care worker who is caring for a elderly who suffers from Alzheimer's, and loses her sanity, leading to physical abuse upon the old woman who suffered Alzheimer’s. She has been abusing the old woman for who knows how long, but the care worker was caught with a camera of her abusing the woman for 17 minutes. And because she have alzheimer’s, she couldn’t remember if she was abused or not. Telling us, that everyone can lose their sanity and does something terrible to contain their insanity, Adult or Child.

The kids in the book do things that makes them angry which is understandable, but it can also go out of hand. So do adults, and one example where there are a married couple, and the husband had cheated on the wife, and which angered the withm which lead to her cutting his penis. Sure that maybe too far, but he deserved it. He went to the hospital to get it reattached but the wife snuck in, and cut his penis off again, which is savage because she had already done so, and the husband had already learned his mistakes.  In the book, I’ve never read anything of anyone doing something as painful as what the married couple had done. Many believe that adults are less savage than children, but in truth there is an equilibrium between the way children and adults act. There are many different ways they can act, but they can act the same way at the same time.


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