Follow My Order!

In “Lord of the Flies” by William Golding a transportation plane crashes on a random island, the only few people that survive are surprisingly a group of young boys and most of them are strangers to each other. This island was not their destination, they’re not prepared to survive on an island, but that doesn’t matter anymore as they’re forced to make choice if they want to survive on this island. As young boys it’s hard, but they must make choices on this island, not solely for their own survival, but as well as every other boy on the island. With most random boys not familiar with surviving on an island the boys aren’t sure of their choices. Once they select Ralph as their leader it seems as though they all understand he is in command and what he says goes. When choosing to follow Ralph, their choices aren’t  dependent on their own knowledge and instinct when under command anymore, they’re dependent on what the other guy is doing. In an rulership, when it comes to following an order complying to what everyone else does and how everyone else acts is natural . But once apart of whatever the crowd does. Without knowing it, people comply to whatever everyone else does, and that begs the question;Is there a silence that fights against the orders of a commander in the form of a question or an idea when it comes to people following orders? Comfort zones are no longer of any importance when the sitation at hand seems normal to those around you

Once the boys all find each other on this island they finally begin to understand that they’re gonna be here for a while. They decided to put somebody in command.Once it came down to determine who their leader would be,the boys voted for Ralph to be their leader by raising their hands. Some of the boys, such as Jack weren’t okay with Ralph officially being elected as their leader. When Ralph’s title as leader was established Jack was disappointed in the decision, but Ralph later gave him control over the choir boys and hunting.”The circle of boys broke into applause. Even the choir applauded, and the freckles on Jack’s face disappeared under a blush of mortification. He started up, then changed his mind and sat down again while the air rang” (23).The boys applauding in a situation like this is a way of them expressing content and delight for Jack’s decision as leader. However, the boys clapping could also be to send a message to everyone else about the emotion they want to be comprehended for, content and delight may not be their true feelings. Jack accepted that what he felt was right didn’t matter anymore after he accepted the boys decision and broke into the emotional state of mortification. Him sitting down was him signifying that he accepts the situation at hand and understands that what has happened is glued in place.

In Lord of the Flies by William Golding some of the boys aren’t always comfortable with what their doing. When it came to hunting there was a boy named Jack who overall took control of the leadership role when it came to hunting. Ralph wasn’t a fan of hunting, but since it had become normal to the hunters he decided to give it a shot. While traveling, the boys ended up along the pig track and that is where Ralph spotted a boar. He took aim with his wooden stick, and stuck it into the boar. The boys chased the boar down to the see, but lost track of it. Ralph felt accomplished with his shot after. “I hit him,” said Ralph again, “and the spear stuck in a bit.”

He felt the need of witnesses.

“Didn’t you see me?”

Maurice nodded.

“I saw you. Right bang on his snout Where!” (113)

Ralph is rolling with a new crowd when hunting down the boar. He’s not used to this feeling, it felt really good to him because he wanted to have the attention for his accomplishment. He seeked out attention so everyone could celebrate along by his side about his huge accomplishment, but sadly Ralph didn’t understand that not only did his shot not kill the boar, but on top of that, this wasn’t irregular to the hunter, this was in fact normal to them. Hunting while stranded there would be enough spear’s plunging into the flesh of  prey and the feeling of witnessing that wouldn’t excite the boys, but Ralph failed to see that. At the end of his begging, Maurice gave him a nod most likely just to quiet Ralph down while they still tried to catch the undead boar that was running away from them. How the group wanted Ralph to feel was of little importance to the boys as they didn’t see this as an achievement worthy of celebration, rather than just another ol’ day in the life of a hunter, nothing special, it was normal.

Conformity is trying to match people’s feelings and beliefs to be the same as anybody else’s in the crowd. In today’s world conformity is seen in everyday lives, at school, work, or even riding the bus. Part of this reason is because of people being unaware that they’re conforming to another group. For example, acts such as smoking and drinking in a highschool environment may seem normal to those around somebody, but when somebody decides to partake in the same actions as the next person people may come to find out that they’re not comfortable with what they’re doing. People’s own comfort begin to become less important when going along with the crowd becomes more important.  Back in 1935 a Psychologist published his experiment about conformity. “Asch used a lab experiment to study conformity,whereby 50 male students from Swarthmore College in the USA participated in a ‘vision test.’ Using a line judgment task, Asch put a naive participant in a room with seven confederates.” In this experiment the questions asked in this test were obvious when using common sense, however with 7 confederates there their job was to try to get the one participant to their answers, instead of the obvious answer. Even if the participant was not comfortable with the answer he chose it because he trusted in what the 7 other confederates answers were. This real world example connects to Ralph’s decision to try out hunting. Even though he wasn’t comfortable with it, he still chose to do it because everyone around him were hunters and felt comfortable hunting.

Hernan Cortes was an explorer. In 1521 he conquered the Aztecs with the help of his men. He traveled to mexico with 500 of his soldiers. Once he went from wanting to explore to wanting to conquer the Aztecs all of his men were not on board with his plan any more. One man tried to assassinate him for his change of heart, but Hernan Cortes found out his plot and had him hung. None of his other men tried anything like this again. “Cortes and his men were in the center of the city, and would most likely have to fight their way out no matter what direction they took.” Cortes men ended up being in the city anyway and attacking the Aztecs and torturing their people. His men winded up fighting no matter what there comforts were. They weren’t on board with Hernan Cortes’s plans but they never tried to rebel against because of the first failed attempt by their fellow soldier

Comfort isn’t important to people when it’s normalized amongst those around you. How comfortable somebody is at times may not be that important to that person, or what they’re conforming to may be more fun or exciting than their own comfort so they decide to take a risk. This could be a good or bad thing but in general, it's natural. In conclusion, the world has shown accounts of this since the beginning of time, but being aware of the conformity you partake in is what makes somebody different from everyone else.

Work Cited

1.Conformity, Compliance, and Obedience, www.units.miamioh.edu/psybersite/cults/cco.shtml.

2.McLeod, Saul. “Saul McLeod.” Simply Psychology, 1 Jan. 1970, www.simplypsychology.org/asch-conformity.html.

3.“Fall of Tenochtitlan.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 6 Apr. 2018, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fall_of_Tenochtitlan.