By Fanny
“Judging a book by it’s cover”
The discrimination against Piggy due to his unattractive appearance is similar to that in the real world, where children in school are teased due to their social status and their outer appearance. This reveals that humans are superficial beings and do not bother about your innate goodness but build up their opinions on others based on appearance, or as said “judging a book by its cover”.
There was this girl in our class named Amanda, who scored great results but was of a small-build, who was meek. Everyone saw her as the “teacher’s pet” and nobody really wanted to befriend her. Not only that, since the “coolest” person in class bullied her, ordered her around and constantly took her stationary, nobody dared or attempted to befriend her, as they found that bullying her was more fun and if even the “coolest” girl disliked her, they as fellow classmates should bully her to be in favour of that one “cool” girls in class. Just like Amanda, nobody bothered to befriend Piggy, Piggy was so neglected that nobody asked for his real name throughout the story ever since he was introduced to be “Piggy”, hence showing his social insignificance on the island. Even though he was obviously much more intelligent than all the boys on the island, nobody recognized his merits and left him outcasted as soon as he arrived on the island, when Jack showed his dislike for him by telling him to “Shut up, Fatty”, it was from then on that Piggy was entirely left out and bullied. Even though it is clear to those students that all should be treated the same, with the same amount of respect, we tend to go overboard and forget about simple things such as respect for one another.
Civilization is learnt, but not innate
The boys easily give in to their savage desires, where they lack self discipline, only doing what they are supposed to do during an emergency, but then eventually forgetting about the impending danger afterwards. Just like in real life, when I first failed an exam i thought to myself that I had to “do better” and “study harder”. However due to my lack of self discipline, I quickly found joy in other activities and was completely neglecting my studies all over again, thus causing me to fail my exams once again. Just like me, the littluns on the island were only motivated after the meetings Ralph saying that “ “I bet if I blew the conch this minute, they’d come running. Then we’d be, you know, very solemn, and someone would say we ought to build a jet, or a submarine, or a TV set. When the meeting was over they’d work for five minutes, then wander off or go hunting.” Hence, showing that self discipline, an example of civilisation, is learnt and not innate, many of us lacking it.
Peer influence has a great impact on others
As seen in LOTF, where Jack negatively influences the other boys to become savage and join him in not only the hunting of pigs, but also that of the other boys, bringing danger to all the boys on the island. This is reminiscent of real life, where students are easily influenced their classmates or the people they are close to.It is so easy to succum to peer pressure because everyone wants to fit in and be liked. Especially when it seems like “everyone is doing it”. People give in to peer pressure because they do not want to hurt someone’s feelings or they do not know how to get out of the situation thus they just say “yes”, and follow whatever the others are doing, and in this case the littluns follow Jack in hunting and little follow Ralph in building of huts even though he is the rightful leader.
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