The motive of initiation and the problem of evil in W. Golding’s novel “Lord of the Flies”

Abstract

The article explores traces of the motive of initiation in the given literary work. The relevance of the study is that the motive of initiation in the novel “Lord of the Flies” has not yet been traced by any of the researchers of the writer’s literary path. The aim of the research is to reveal the motive of initiation in the novel, which, owing to the revealed motive of the ritual transition, acquires a new in-depth coverage. The authors of the study trace in the work allusions to certain symbolic signs of the initiation ritual, in particular, the allocation of a group of adolescent boys, a territory closed to outsiders (in this case it is an uninhabited coral island), the performance of a ritual dance (dance of the hunters), the application of signs to the initiating persons (painted faces – masks in Jack’s tribe) etc. The novel even features the image of a beast’s head (a boar’s head), and the writer casually uses a phrase that is important for the symbolic meaning of initiation: swallowing by the mouth (at the moment when Simon loses consciousness). This article draws attention to the specifics of initiation in the work: we have a group initiation of adolescents without a mentor, without a shaman. Instead, two leaders appear among the boys, two chiefs who lead the teenagers in completely opposite directions in the development of their small island society. One of them, Ralph, tries to worry about their possible rescue by adults, tries to take care of the little ones, and is also based on a completely democratic version of governance and humanity. The second boy, Jack Meridue, is offended that he was not chosen as the leader; he becomes the leader of hunters’ group. He is very ambitious, gaining prestige by hunting wild pigs and holding meat-eating banquets; he violates Ralph’s orders regarding the boys doing their duty (for example, maintenance of a fire on a mountain for a smoke signal when a ship appears on the horizon), incites them to games and entertainment etc. As a result, most of the boys follow Jack and create a tribe in which the boys paint their faces, dance ritual dances, hunt wild pigs, and tolerate a tyrant little chief, who hates dissent. Eventually, the tribe kills Piggy, and then hunts the only “dissident”, the only owner of “common sense” Ralph. In order to “smoke” Ralph out of the forest, the jungle is set on fire, turning the green island into black ashes. Before us there is the degradation of well-bred English boys into a tribe of cruel savages. Such degradation is confirmed both by the religious motifs present in the novel and by the symbolic features of the ritual – an initiation that turned out to be unsuccessful. Instead of developing and improving, a group of boys on a deserted island degrades as a result of life’s trials, turning into a herd of selfish and cruel savages. Looking for an answer to the question of where evil comes from in the world and why even cultured European nations often forget about spirituality and culture and become cruel killers and often even sadists (as it happened to the SS in World War II), the writer in his novel-experiment comes to the conclusion that evil is created not only by society, the environment, but it is inherent in the potential state of human nature; and under certain conditions, when indulging mundane desires and interests, a person becomes a carrier of evil, which we see in the novel “Lord of the Flies”.