Lord Of The Flies Identity Analysis

Change. Everybody changes drastically at some point in their life. Some may even change daily, little bits at a time. Maybe they grew an inch, maybe they ate half a sandwich instead of a whole, maybe they learned a new curse word. Who knows? Someone may even lose a part of themselves in the changing process. In the iconic novel, Lord of the Flies, the characters are challenged and they change and find that they are losing their identity. People can also lose their identity by losing their innocence. The innocence a child has, that has people going ‘aw’ eventually goes away, and with it, a large part of a child’s identity can disappear. This childlike innocence appears in Lord of the Flies and in this book, the characters lose this innocence, therefore they lose a component of their identity.

Identity is the fact of being who or what a person or thing is. An identity can be lost in a person’s life time when they go through ruff or troubling times. This was proven in The Lord of the Flies when young boys went from civilized school boys to blood thirsty savages all wanting power. The characters all lost their identity one way or another during the story. Piggy was the first victim of lost identity when he was already labeled by society and other schoolboys by his looks. Every boy on the island had a choice to pick between a civilized life with Ralph or a barbaric life with Jack. This choice also determined some people’s identity by them changing themselves to fit on a side. Jack’s choir boys had changed their

Identity is the fact of being who or what a person or thing is. An identity can be lost in person’s life time when they go through ruff or troubling times. This was proven in The Lord of the Flies when young boys went from civilized school boys to blood thirty savages all wanting power. The characters of this story all lost their identity one way or another during the story. Piggy was the first victim of lost identity when he was already labeled by society and other schoolboys by his looks. Every boy on island had a choice to pick between a civilized life with Ralph or a barbaric life with Jack. This choice also determined some people’s identity by them changing themselves to fit in a side. Jack’s choir boys had changed their identity dramatically from proper school boys to savages rubbing blood on their faces and mindlessly murdering people. One thing most of the guys did was paint their faces to hide form their prey, then after killing them viscously they would wipe their camouflage off like nothing happened. The only person who never changed their identity was Ralph and you can see that him keeping leadership during

Developmental psychologist Erik Erikson stated, “in the social jungle of human existence, there is no feeling of being alive without a sense of identity.” It is important to note that Erikson is trying to emphasize the influence and vitality identity has on the human mind. The identity people have dictated the status they hold and what they can and cannot do. William Golding suggests the power identity has over a civilization and a single person in his novel Lord of The Flies. Golding develops his novel in describing how people prioritize power and authority to which this desire alters their identity to change over time through exposure to possessing higher authority over others. This new identity is stripped from

An indivdual’s identity is mainly derived from the contact they experience with their environment. Both the ideas of nurture, the sociocultural factors learned through the environment and “free will vs. determinism,” how nature is tied into birth by genetics shape your identity throughout life by the choices you make.

“[The] capacity for disgust, like all natural capacities, can be built on culture.” (Appiah 54) Are identities constructed because of surroundings, or are they molded based on one’s own individual thoughts and actions? This is the ultimate question; a variation of the nature vs. nurture debate. One can make the assumption that a person is molded by what he or she sees around him happening in the world, or by reading and learning from past events. In CORE this semester, we read plenty of books, all with the common theme of identity. Throughout all three units there were better examples of identity, and there were not so good examples of identity. However, another common theme is an individual’s identity getting compromised by what he or she is exposed to on a daily basis. A person builds his idea of himself based off of what he sees around him. As sad as this fact is, very few people are not influenced by outside sources.

Perhaps the common phrase, “You are a product of your environment,” should be extended to “You are a product of your environment and biological makeup”—although it is not nearly as catchy. These identities that are influenced by these outside (and inside) factors nonetheless become an integrally important way that people are able to make sense of themselves and their existence, a way that they are able to organize and categorize information about who they are in a definable identity that can be communicated to someone else. Everyone is given the unique opportunity to define who they are, to reinvent themselves, and to continue this development throughout their

There are various kinds of identity (individualized or shared) that people are expected to possess. (Hollinger, 2004) namely; personal identity which is known as a

The process of identity formation is a life-long process that will continue as an individual ages. Many aspects contribute to the formation process. Often, individuals ask themselves the question who they are. Subsequently, they tend to spend their life trying to figure that question out. Some are able to do so with such ease, others tend to take a lot more time to answer that question. The sense of identity has the purpose to aid the individual in their social-cultural environment (Kapplan & Flum, 2009).

Individuals have a sense of who he or she is. For example, I am a male human who is 20 years old. I have blue eyes and brown hair. I have experiences and memories of past experiences. I have a collection of beliefs, ethics, memories that have given me a

People has been trying to find their own identity throughout their lives. Identity, in fact, is a changing subject that are influenced by many different experiences and circumstances. Identity is the product of varieties of sources and is hard to return to its original shape. The society and the environment that people grow up in play major roles in impacting their identity. Changes in these environments create an ever-lasting changes in these identity. Identity slowly becomes concealed in order to help people better survive in their society. People’s real identity becomes hidden so that they can better cope with the changes in culture, learning experience, society’s expectations, and, stereotype.

As human beings, we should always understand that our identity is shaped by numerous numbers of different motivations throughout our live cycle. Each encounter, irrespective of whether or not at the time there was conception of its consequence, has further helped us come to a better understanding of who we are, what we are, our interests, our opinions, what drives our desires, and so on. In this accelerated world we live in, it is so easy to overlook and underappreciate one of the most extraordinary mysteries of not only our time but of that of our descendants as well, the mystery of defining who we really are.

Choosing an identity is necessary, and many of us are forced to have more than one identity. We have an identity that we choose, a private identity, and are forced to also have a public identity. Our public identity is shaped by politics and our cultural surroundings. According to Saenz, “the West’s obsession began with Plato and Aristotle and was extended by (among others) Thomas Aquinas, Augustine, Descartes, Locke, Hume, Heidegger and Marx” (75). This obsession with political identity continues into present day and the West’s obsession has a great impact on our public identity. Our public identity is not one that we may necessarily choose, but rather is forced upon us by others. While some say “we are all the same. We all love, we all hate, we all dream, we all will die. We feel. We all feel” (73). There is so little truth behind such a statement. We are not all the same, not genetically,

William Golding’s Lord of the Flies takes place during a war, and follows a group of unsupervised British school boys who crash land on an island due to the war. Jack is able to hide his true self behind a mask which allows him to act out on his savage tendencies; however, Piggy never hides his true self causing the other boys to see Piggy as someone who should not be taken seriously. Through the humiliations suffered by Jack and Piggy, Golding shows that when the boys conceal their identity, they act without repercussions which proves that mankind has a weak state of mind.

In William Golding’s novel Lord of the Flies, a group of boys are left stranded on an island when their plane crashes after getting hit by a bomb. They must survive on their own without adults until they get rescued. Sigmund Freud, an Austrian neurologist, believed that humans have three parts to their personality. The id is selfish and doesn’t care about other people's needs or wishes, only itself. Freud says the id ““knows no judgements of value: no good and evil, no morality” – only the fulfillment of immediate desires” (CommonLit). It can also be compared to the boys losing their sense of civilization and becoming savages. When humans reach around the age of three, they develop what Freud calls the ego. The ego meets the needs of the id, but also considers the situation and makes a rational decision. Finally, after the age of 5, humans develop the superego. The superego is the human’s moral and ethics, holding them back from making impulsive decisions based off their desires. In Golding’s Lord of the Flies, the boys begin to lose their morals and sense of civilization, therefore letting their id take control and become more powerful . Throughout the book, the author explores the Freudian philosophy of human nature, revealing the need to keep the id under control and to balance the three parts.