Mental Breakdowns in Lord of the Flies Lord of the Flies by William Golding is a book about the slow decay of order within a society that cannot sustain itself. In the story a group of young british schoolboys find themselves on an island after their plane crashes. The reader does not know the exact time period that the story takes place in, or even if it is supposed to take place during a real world event, but it seems to either take place sometime around the second world war, the cold war, or some hypothetical third world war.
Either way, it is fairly clear that some war is taking place during the period the book is taking place. The story begins with the group of boys having some semblance of a community and some well set rules, at least for a group of preteens. Some characters are shown early in the story and are clear from their first introduction that they are important and will likely play some important part, though more characters do come into play later on and play some very key roles.
Either way, the initial clear leaders of the group are Ralph, the first character we meet and the elected chief of the group from the very start, Piggy, the most rational and parental kid of the group and the keeper of the glasses used to light the fire that will hopefully get them rescued, Jack, the leader of the choir boys and self appointed leader of the hunters, and Simon, the most quiet of the beginning four, but probably the most rational besides Piggy hough he does have some more spiritual and fanciful thoughts later on. There always seems to be a slight division within the group, as some of the characters, mainly Jack and his hunters, suddenly decide that they do not want to do their chores and would much rather run around the wonderful rule free playground that they view the island as while they can while throwing in a heaping spoonful of violence into the mix, just to spice things up.
And for the first few chapters of the story that is completely fine because some of them still follow the rules albeit with a groan because rules are for losers, but as the story reaches its halfway point, some kids become bored of the relative order that exists in their group and break off to be more wild and have more ‘fun’. When you combine that with the fear running through the younger kids, mostly related to the Beast that they are convinced lives in the woods, things are setup to fail, the only question now is how spectacular said failure will be.
It is clear that madness and decay is a large theme in this book and I believe that the most obvious cases of a quick descent into madness are Simon, Jack, and Ralph, who are going to be the main focus in this essay and who all seen losing much of their rationality and instead relying on magical thinking to go about their lives on the island. The first example of a mental breakdown would be Jack, who from the very beginning seems to be a bit more interested in the wild side of things than the rational, such as the tribes supposed need for meat.
In chapter 4, after Jack and his group of choir boys were assigned to keep watch of the fire and ensure that it is kept lit and smoking at all times during the day, a plane flies overhead and is seen by Ralph and Piggy. They quickly realize that the smoke that Jack was in charge of is missing in action and rush to go find him and his group. When they do find him and explain what had happened, his only response he can give to them is “We needed meat. ” (p. 100). They try to explain to him why him letting the fire die could have just cost them a chance to go home and he proceeds to punch
Piggy in the face, breaking one side of his glasses. He shows no regard for everything they say after that and doesn’t apologize for his mistake, he only cares about the meat, which is already showing, in chapter 4, that he is not quite stable and is losing his grasp on what is important for their survival and return home and what is important for their happiness in this game he views the island as. This continues to spiral down until chapter 8, where he calls a meeting and attempts to separate the group into those who follow him and those who follow Ralph, promising meat and dance to those who choose him. I’m going off by myself.
He can catch his own pigs. Anyone who wants to hunt when I do can come too. ” (p. 183). Once his group grows in size this being snowballing in the trip downhill, to the point that they kill two people, Simon and Piggy, and nearly kill Ralph. He shows no remorse for any of these deeds, not even trying to justify the last two. He becomes so trapped in his mindset of everything being a game that he forgot that it wasn’t and that there are actual, real world consequences to his actions. His mental breakdown is likely the most severe of the three and the one that does the most damage to the group as a whole.
The second, and possibly most obvious, mental breakdown that occurs is Simons. His breakdown occurs only in chapter 9 and so does his death. After they find what they believe to be the beast, he decides to go on his own, not to leave the group permanently, but to go investigate the mountain on his own for a while. The first thing that may have caused his breakdown, though we can’t be sure, may have been when he found the body of the pilot that had fallen from the sky sometime earlier in the book. “The flies had found the figure too.
The life-like movement would scare them off for a moment so that they made a dark cloud round the head. Then as the blue material of the parachute collapsed the corpulent figure would bow forward, sighing, and the flies settle once more” (p. 210) Anyone could agree that that would be a bit traumatising to anyone, especially a young boy who was likely already beginning to lose hope of ever seeing the world he once knew of again. After that incident, he stumbles on the head of the sow that had been killed by Jack and his crew, only to have fantastical visions, or delusions, involving it.
He may have reached some helpful conclusions through these delusions, that the beast was not something they could fight or needed to fear, that it was actually their inner urges to destroy and be wild, but there is no denying that the pig’s head did not actually talk to him and anything he saw was made in his own mind. As helpful as this information could have been, Simon was soon killed by the other boys after they worked themselves into a frenzy and mistook him for the beast. “Kill the beast! Cut his throat! Spill his blood!… Him! Him! ” (p. 18) This chapter was one of the most madness driven in the book, showing not only Simons, but also everyone else in the tribes. The last example of madness is Ralph, who towards the very end of the book completely loses his mind. After Piggy dies, he no longer has anyone to keep him stable, which we saw Piggy doing back in chapter 10.
Now, in chapter 12, Ralph is being chased by Jack’s group, which is at this point everyone else on the island. They intend to kill him and offer his body to the beast, which can be inferred from “Roger sharpened a stick at both ends. (p. 273). He loses all advanced thought and becomes completely preoccupied with survival, which even he realizes in his state when he plans what to do. He believes hiding would be the best idea and when he pauses “He wondered if a pig would agree”. He at least still had the thought process to realize he was acting like an animal, though he still went through with his plan to hide. He resorts to actually harming the other kids to save himself and running desperately for his life.
At this point in the book, I do not believe there is a mentally stable person on the island. At the very end of the book we can see him realizing his state fully, when the naval officers arrive and question him. Even then, when his mind might have been clearer than it had been throughout the entire story, he still broke down in another way, and cried for the first time since they had arrived. In conclusion, this book showcases a wide variety of madness and shows the descent into said madness quite clearly.
Jack likely never had much of a mind to begin with, Simon loses it for unknown reasons but it is clearly shown to be gone, and Ralph loses his only due to the need to survive. The only person who might have stayed sane throughout the entire story was Piggy, but he died too early for us to ever know. William Golding shows that in situations where there is no clear set order that is enforced by someone the masses cannot contest, there will never be order because it will always fall apart again into madness eventually.
