“Civilization is skin-thin: scratch it and savagery bleeds out.” [Felipe Fernandez-Armesto, Civilizations ] Nobel laureate William Golding’s first novel, Lord of the Flies (1954), tells the story of a group of school boys plane-wrecked on an uninhabited island. The leadership of the democratic and sensitive Ralph is soon usurped by the savage Jack, and childhood innocence soon gives way to uncanny cruelty on the island. The novel is the story of evil in the human being and his society. Seeing that there are no adults to restrain them, the children are initially excited. But Ralph emerges as a leader reminding them of their responsibility to find ways of returning home. Ralph is a moral character in the novel. His is a cultivated morality, the product of human civilisation. Jack, on the other hand, is the uncultivated savage. He soon wrenches the leadership from Ralph and becomes a dictator who imposes both his will and his savagery on the group. Most of the ch
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