CHAPTER I (Second Draft)

CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION

RATIONALE

            Ralph, a 12-year old boy, was chosen as the leader of the group of boys who survived a plane crash. As a leader, he tried his best to create rules and achieve goals that would satisfy the needs of the group (food, shelter and water) and would also help them survive in the secluded island. It was all good until common norms of society that defined what was right and wrong diminished the longer they stayed in the island. Ralph was a witness to how the other civilized young boys turned into savages, killing not only animals for their food but also humans for their own selfish desires.

The characters of Ralph and the other boys in the book Lord of the Flies portrays and unravels how we humans reveal our innate vileness when the constraints of the society are gone. When Ralph and the other boys were trapped in an island that was isolated from human civilization, their survival instincts overruled their educated and cultured personas. This book of William Golding is filled with symbolisms that adhere to how humans will act when they face threats to their existence be it by physical death or by death of significance in people’s minds.

The characters in the book are metaphors that the novel used to show how different personalities of men can bring about destruction or salvation to others. For the past years, psychologists had tried to define man’s true nature.  Jean Jacques Rousseau (as cited in Coleman, 1960) said that man is naturally good. However, in the book of Fromm and Xirau (1968), Thomas Hobbes stated that man is born evil. The novel not only described man as an innately evil individual but also introduced the concept of man’s inherent goodness. This brings us to the question of what kind of “creature” is a human truly “underneath” is (Coleman, 1960).

William Golding, after the Second World War, said in his essay entitled Fable that “man produces evil as a bee produces honey” (as cited in McClean, 2010). He realized that even in a perfect society, evilness of man still exists. Golding used the psychological concept of Sigmund Freud as one of his basis in showing how evil humans as depicted in his novel (McClean, 2010).

The different situations in the novel depicted how the satisfaction of the basic needs of a person like food, care and love, and the need to feel important, affects the decisions and actions of a person. In Maslow’s Theory of Motivation, the basic needs of a person are in a hierarchy (Green, 2000). This means that in order to achieve satisfaction or contentment, a person needs to satisfy his/her lowest need until he/she in order to go up to a higher need until he/she reaches the highest need of a pyramid-like hierarchy. Most of the actions and decisions of the characters to the various situations in the novel that requires the satisfaction of their need were cruel to the extent that actions of blind destructiveness were done. McClean (2010) used the book Lord of the Flies in his psychoanalysis of man’s nature because of how similar situations of blind destructiveness in the novel also happened in his work as a psychologist.

Just like McClean who used the book to analyze man’s nature, we, the researchers aimed to determine the true nature of man by also interpreting and analyzing the book of William Golding, Lord of the Flies. Using Freud’s Personality Theory and Maslow’s Hierarchy of needs, we the researchers would identify the basic needs of the characters in the novel that affected their decisions and actions in a specific situation. The data gathered from the actions of the characters from situations that correspond to their needs would be used to classify what was dominant among the three aspects of the mental construct of Freud (id, ego, and superego) that influenced their decision/action. The leading aspect seen on the results will determine the true nature of man.

STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM

This study aims to define man's nature through the characters Ralph, Jack, Piggy and Simon, in William Golding’s Lord of the Flies, focusing on the psychological context of the novel.

            Specifically, the study targets to answer the following questions:

1)    What is the nature of man according to its psychological perspective?

2)    Using psychological analysis, what do the characters of the novel represent on man’s true nature?

3)    What are the environmental and social factors that affect the decision and

           actions of the characters in the novel?

4)    How does this decisions/actions by the characters define the true nature of man?

OBJECTIVES OF THE STUDY

1)    To determine the nature of man according to its psychological perspective

2)    To determine the representation of the characters in novel using psychological analysis

3)    To determine the environmental and social factors that affect the decision and

           actions of the characters in the novel

4)    To determine how the decisions/actions of the characters define the true nature of man

SIGNIFICANCE OF THE STUDY

            The study has been conducted to define the true nature of man through the psychoanalysis of the different characters in the novel, Lord of the Flies.

            It is very important to know what the true nature of man is in order to further understand how the human mind works. To the readers, understanding how the mind works will help also in understanding oneself better, realizing one’s own weaknesses and finding solutions to counter such weaknesses. This will also help the readers in making better decisions and actions pertaining to the different situations in their life.

This research will also guide the readers especially psychologists in understanding human behavior and human nature better.  This will help them in assessing their patients and determining the real source of the patients’ psychological problems for better psychological treatment of these problems.

To the parents, this study will also help them in evaluating how they would raise their children. Proper guidance to their children as they grow up is important because if there is proper upbringing of a child, nourished with love and care, the child may grow up not having the neediness to satisfy oneself (Jacobson as cited in Tishkowski, 2005).