Jack vs. Piggy: A Psychoanalytical Reading of Lord of the Flies

Lord of the Flies is interwoven with the social history and the mental health. However, in an interdisciplinary attempt, it aims to uncover the factors that help shaping of character traits of individuals, and the way of conduct in their environmental community and civilization defects. The survival of Lord of the Flies relates the moral, psychological, social, and cultural failure of a bunch of boys so disgraceful that they degenerate into a savage tribe in an uninhabited island, shortly after they found themselves there. Some of these children are so wicked in mind and body, who lead others to the same corruption, that reader cannot find any guiltlessness which is common to kids, which is one of the points that the author wants to reveal to his readers. The humanity in performing real wickedness and atrocious corruption is seated in the cultural bases that nourish mankind’s personality and root. This explains the inhumanity and enormities that are formed by the hands of ordinary people, and surprisingly children, in society due to the defects of civilization surrounding itself, and experiences of individuals in such conditions. In this respect, this novel would be more tangible by analyzing it based on psychoneurosis theories of Horney.

Keywords:

Atrocity , Civilization , Environment , Neurotic , Psychoanalytical Reading.