摘 要

威廉·戈尔丁的杰作《蝇王》，是一部深含寓意的成长小说，讲述的是一群六到十二岁的英国男孩被困在一个荒无人烟的岛屿上，起初他们虽试图用规矩来约束自己，但却事与愿违，后来因害怕所谓的“野兽”而分裂成对立的两派，野蛮的专制派逐渐压制了理智的民主派，最终酿造出灾难性的后果。从寓意角度看，小说的主题是人类对在文明社会的规则下平和而又和谐的生活的渴求与对权势的贪欲之间的矛盾。主题包括了原罪与善的矛盾、理性与非理性的矛盾、个体与集体的矛盾、文明与野蛮的矛盾。

论文主要由五部分组成。第一部分是对威廉·戈尔丁及其代表作《蝇王》的简单介绍。第二部分是对论文意义和结构的阐述，以及国内外对《蝇王》的相关研究。第三部分是与米尔格兰姆实验的介绍及其与小说《蝇王》的相关性。第四部分是分别从《蝇王》和米尔格兰姆实验的角度分析阐述权威对服从施加的影响及其引起的极大危害。这一部分会对人物所处环境对其行为造成的影响等进行分析。此外，本文还会阐释为何偏离正轨的权威与对权威的盲从，结合在一起，会造就残忍的社会甚至杀戮。最后一部分是基于以上分析得出的结论，即误入歧途的权威和盲目的遵从会导致灾难性的危害。

关键词：《蝇王》；权威；盲从；危害

Abstract

Lord of the Flies, the most outstanding work written by William Golding, is both a coming-of-age and allegorical novel about a group of British boys at the age of six to twelve trapped in a desolate island. Initially, they attempt to rule themselves; but later they split into two opposing factions due to the fear of the supposed “beast”. Gradually, the irrational and ruthless leadership suppresses the reasonable and civilized one, thus eventually leading to a disastrous result. In an allegorical sense, the theme is mainly the conflict between human desires toward living peacefully and harmoniously within the rules of civilized society and toward the will to gain power. Themes include the conflicts between original sin and original goodness, between reason and irrationality, between individualism and community, and between civilization and savagery.

This paper mainly consists of five parts. The first part is about a brief introduction of William Golding and Lord of the Flies. The second part is about the significance and structure of the paper as well as the studies on Lord of the Flies at home and abroad. The third part is about the introduction of Milgram’s experiment on obedience and its relevance to the novel. The following part is the main part, which is about the clarification of the effect of authority on obedience and the dreadful dangers caused by blind conformity in the case of Lord of the Flies and Milgram Experiment respectively. In this part, there will be analysis of the influence of situation or surrounding on the behavior of the characters. Moreover, there will also be some illustrations of the reason why the authority goes astray combined with mindless obedience to that authority is able to make an inhumane society and even result in genocide. In terms of the last part, it is about the conclusion basing on the above analysis to get the theme of this paper that misleading authority and unquestioning obedience can give rise to perils.

Key Words: Lord of the Flies; authority; blind obedience; perils

Contents

1 Introduction 1

2 Literary Review 3

2.1 Significance and Structure 4

2.2 Studies on Lord of the Flies at Home and Abroad 4

3 Milgram Experiment and Its Relevance to the Novel 6

3.1 Milgram Experiment 6

3.2 Its Relevance to the Novel 7

4 Perils of Blind Obedience 9

4.1 Perils of Blind Obedience in Milgram Experiment 9

4.2 Perils of Blind Obedience in Lord of the Flies 10

5 Conclusion 14

References 15

Acknowledgements 17

On the Perils of Blind Obedience in

Lord of the Flies

1 Introduction

Winning both the Booker Prize in1980 and the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1983, the works of William Golding have deeply touched people around the world and are read in dozens of languages. What’s more, his masterpiece Lord of the Flies still remains a global popularity. This story is derived from Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe and R. M. Ballantyne’s The Coral Island. In this book, as well as in his many other books, his purpose was to explore into the darkest part of human heart and reveal the evil of human nature. Golding held a rather strong pessimistic view towards human nature largely due to his experience of the war which led to a drastic shift in his viewpoint about humanity. He held the view that modern civilization, the institutions and order were fragile and temporary, and that oppositely the irrationality and inborn wickedness of human kind were strong and enduring.

The story starts on a tropical island. The survivors of a plane crash who are a group of British kids at the age of six to twelve during an atomic war, attempt to create a provisional society by themselves while they are waiting for rescue. At the beginning, a conch shell that can create commanding noise is used by the voted leader Ralph to summon the other boys for meetings and meanwhile a series of rules are set up.

Nevertheless, Jack Merridew, head boy of the choir and the antagonist of the novel, skilled in manipulating the rest of the boys, is envious of Ralph’s position, thus gradually weakening Ralph’s leadership. Actually he stands for the built-in barbarism of mankind, as opposite to the instinct of civilization Ralph represents. Soon the boys divide into two different groups: one attempting to keep the fire burning and make use of the smoke as a signal to attract passing ships; the other pursuing the pleasure of hunting and killing for meat. The conflicts between the two groups become increasingly obvious. Gradually ruthless Jack enrolls a great number of the boys into his group. Jack’s irrational and cruel one has replaced day-by-day Ralph’s reasonable leadership. At the direction of Jack, one end of the island is occupied and their life of savagery hence begins. Led by Jack, the pack of boys even takes Simon’s life away and steals Piggy’s spectacles. Ralph together with Piggy tries to reason with Jack, but it does not work. During the fight between Ralph and Jack, Roger quietly aimed at Piggy and pushed down a huge rock. Piggy dies right away and the couch that symbolizes the rule and order is crashed at the same time. With the death of Piggy, Ralph has no confederate on the island to fight against Jack any more. Jack and all of his followers search around the entire island for Ralph. Jack even sets the whole island on fire to make Ralph have no place to hide at all. When the hunters are almost able to capture Ralph, a naval officer suddenly appears in front of them. It is actually the smoke on the island that attracts him and his companions to this area. At last, the children are all rescued. However, having just witnessed the savagery of his fellows, Ralph cannot help crying for the end of innocence and the darkness of human heart.

2 Literary Review

2.1 Significance and Structure

The result of the novel Lord of the Flies is quite shocking—the group of innocent British boys ultimately regresses to total savagery under the lead of Jack. It seems that the plot of Lord of the Flies is an exact example of how leadership that goes astray together with mindless conformity can give rise to an extremely violent and cruel society; a mob mindset enables the leader to give any kind of orders, even commit genocide. Coincidentally, according to Stanley Milgram, similar hazards also happened in his experiment on obedience to authority, which was inspired by the Nuremberg Trial of the Nazi war criminals, most of them pleading that they were simply following the orders of their superiors during the Holocaust.

Therefore, this paper is chiefly aimed to discover the dreadful hazards of mindless obedience in Lord of the Flies and in Milgram Experiment, and the latter had a finding of the astonishing ease with which average people are able to comply with the order of doing severe harm to a blameless individual by a supposed authority figure. In the novel, a large amount of stranded boys eventually end up with completely following orders from the novel’s antagonist Jack without truly understanding the reason why they have to do it. Actually, William Golding himself also made a statement in an interview, Lord of the Flies was simply what it seemed sensible for him to write after the war, when everybody was thanking God they weren’t Nazis. And he’d seen enough and thought enough to realize that everyone could be Nazis... (Golding, 1954)

Hence, the following part is about studies on Lord of the Flies at home and abroad, the brief introduction of Milgram’s experiment on obedience to authority figures and its relevance to the novel. In terms of the third part, it is about the clarification of the effect of authority on obedience and the dreadful dangers brought about by blind conformity in the case of Lord of the Flies and Milgram Experiment respectively. In this part, there will be analysis of the influence of situation or surrounding on the characters, etc. Moreover, there will also be some illustrations of the reason why authority that goes astray combined with mindless obedience to that authority is able to make an inhumane society and even lead to genocide. As for the last part, it is about the conclusion basing on the above analysis to get the theme of this paper that misguided authority and unquestioning obedience can give rise to perils. As to the significance, this paper may enable people to be aware of the perils of mindless obedience, strive to deal with the situation or surrounding with independent judgment and act accordingly, thus refining themselves consciously.

2.2 Studies on Lord of the Flies at Home and Abroad

Since its publication, most of the studies on Lord of the Flies are chiefly concerned with the dark sides of human nature, its development of “desert island literature”, its interpretation of feminism and Eco-criticism, and its political, psychological and religious allegory as exposed in the novel. In addition, there are a great many theoretical sources such as Auguste Comte’s theory of “the law of the three stages”, Freud’s Structural Models of Personality, the theory of original sin, so on and so forth. These analyses may vary from each other in manifold sorts of ways; but they still have something in common: the exploration of the innate evilness of humanity when isolated individuals or small groups are pushed into extreme situations or surroundings.