Lord of the Flies Forum

Would the boys behave any better?

naaaaah. they would act more like kids and stuff.

So an adult would make it worse? I think the adult would be the first victim of Jack's Madness.

well probably at first he would try to order them around just like ralph did, and i think jack would eventually rebel anyways but it would be against the adult instead of ralph? .o.

It depends on how long the adult lived, but I think they may end up overwhelming the adult, or just ignore him completely and throw him off a cliff, or... it depends on the adult really.

The adult would be accepted as an authority and would be followed by the boys...as long as that adult provided rules and consequences.  This is why Ralph's leadership fails--he makes rules but does not punish boys who don't follow the rules.  He just tries to explain why they should follow the rules.  Jack is the one one who says, "We'll have lots of rules" but also "Bullockes to the rules!"  When he forms his own tribe, he succeeds in getting the boys to do his will because he punishes offenders--even Wilfred, whom he beats for no apparent reason. 

To these boys, authority = rules and consequences, and the leader who provides them is Jack, even though he is a tyrant.  Ralph is the better man, but Jack is the better leader.  This is Golding's point--people NEED tough leadership so that their beast does not take over.

I don't know if the kids would follow an adult because they want to take care of themselves.  I guess it would depend on who the adult is and how he acted.  If there was an adult on the island they would probably be a little surprised to see them since they think they're alone.  Some would be upset that they didn't have more time withought adults but alot of the younger one's seemed to want to be rescued so they would probably be happy.

they would behave naughty and rape eachother

Absence of grown ups was a source of joy to ralph but he also misses them at one point and keeping all this in ,mind i can say all the boys feels secure in the presence of adults, to what extent am i right.

its wrong to say that they would rape each other but the presence of adults would make them more sensible and they would become more observer under the protection of adults.?

adults on the island would have provided structure and guidance, just like they did at school. 

Structure and guidance, just like at school . . . herein lies the irony of the novel.  Back at school the adults were in charge.  And what have they done?  Created a big deadly mess called a war.  This is why the boys were being evacuated in the first place.  And so, without adults, they re-create the adult world on a little-boy scale . . . and it's just as deadly as the world they left.  And when they are rescued, they are taken to a trim cruiser where there are adults . . . fighting a deadly war.

The main reason Jack lead the rebellion against Ralph was because he thought that he was better suited for the power that Ralph held. If and adult was in charge, Jack would have had no grounds for challenging his authority. A minor theme of the novel is the aspect of 'conditioning' (such as how Maurice threw rocks around, but not at Henry) and children of that age are conditioned to listen to an adult. However, if an adult was present it is very likely that the children would revert into even more childlike states since there is an authority figure there to tell them what to do. There becomes no need to think for yourself.

heather, I disagree. The boys are already in a childlike state at the beginning of the novel--as they should be, since they are children. If they had an adult to guide them, they would probably be more orderly and civilized since there was adult leadership. Lacking that leadership, they decide to "play" adult roles. In behaving as they have seen adults behave, but without guidance to control the inner Beast, they fall quickly into the beastly behavior that really isn't so different from that of adults (consider the dreadful war going on out there that the boys were being evacuate from).

I believe Golding's entire point is to show the boys with no adults, to show that they would not have a jolly good time as the boys on Coral Island did. They would do what they have seen adults do...which is dreadful. The society itself is what keeps the Beast in check, and these boys have no guidance and no "society" like home, so the Beast takes over.