The clearest model for Golding's thesis of the inevitability of the children's movement towards savagery is Thomas Hobbes' "The Leviathan" (1651). Hobbes (1588-1679) was an immensely influential political theorist. ... In "The Leviathan" Hobbes asserted that man is intrinsically selfish. He denied that man is by nature a social being (as the Greek philosopher Aristotle had maintained) and upheld instead that each individual is fundamentally guided by self-interest. As Hobbes puts it, 'I put for a generall inclination of all mankind, a perpetuall and restlesse desire of Power after power, that ceaseth only in Death' (The Leviathan, Part l, Chapter XI). To counter the anarchy which man's selfishness would create if there were no checks and balances to restrain it, we adopt, according to Hobbes, certain 'articles of peace' which impose restrictions on individual liberty. To see that these articles are implemented, an external power is entrusted with absolute authority, including the right to punish.
This power, in Lord of the Flies, is initially entrusted to Ralph by the common consent of the other children. When, however, he proves too ineffective as a leader he is displaced by the more ruthless figure of Jack. Hobbes suggests that the people's loyalty to the sovereign need only last as long as his authority effectively protects them. If his authority fails then they have the right to replace him by someone more competent. Hobbes denies that any man possesses an instinct to do good or to feel loyalty or to defend his friend. When these things occur it can only be as an act of self-interest. The leader, if he should fail the people in any way, cannot presume on the support or love of anyone. "... what argument of madness can there be greater than to clamour, strike and throw stones at our best friends?" The multitude, he says, "will clamour, fight against, and destroy those, by whom all their life-time before, they have been protected. and secured from injury. And if this be Madnesse in the multitude, it is the same in every particular man." (The Leviathan, Part I, Chapter VIII. p. 47)
Jack's lack of expertise in blowing the conch and his growing neglect of the symbolic authority with which it has been invested clearly point to his abuse of social custom. By the end of the novel Jack is well on his way to establishing a tyranny. He has been able - according to the Hobbesian notion that no sovereign can depend upon the loyalty of his people if he has ceased to protect them - to subvert the other children, to win them away from Ralph, and to establish a System of 'government' depending on the strict maintenance of his tyrannical 'justice'. He metes out summary justice to any Opponent - Piggy dies, Ralph is hounded, Wilfred is beaten, Samneric possibly tortured. He wields his authority by pandering to the fear of his subjects and offering them outlets for their apprehension. Under his rule the children have festivals and rites of a kind which Ralph can see only as a distraction from what ought to be everyone's principal objective: rescue.
From: Alastair Niven: William Golding, Lord of the Flies, York Notes, Longman, 1980, p. 38f.
while-reading task (chapter 7) – finish the following sentences
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