Lord of the Flies: Natural Selection and its Finest
Charles Darwin was a famous scientist whose most famous studies were the evolution of man and all other creatures. Darwin realized that certain species became extinct because they were not both strong physically and mentally, and he explains his theory which is called natural selection, and later claimed the phrase “Survival of the fittest.” This phrase can be seen through war as well as the aftermath of a war. World War II proved that the strongest bodies and minds survived, and in England the strongest had to stay strong for more than a decade after the war because they had to rebuild everything, including the way society acts. Many literature pieces were written in this time period, and none were more famous than William Golding’s Lord of the Flies. This novel is about a group of British schoolboys whose plane crashed on a desert island, and the boys just have themselves. The boys start as civilized at first, but at the end of the story, most of the boys lose their control and some are killed right before they get rescued. William Golding uses his characters Ralph, Jack, Piggy, and Simon in his 1954 novel Lord of the Flies to show that one must be strong physically and mentally in order to survive because they are meeting the needs of Darwin’s theory of natural selection. To start off, Charles Darwin was born in Shrewsbury, England in 1809, and he was born into a wealthy family with well-known ancestors. His father was a doctor, and he wanted Charles to be one; however, Charles was disgusted by surgery when he saw it, so his father decided to push Charles towards a career in the church. Like the medical field, Charles was not interested in the church, but he gained an interest in the natural world when he studied for the church. He went on a field trip led by geologist Adam Sedgwick, and when observing the world, Sedgwick saw something special in Darwin, so he introduced him to botanist John Stevens Henslow. Henslow invites Darwin on a five-year expedition to