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Austin Lambert

Stress is a part of everyday life. Fifth grader, Jason, has three SOLs in the next few days,

and is struggling to balance his time studying. A mother of three has just been called to her

middle son’s school again because of a behavior issue and has no one with whom to leave the

baby. These are some examples of everyday stressful situations. William Golding’s ​Lord of the

Flies​ is about a group of boys who crash land on an island and have to find a way to survive.

During their time on the island, they experience a type of stress that most people don’t deal with

on a daily basis. Stress negatively affects decision making and actions; this is especially true in

William Golding’s ​Lord of the Flies​.

Stress can affect people’s actions. According to Miller and Shelly in their article, “What

is Stress,” stress is defined as ,” how your body responds to pressure caused by a particular

situation.” For example, when Jack was encumbered by trying to kill a pig which ended up

escaping, he became overwhelmed, which kept him from completing his task.This is a common

symptom of stress related situations. The stress caused by isolation throughout the beginning of

their experience were brought to the reader through Piggy and Ralph. Having encountered many

other characters with different viewpoints have caused the group as a whole to fall apart, this

shows that no two people handle stressful situations in the same manner. When many people

from differing backgrounds are put together in a stressful situation, their reactions will all be

different. In this quote “They used to call me Piggy,” makes Piggy recall how much stress he

was put through back in school from other people bullying him because of his weight.(Golding

11) This caused him to have low self esteem. Ralph wasn’t bullied back at his school, and he

lived a much better life prior to being stranded on the island. He hasn’t adapted well to this
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change because he never had to do much on his own and now everything is on him, so he can’t

run to his parents for help. While stress is a very hard thing to keep under control, it also shows

how each person in the book handles it through their own actions, which may be dependent on

their individual personality.

There are many different ways people deal with stress. According to Allen Miller and

Susan Shelly’s article, “Long-term psychological effects of stress,” they state that “Too much

stress over time can negatively affect your brain.” Stress can affect the way people deal with

certain situations that cause the person to be overwhelmed and react in ways that they wouldn’t

normally react were they not dealing with the stressor. In the quote,“Eat! Damn you! Take

it!”(Golding 74) Jack is expressing his feelings of frustration through anger that has arisen from

his incessant attempts to kill the pig in order to feed the group. In response to his efforts and the

gift of sustenance, the group wasn’t really appreciative, regardless of the burden Jack took upon

himself for the benefit of the group. Miller and Shelly also state, “Poor self-esteem often can be a

huge source of psychological stress.” A perfect example of this statement lies in Piggy. Since he

is overweight, he is in constant fear of being made fun of for it as well as for his nerdy glasses,

which causes him major stress. This is an example verbal abuse which is one of the leading

causes of stress.

The high amount of stress in Lord of the Flies negatively affects the characters decision

making skills and actions. All these characters deal with different amounts stress throughout the

book, as well as different types. This book connects characters to actual people around the world

because there are many people who have to deal with situations like these, but Golding wrote

this to tell the reader what the likely scenario would be. There is no doubt that every person
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reading this book can find a character to whom they relate, as people all over the world

experience stress and every individual handles it differently.