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Lord of Flies is a 1963 published movie directed by Peter Brook and adapted from the
William Golding’s novel with the same title.

The movie starts with the scene that shows the fall of an airplane. After the crash, the
children, all English and male, find themselves in an island. Ralph and Piggy find each other
by chance and use sea shell, which will become the symbol of authority later, to gather all
children. After gathering, Ralph becomes the leader of the group. Then, another group of
children appear in the island and they have their own leader, Jack. They both claim to be
leader and Ralph was chosen by children as a leader. Ralph was claiming to be leader because
he used the sea shell to gather the children while Jack claim to be leader due to his ability to
fight and hunt. Jack and his group showed disobedience to Ralph’s authority and the rules he
determined. Claims about the existence of a monster deepens the dispute and Jack leaves from
the group and establishes his authority in a different place of the ısland. From that moment,
we see how a group of children turned into savages, how fear and lack of rules changed
children from playing in beaches to kill each other, how the evil exist in each human in
different ways. Since Jack’s group have ability to fight and hunt, most children joined his
group and began to live as savages. The notion of Englishman as a modern, socially evolved
human disappeared with the desire to survive and fear from the monster. Lastly, Jack’s group
steals the Piggy’s eyeglasses to make a fire and this becomes the end of cooperation and
communication between the groups. When Ralph’s group go to take the eyeglass back, Piggy
dies, rest is captured and Ralph run to save his life. When a ship crew find them form the fire
they make, they see a child running from other children who wear and act as savages. When
the savagery children see the crew, they remember the authority and modernity that they had
before coming to ısland. The savage children become the Englishman again at the moment
they see the crew.

My reaction to the movie is that it is generally about the dispute between authority and
unrestraint power. While Ralph’s group support for rules, others don’t feel obliged to obey the
rule because they think they have enough ability to live independent from any authority,
hunting and fighting. We can see how Jack’s group turn into savages after they left Ralph’s
group and how they enjoyed unrestrained power and its consequences. This movie, in terms
of authority, shows the need for a higher authority that protects us from unrestrained power. If
there is no authority, chaos replaces order. In this way, the movie also reflects the zeitgeist of
the post-WWII era.

Another point that movie clears out is the children’s tendency to evil. In the movie,
every character has an evil side. For example, Ralph is evil due to his betrayal to Piggy about
his name, Jack is evil due to his confidence on his ability to fight and exerts power in an
unjust way with his group, Piggy is evil due to his efforts to exculpate themselves on the
murder of a child. This indicates that the movie has the pessimistic realist understanding of
human nature.
 Last point that I think about the movie is the power, how it determines the relations.
For example, Jack’s reason for disobeying the rules was his belief that he is stronger than the
ones who determine the rules. Relying on his power and abilities, he refrained from the
cooperation and choose to act as his wishes. This also reminds the realist view that claims
power is more important than the cooperation and values in times of anarchy.

To conclude, this movie shows the struggle between evil human nature, chaos and
authority, and rules that define the limits. In general, this movie consists of both general
questions on human nature, society and contemporary politics and discussion of its time like
furthering of evil, need for an authority to prevent chaos.