I will also look at Golding's message. Golding shows how society holds everyone together and protects the weakest members (eg. Piggy who is eventually killed). He shows that without the rules of society the sense of right and wrong are lost and "savagery" and corruption become apparent.
At the beginning of the story the boys thought that this was going to be a fun and enjoyable experience "Here at last was the imagined but never fully realised place leaping into real life." There was no savagery and everyone including Jack was willing to obey Ralph and work together as a group "I agree with Ralph. We've go to have rules and obey them. After all, we"re not savages. We"re English, and the English are best at everything. So we've got to do the right things." Golding however does give some hints that the boys will find it difficult. When the boys are hunting, for example, they find it difficult to kill, "They knew very well why he hadn't because of the enormity of the knife descending and cutting into living flesh; because of the unbearable blood." When the boys do kill they kill the mother sow thus showing that they have no consideration for the future (supply of new pigs). Golding uses these descriptions of the pig well as the reader becomes aware of how he would not be easily able to kill a pig.
Golding presents evil as a them throughout the book. The evil that is inside human beings is symbolised in the beast . Because people are unwilling to recognise this "dark" side of their nature, the beast provides something external to cause the evil. The boys look everywhere, the forest, air and sea but never find the beast in themselves. Piggy seems to identify the beast as symbolic rather than literal, "I know there isn't no beast, not with claws and that." .
The main conversion to savagery, another theme in the book, is possibly in the choir. They are boys who are disciplined and then they become hunters.
