A Sad Melody Of The Power Desire

William Golding is a unique novelist in British during the latter half of the twentieth century. In 1954, he published his first novel---"lord of the flies", and caused a huge reaction in public. This novel which concerns the future of humanity corresponds with the mood of pessimism in post-war period, and predicts that the human civilization would be destroyed with their own hands, which gives people a great hit, and finally urges people to do a self-reflection. To a certain extent, this novel can be said the most important as well as representative works. From an angle of psychology and sociology, this paper attempts to interpret the phenomenon of power in group, analyzes the relationship between individuals and group under the impact of power, and consequently finds the real reason which results in the evil nature of humanity and collapse of civil order.Introduction In this part, we mainly review the study of "Lord of the Flies" in the past time. The Allegorical story, rich symbol and open-ended result in this novel provide a broad space to study. The interpretation by Chinese and foreign scholars focus on theme research whose conclusions are mainly about the evil humanity. Since this kind of research has abandoned the social fact thus put it to an abstractive level to discuss, the conclusion was suspected from it was born. The writer addressed that the real reason for the humanity tendency to be evil is the power desire lose of control and expansion.Chapter one, formation of the desire for power The image of children in "Lord of the Flies" has a dual meaning, on the one hand they are close to the nature of human being, on the other hand, they are the reflection of some kind of social factors to a certain extend. The biggest difference between "Lord of the Flies" and the traditional desert island novel lies in the introduction of the concept of community. The story happened on the desert island is no longer a personal history of survival, but the activities under the social constraints. Community is the premise of power generation, that is to say, the children on the island formed a small group, which gave birth to the concept of power in human society. The struggle for power became a potential clue behind the representation of evil humanity, which also corresponded with the post-war background in which the novel was composed.Chapter two, the performance of power and the manifestation of desire This chapter is mainly to discuss the power and the way to perform the desire for it. The most representative as well as powerful symbols is conch and hunting which are relatively Ralph and Jack's main accesses to get the power. Through interpreting these two symbols, we can find the concept of power has two characteristics: civilization and originality. Under the impact of these two characteristics, for the individuals, power is performed in a way of constraint and control, while for the group, congregation and sharing. In addition to the two children, group should be attentioned as an important role which stimulated the power's generation. Furthermore, the extreme manifestation of desire for power was realized by the violence from the group.Chapter three, the reason for the destruction of civilization on the island In this chapter, the writer attempts to find the reason leading the collapse of civilization from three aspects. First of all, the strong force which is attached to the power causes power worship, covers the original meaning of the activities in the community and simplifies the connection between people to be conquering and be conquered. Second, when the group has been fascinated in the person who takes control of the power, its old habits which is blind, impulsive, unthinking, will intensify the possibility of conversion from the desire for power to evil, so that the group becomes the most powerful murder when seizing the power. In addition, the inherent difficulty of democracy and the binary opposition between the power and society are the objective reasons for the collapse of community on the island.Through the analysis above, it can be found that the tragedy in "Lord of the Flies" roots in the fight for power, and what really inspires the humanity's transformation to evil is the unlimited expansion of power desire. The worship of power overrides the ration and civilization, and explodes in the form of violence with the inherent defects. With civilization, order and faith all lost in the power struggle, and no inherent constraints of the expansion of power desire, it's inevitable for the civilization to be destroyed.