The theme of civility and barbarism is significant in Golding's 'Lord of the Flies'. Discuss.

When the boys find themselves alone on an island without an adult, they are still civilized and immediately set about building a community. Ralph is elected the leader, and he begins by making a few rules. The first rule is that the person holding the conch is the only person who should be speaking during a meeting. The others have to listen. Another rule, or suggestion, Ralph makes is that their best chance of being rescued will be if they have a signal fire. Ralph wants all the boys to participate in building and keeping the signal fire going. Ralph also suggests that they build a shelter in case it rains the way it did the first day they were there.

Ralph has many good ideas, and, for the first few days, things go well. However, as the children discover the freedom associated with a lack of adult supervision, they begin to realize that they do not have to do the boring work Ralph wants them to do. Ralph never develops a system for dealing with those who do not help out. For this reason, Ralph ends up doing most of the hard work himself, and the signal fire will often go for hours at a time without a flame.

As Ralph struggles with leadership, Jack begins to learn how to hunt. As the days go by and Jack spends more time trying to figure out how to catch and kill pigs, he becomes more savage. Jack makes excuses to spend more and more time out in the jungle. By doing this, he becomes less and less involved in the day to day activities in the camp and living a civilized life. Jack stops trying to be helpful to Ralph and, instead, becomes more interested in living in the jungle and hunting. In the end, Jack becomes brutal, killing several of the other boys and leading others with a savage rule. In the end, savagery wins over civility, making this a theme of the novel.