1. The Previous Education.

It is transmitted through some cultural rules imposed previously. They are rules of different expected behaviours according to the different cultures. The education that these children have received is the Anglo-Saxon, related to a very severe and repressive society.

For this reason, the children in the island take a bath for amusement, and not for hygiene. They do not have an obligation to make it and nobody who commands it. In the island they are liberated of the repression that they felt when they washed themselves without feeling dirty or simply necessary. The author speaks to us of this liberation: “in his other life, Maurice would have been punished to fill with sand some younger eyes than his.” However, although nobody quarrels Maurice for what he has made, he feels regret because he has not followed the behaviour that the society had imposed him. The education received since he was little was part of his personality now.

This also happens to Ralph, and even to Jack to their short age they have not acquired cruelty, so Jack is not able to kill the boar the first time he has the opportunity to do it. The following time he will do it because his pride will be imposed.

The Anglo-Saxon society is included in the capitalist system, that favours the competitiveness fundamentally, and consequently the violence. There are violent confrontations between Ralph and Jack for the power and the authority.

The education determines what is well and wrong, although they are arbitrary concepts, and they are always imposed by repressive rules.

In a first moment they try to adopt a democratic system to be organised, the same as they have seen the adults, under the control of a boss: Ralph. But Jack is marked by the competitiveness, he has always been the boss of his choir and he believes that he should continue being it in the island because he has been educated for it. For this reason he does not want to relegate his position neither to Ralph nor anybody, and he forms a separated group in which the savagery reigns but also the satisfaction, the fear, the pleasure: Jack.

2. Characteristic of the island.

They are completely favourable for the survival of the children. The tropical weather of the island provides them wild fruits to satiate their hunger and thirst.

The personality of all the individuals is modified by the physical environment and the heat because it does not invite to the work.

Golding chooses this physical space to develop the work in an island, because he makes them feel more far from the world of which they proceed, as if they would be separated of the world without any connection with the previous civilisation and to be able to develop his main objective: to force the children to be organised.

The sense of the isolation is such that Jack and the partners that follow him forget the rescue. They resign to live in the island and they are organised trying to pass their existence in a better way. Ralph himself forgets in occasions the sense of his biggest obsession: to maintain the blaze lit. This happens because he believes that they will never be rescued.

The wild state makes them forget all education received previously, and Golding locates the island in an exotic atmosphere so that it contributes to this regression.

3. The Anguish.

One is afraid by concrete things, and is anguished by the abstract ones. The fear that they feel is genetic and due to the insecurity that they feel. It is reflected first in the smallest, because they do not have the security that their parents give them and they lack the stability that the adults provide them. At the beginning the teenagers do not feel fear toward what is ignored because Ralph infuses them trust. First they project the anguish the children feel in nightmares, later they become snakes and finally, when Ralph is unable to give trust, they fix their anguish in a wild animal that they do not know how is.

The fear can disassemble the society or it can live in it. The anguish that they feel from the beginning breaks down the whole structure that they have risen with Ralph.

In the work several forms of controlling the fear are presented:

1. Simon discovers which is the reason. He knows that we project the anguishes and with them we deform the reality that is bound to the ignorance, and that the only way of eliminating is discovering its cause.

2. Jack buys the fear to the wild animal by offerings. He thinks about the question of the fear like a hunter and for that reason he offers him the head of the first boar that they hunt. Jack orders to forget the wild animal. To Jack it does not interest to discover which is the wild animal because is the base of his gang.

            3. Ralph ignores the existence of the wild animal, although he has seen it; but this is because his fear prevents him to discover what it is really. Ralph feels more fear for the people than for the ghosts, it is part of the human beings.

4. The man's aggressive nature.

The aggressiveness is a genetic factor, but when they are made free from the repression of the culture, it is developed much more and it is often manifested gradually in the confrontations between Ralph and Jack.

When they break up with the previous culture they are not able to control their own aggressiveness and they become insensitive to its consequence: the death.

There are moments when this aggressiveness becomes in paroxysm: “the desire to attack and to harm was irresistible." The received culture has repressed Piggy and Ralph more and for that reason they are not so aggressive as Jack. Now he kills boars with certain regularity and without any mercy. Piggy’s death does not disturb him.

5. The Mask.

It is an object to get away from themselves and an object to be free from what the society had imposed them.

The mask liberates them of the shame that they feel when they do irresponsibilities, damages, etc. Taking a mask that does not allow them to recognise themselves supposes a new stage in their life. With the masks they are no longer Jack, Roger, Wilfred. They are wild, different beings that have been released totally of the culture that the adults began to inculcate them in a more distant time. They knew very well that the concealing painting covered the wildest acts. They do not feel shame of their current behaviour because the things have changed. However Jack wants to break up totally with what the past supposes and for this reason he also wants to kill Ralph.

The use of the masks supposes a bench mark of the regression that the children have experienced. The author no longer calls them for his names, but rather he says: “a coloured face spoke with Robert's voice”. It also supposes a bigger adaptation to the environment where they live, since they will use them to get the camouflage necessary for hunting. The mask has double utility: to adapt to the rhythm of the animal and to be liberated of all knot with the past.

6. The Religion.

The cult to a wild animal that they fear, and the fact of offering gifts to obtain its favours supposes the adoption of a primitive religion. Again this is a factor that accentuates the regression of the culture.

Offering the head of all animals that they kill is a way of buying the fear instead of discovering the reason of it.

The dance also serves as an escape, its rhythm: “kill the wild animal! Cut him the neck!” hypnotises them. For these reasons, and the fear that produces them the ferocious storm that watches them, they dance to combat and forget the insecurity they have. The dance makes them go mad as previous times and makes them kill Simon because in this environment of savagery none of them know what they make. They feel like a unique person, and in fact to accentuate this sense of equality, they adopt the form of a circle where everybody is at the same distance of the centre.

The author's intention.

Golding reproaches to the society the hard repression that imposes on its individuals which causes them to break up its measures as soon as they have the opportunity they are only free from the learned rules as violent instincts that persist in all the individuals appear.

Golding expresses his opinion about the genetic fear and the desire of power. They are so big that they can be prefixed to the behaviours that they learn during the childhood. But the assimilation in this period is not similar in all the individuals of the society, and for this reason, Golding shows children with better assimilated culture (Ralph, Piggy, Simon) and children that soon break up with that learned culture and adapt to the conditions of the island (Jack).