RULES ESSAY

 

            Rules are a set of reliable regulations that allow or prohibit certain behavior in a society.  Rules are the foundation of civilization, but when these sets of laws are disregarded, the basis of society is broken. In Lord of the Flies, by William Golding, and Sydney H. Schanberg’s article, “The Rules are All We’ve Got,” opinions on rules are presented.  In Lord of the Flies, the disregarding of the rules leads to the collapse of society, and the further savage killing.  In Schanberg’s essay, New York city has taken a turn for the worst because people choose not to follow rules.  When rules are not followed, chaos replaces the soundness of civility and selflessness. 

            In his article, Schanberg shows how New York seems to be “a city without rules.”  He discusses the breakdown of New York’s society into lawlessness.  There is a lack of caring in the city, and the citizens look down upon the rules, as if they were above them.  Citizens have a lack of caring about anything and everything that does not have an immediate consequence.  “Shoplifting has become an occupation rather than a serious crime,” illustrating how stealing and disobeying laws is inconsequential.  People steal, because they have a want for something, and the immorality of the act does not cross their minds.  People are not afraid of breaking laws, because “they’ll serve their time and get out again.”  Schanberg also criticizes people who turn their heads from crimes, and who become part of the problem.  However, no one wants to believe that “the cocoon we call civilization may be very thin and fragile indeed,” and that they are involved in the decomposition.  When a 26-year-old is beaten to death by pack mentality on the subway, a person comments that the murders had nothing better to do and they were only having fun.  They were only breaking rules.  Their actions show a blatant disregard for the lawfulness of our society, when death and fun are callously linked together.  “As we are taught from elementary school, the rules are all that stand between us and anti-civilization”.  By not following the laws set up for societal purposes, New York City falls further into decline toward primal times. 

In Golding’s Lord of the Flies, Ralph’s rules are the only thing that the young boys have, but when they choose to disregard these rules, the boys turn to savage killing.  The ideas presented in the novel are very similar to those that appear in Schanberg’s article.  However, in contrast to the article, there is a lack of adult supervision for the boys on the island.  In addition, the novel is a fictional work, whereas the article discusses actual events.  In Lord of the Flies, the boys of Jack’s tribe disregard the rules, and the hunters steal whenever they want something, just as the shoplifters take whatever they want in New York City.  “You came sneaking up like a thief and stole Piggy’s glasses!” (176).  They are not afraid of going against laws, because there is no fear of punishment for wrongful actions.  When the hunters rape and kill the sow, she “collapsed under them and they were heavy and fulfilled upon her” (135).  The boys find joy in the self-indulgent savagery, and become fulfilled by their evil actions.  They display the same enjoyment of their actions as the gang in New York City who taunted a boy to his death on the subway tracks.  Piggy is a witness to the murder of Simon, but he does not do anything to stop the heinous crime.  Therefore, he is in denial of his loss of values and ethics.  Schanberg, in his article, also accuses the people of denial, because they are unwilling to think about how society is crumbling.  It is Piggy who holds the conch shell as it is broken, symbolizing the shattering of society to tiny pieces that are stepped upon by savagery.  The allegory of society in Lord of the Flies parallels that of the “The Rules are All We’ve Got”, showing how without rules, civilization deteriorates to chaos. 

When rules are not followed, chaos replaces the soundness of civility and selflessness.  These ideas are illustrated in William Golding’s Lord of the Flies, and Sydney H. Schanberg’s, “The Rules are All We’ve Got”.  Both these works show that when there is no fear of retribution, people feel that it is unnecessary to obey regulations.  Rules are important in both a well established society as shown in Schanberg’s article, and a society containing young boys, illustrated by Golding’s novel, because there is an evil within humankind, and humans need rules to prevent anarchy.