Power over authority: a comparative analysis of the breakdown of social structures in Lord of the Flies and High-Rise

Abstract

This thesis explores the dynamics of power and authority and its part in the transformation of society’s subordination, incorporating J.G. Ballard’s novel High-Rise and William Golding’s Lord of the Flies as contextual primary source texts. Both works illustrate the chaos which prevails if power triumphs over legitimate authority and provide a philosophical analysis of human nature and society. Through qualitative text analysis study, this paper examines leadership conflict and struggle, social class division, and the effects of eroticized power. This paper, engaging with a textual approach consistent with critical narrative methodology, examines the thematic concerns of leadership crisis, class antagonism, and the forces of degeneration of power. In Lord of the Flies the scenes of democratic authority shifting to violent autocratic supremacy represents savagery of the human souls. Likewise, High Rise describes how division of class and competition for resources leads to destruction of contemporary social order. It is thus the purpose of this thesis to analyze these fictional contexts side by side, so as to show the general impact of power unchecked by official authority. It captures how fragile society’s structures are and how seemingly leaderless societies result in the autocratic reign. In detail this study shows that these literary works are relevant in current society to analyze and comment on the modern governance and human actions in response to power.