Quotes, part 1

"We've got to have rules and obey them. After all, we're not savages, we're English, and the English are best at everything."

 This quote is from Chapter 2, when the boys are attempting to set up a functioning government with laws.  While most of the boys wish to have rules to maintain order, Jack wants rules to maintain a sense of superiority that the English always seem to have. 

 This philosophy is not exactly new. Since the beginning of the British empire, the British have believed themselves to be superior to every native group that they have come across. In the most extreme cases, natives weren't even considered to be human (in the case of the Australian Aborigines). The British even believed themselves to be mentally superior to the Irish, even though they lived less than 200 km away from the English.

 It's not like this idea of superiority isn't completely false. Although the British were not actually physically or mentally superior over anyone else, they did have a superior navy and a superior army over every other country they encountered. From the native tribes to the Indian Military, all the way up to the French army (an army that was very powerful at the time). The British used a vast array of tactics created over generations of Warfare let them perfect the art that every nation seeks to master: he art of war.

 The British may have had a grand army, but they were also vastly cruel. They may have been the greatest at conquering, but they were also the greatest at cultural destruction. The British forced Anglicanism on many of the nations that they conquered, both destroying a chance to worship and live comfortably and a chance to study, as many of the religions and cultures did not keep written records, so we only know what the British explorers knew, and what they told us may be falsified in an attempt to make the natives sound brutal and savage. A good example would be the people of Zimbabwe. When the British first settled Zimbabwe (known as Rhodesia at the time, in honour of Business man and mining magnate Cecil Rhodes), they discovered a ruin known as the "great city of Zimbabwe". The natives of Zimbabwe had known of the ruined city long before the Europeans arrived, and had also known that the ancestors of the natives had built the city. British archaeologists noticed the large ruin and started excavation. The archaeologists discovered artifacts obviously African in origin, but couldn't believe that the people that they believed to be so primitive could have built such a wondrous monument. Instead of giving up the British philosophy of European superiority, the British fabricated a story about ancient European immigrants to Zimbabwe building the city, and stating the ancestors of the native Africans were either allowed into it by the "European generosity" or the Africans savagely took over the city and declared it their own. In that example, the British stumbled upon something amazing that would have debunked the theory of "European superiority" and instead of getting rid of their false ideology and accepting that they weren't superior, they made up a story to maintain superiority, and then enslaved the native people. If you were to analyze British history, you would notice that this behaviour was a pattern throughout the entire British empire.

"Because the rules are the only thing we've got."

This quote from chapter 5 of Lord of the Flies, a section of the story in which Jack is becoming more and more insubordinate to the verge of leaving the group entirely. Ralph says this during a group meeting when Jack speaks out of turn. Ralph calls Jack out on this, to which Jack says "Who cares?"

"Because the rules are the only thing we've got." Ralph replies.

 This sentence illustrates Ralph's knowledge that the group has nothing if it is not organized. Without rules, the group would slip into anarchy and everybody would die. 

 Ralph turns out to be right. When Jack rises to power and declares a near anarchic government with few rules, chaos reigns and people die (the most notable and dramatic being the death of Piggy). If it weren't for the rescue at the end of the story, the children would have been almost certainly been killed off.