In Lord of the Flies a group of boys are cast on an island from a plane crash. �We�re on an island. We�ve been on the mountaintop and seen water all round. We saw no houses, no smoke, no footprints, no boats, and no people. We�re on an uninhabited island with no other people on it� (30). Without rules, regulations, and adults telling them right from wrong their savage instincts begin to take over their personalities. Ralph represents order and rules on the island. He uses the conch shell to assemble all of the boys on the beach when the need for a meeting occurs. �By the time Ralph finished blowing the conch, the platform was crowded (30). When most of the boys on the island left Ralph�s tribe for Jack�s the island had no civilization on it. Schanberg said it perfectly, �no one wishes to see himself as a potential savage, embrace the notion that the cocoon we call civilization may be very thin and fragile indeed.� Yet this is exactly what happened, when the boys left Ralph�s tribe of civilization, they entered a new tribe of violence. �Jack slammed his knife into a tree trunk and looked round challengingly (31). Ralph and Piggy were the only two characters who were left in the novel that were not in Jack�s tribe and who were still nonviolent. The uninhabited Pacific Island corresponds to New York City, which is mentioned all through out Schanberg�s article. Quoted from the article �A slasher ran amok, cutting the throats of sleeping derelicts. He killed two and wounded another dozen.� In the novel, Jack �was on top of the sow, stabbing downward with his knife� (109). Both show how rules were not followed but instead violence was enforced and civilization was not maintained.

Ralph�s actions of killing Simon and leaving him there to get pushed into the ocean by the tide are equivalent to those actions of the �wolf-packed� group of people who tormented a twenty six year old man to death and then threw him on a subway track. Ralph is the character in the novel who, who almost never gave into brute hood but did not always make Jack stop his violent behavior. This proves Schanberg�s correct in when she stated that �the lawbreaker and the witness who looks away may not be the same person, but eventually they begin to merge.� �Occasionally, dramatic crimes bring us to attention and set us shaking our heads- but still only in bewilderment over what to do.�

Quoted from William Snyder, �young people [have] no respect for authority of or other people�s rights.� This is shown in the novel when Jack steals Piggy�s glasses. He does not care that Piggy needs them to see, all he cares about is himself. He does not care about anyone else�s rights.

Both William Golding�s novel The Lord of the Flies and Sidney Schanberg�s article �The Rules Are All We�ve Got� share a common subject of rules, regulations, and civilization� New York City�s violence rate is steadily increasing, rules are getting broken more and more often. Rules are the only thing that keep us from being evil human beings who do whatever they want whenever they want. The Lord of the Flies, is a perfect example of how cruel people could turn with out regulations. All rules exist for a reason and should be followed.