We have all wondered at some point, "Is society really that great?". Well, is it? Who is to say. Some would say society keeps us "in check". And then some would argue that society just leads to a sad and boring demise; wife, kids, job, etc. It's all a perspective issue. As with all things, society has it's own pros and cons. In our roles as creative, independant, free thinking, beings, we need to weigh these "goods" and "bads" and make a decision on whether or not having a society at all is worth it.

Lord Of The Flies, by William Golding, shows us a group of boys that are stranded on an uninhabited island. In a matter of days these boys have reverted to savage, beast-like things; complete with strange rituals ,barbaric manhunts and dark gods, they epitomized the horrid thing that people become when society abandons them. Though Lord Of The Flies is a little on the extreme side, Golding is probably right in that people would become less "civilised" if they didn't have civilisation. Of course they would be less "civilized", how can you be "civilized" without civilization? Then again, civilization is (like most things) different depending on whom you talk to. Golding tells us that society is needed to keep our "inner evil" from getting loose. Society is needed to keep us from becoming animals. Then again, some would argue otherwise.

The Postman Always Rings Twice, by James M. Cain, represents the other half of the coin. Cain writes on how society ruins us; on how we are better of just drifting around and avoiding any sort of extended contact with society. Cain gives us a man, who has (up until this point) been drifting around the country. He runs accross a filling station and restaurant and falls in love with the wife of the owner. This love and his encounters with society show you how sick and twisted society makes us. They (the man and the gas-station owner's wife) attempt to murder the gas-station owner; they fail. Then they try again; this time they succeed, but the crime is somehow traced back to them even though they planned it fairly well. The following court processions really show how vile and disgusting society makes people. How their lawyer doesn't care one bit if they are right or wrong, and he doesn't even care if he gets paid, all he cares about is that he has defeated and humiliated his oponnent. This and other incidents in The Postman Always Rings Twice really make you want to run away and live peacefully out in some forrest. Perhaps Cain is right, maybe we'd all be better off as hermits.

Though both books are different and are not perfect opposites, they do gives us some material to think upon. On the one hand we have the pro-society Golding whom holds desperately on to his claim that without society we'd all be savage animals. On the other hand we have the anti-society Cain who argues that when we are kept in a societ for too long we become savage animals anyway. Then we must decide which kind of savage animal we would like to become. A cunning and weasel-like animal that works around the rules and is constantly trying to cheat everyone, or a free and proud animal that supports itself and leaves others alone.