Lord of the Flies Essay- William Golding
Lord of the Flies is set on a deserted island where a group of boys were stranded due to a plane crash.
In the novel, “Lord of the Flies” by William Golding, the author uses a lot of symbols to help portray the destruction and deterioration of the boys. The destruction of the island can be understood using various symbols, the symbols that I will be examining are the conch, painted faces, and the beast.
The conch, I think is the most important symbol in, if not the whole book then most of the book, it helps us understand how organized the boys were. It explains this because, when the boys first found the conch, they were all pretty happy to have rules and be in charge for once. “We’ll have rules!” he cries excitedly. “Lots of rules! Then when anyone breaks’ em-”. In the beginning they were all pretty happy of having rules and being responsible for once, but a short time after that all started to go downhill no one obeyed the rules, no one listened to the person holding the conch. On the other hand the conch also shows how the boys deteriorate the island, the conch was one of the main reasons Ralph and Jack didn’t get along so well, because Jack wanted all power to himself but Ralph wasn’t going to let him have that without the conch, and because of that Jack and Ralph had a huge rivalry. The conch as a whole symbol basically just shows how the boys go from classy to “barbarians”.
The Painted faces represents when they go f...
