Category: Lord of The Flies

Introduction

Lord of the Flies is an allegorical novel. Written by William Golding, it appeals to your sympathy and arouses compassion. This novel captures your attention and makes your imagination work as the story is described in vivid colors. No wonder ‘Lord of the Flies’ is required reading in many schools and colleges nowadays, as it deserves its rank ‘bestseller’.

The plot of the novel

There are several strands to the plot of this novel. A group of boys, being strand on a tropical island, tried to govern themselves. This kind of effort turned out to be not a good idea. As the auction proceeds, the reader follows the heartbreaking events of the book. Boys of 6 to 12 ages, struggle to survive on an island.

The novel itself represents the middle fifties. It embodies society’s laws and its morals at those times.

The leadership race is observed. Ralph, an athletic and charismatic boy, elected as a leader, faces resistance from Jack Merridew. Though, while observing the island, the boys found a trapped piglet, which Jack hesitated to kill. It was a potential food they could have got, but because of Jack’s cowardness and fear, the bag escaped. It cracked Jack’s leadership position.

There is another character, opposite to those, listed above. Piggy is a boy, who has been mistreated constantly. No one noticed anything else except his overweight, thick glasses, and asthma. Piggy symbolizes a vulnerable child just like the wild pigs are, being hunted for. Though, the most precious and important ideas came to Piggy’s head. Such as fire and shelter making. Piggy is also a victim of the story, as he is the only one to wear glasses. Those disgusting, thick glasses, that no one liked at first, turned out to be almost the most valuable thing on the island. Due to them, boys made a signal fire, so that any passing-by ship could see it and pick up the boys. This serves as proof that boys have not completely lost their minds and became wild.

The signal fire symbolizes the desire of boys to be rescued. As the fire goes low or stop, it seems like they are fully losing hope. The fire goes out of control and scorches half of the island. The boy with a birthmark on his face disappears during the fire and never comes back again.

Life on an island gradually becomes disorganized. Chaos invades when a ship passes by without knowing the boys were there because the fire went out.

The leadership race gets worse between Jack and Ralf. Ralph represents democracy, whereas Jack is an exact example of a tyrant.

As the military planes have a dogfight over the island, one of the pilots’ parachutes out of his plane. Sam and Eric consider him to be the ‘beast’ and cause mass panic among the boys. After the investigation expedition fails, Jack calls for another election but does not get any vote. He leaves Ralph’s tribe and creates his own.

Boys hunt down a pig and place its head on a stick as an ‘offering’ to the ‘beast’. Simon, walking by the ‘Lord of the Flies’, hears the head speaking to him. It foreshadows Simon’s fate. Discovering that the ‘beast’ is a dead pilot, he hurries down the mountain to tell everybody the news. But the boys spear him to death.

Jacks’ tribe steals Piggy’s glasses to survive. Piggy demands the glasses back but is killed by Roger. The situation becomes more tensed when Jack fails to kill Ralph. While doing this the boys set up a forest fire which is seen by a naval vessel passing by. One of the officers comes ashore to rescue Ralph and the rest of the boys. The irony is that Ralph has been the one who kept on reminding others of the fire. This time the rescue fire was lit to kill him.

The main idea

The main idea of the book reveals human nature. The question is: ‘what is more important – a leader’s position or a precious life?’

The Lord of the Flies is a fiction novel by William Golding which takes place during a chaotic war. A group of schoolboys crash land on a deserted island and develop a faulty hierarchy in the strive to survive. The characters, including leader Ralph, antagonist Jack, the kind Piggy, and innocent Simon go through varying journeys of the human spirit in which they contend with and ultimately fall prey to the effects of chaos and violence. The book shows us what an environment of savagery and survival instincts does to the character, and how we all have the ability to exceed the boundaries of both righteousness and destructiveness. Ultimately, we conclude that the latent human character is neutral and that a person’s behavior is a reaction to the environment she or he is surrounded by. Though William Golding does not profess the idea that man is born evil, the concept of man’s innate potential for evil is central to the novel.

From The Lord of the Flies, we can devise Golding’s belief that man is born neutral. The idea is that we are born with both the capacity of good and the capacity of evil and that the way we are raised, or the environment in which we live determines how we act. This shows the power of outside sources and the pliability of our own character. Literature constantly explores the potential in man to commit the greatest evils and the greatest good. Lord of the Flies puts this discourse in an even more riveting context by testing the characters of a group of proper English children who carry the stereotype and literary reputation

Through the devolving of his characters, Golding shows that the capacity for evil lies in all beings and appears when nurtured by the environment. Ralph, Jack, Simon, and all the boys on the island come from a proper English background. They were raised in a world of boundaries, customs, and propriety. As the story continues and the environment becomes more and more brutal, the change in the boys becomes evident. Golding uses antagonist Jack to symbolize this transition from structured human behavior to the more instinctual savagery that the majority of the boys end up exhibiting. At one point, Golding describes the frenzy of killing a sow through the perspective of Jack: “His mind was crowded with memories; memories of the knowledge that had come to them when they closed in on the struggling pig, the knowledge that they had outwitted a living thing, imposed their will upon it, taken away its life like a long satisfying drink” (Golding 92). In contrast to the other boys, Jack has become violent, enraged with bloodlust, and savage. The others in the group chide him for letting the rescue fire go out, ” ‘You and your blood, Jack Merridew! You and your hunting! We might have gone home…” (Golding 93). This shows the contrast between environments. Even though they are all living in the same conditions, Jack is the first and most severe to fall into chaos because he is put in charge of hunting and becomes immersed in the act. Simon, a symbol of purity and humanity despite the barbaric conditions, witnesses the vision of the “Lord of the Flies” when finding the sow’s head on a stake. Simon sees that “There was blackness within, a blackness that spread” (Golding 201). Simon, the purest of the group, is the only one to fully understand the hold that this evil had on the boys. This scene depicts Golding’s ultimate judgment of mankind: that the potential for evil lies within us all, just as does the potential for good and that the environment affects us and determines the development of our personality.

Lord of the Flies takes us on the often harrowing exploration of the nature of the human soul. Like much of literature, Golding’s work shows the true condition of man, that we can not avoid the capacity for evil, but that we can also all embrace our ability to do good. Lord of the Flies is integral to our literary understanding of the fight between good and evil. From this story, we can reflect on our own capacity and how our environment affects both the behaviors we act on now, and those we will act on in the future.

Works Cited

Golding, William. Lord of the Flies (1959). Faber and Faber Ltd: London.

The Lord of the Flies essay is about a novel written by William Gerald Golding in 1954. Born in 1911, he decided to practice a career in literature although his parents wanted him to be a scientist. The Lord of Flies was a great success after which he published the novel “inheritors’’ and many more novels. The Lord of the Flies essay show the Golding’s aim to reveal that evil is in everyone and civilization connects us together.

The Lord of the Flies essay should provide a detailed examination of the novel bringing out the writers’ opinion. In a given Lord of the Flies essay, one needs to illustrate the different themes used by Golding in his novel. Themes are used in literally work to bring out ideas on a given subject, The Lord of Flies novel has many themes and ideas represented by symbolism and patterns throughout the novel making Golding’s novel allegorical which can be included in the Lord of the Flies essay. The first theme which can be shown in a Lord of the Flies essay has been used in various works to represent good or evil. Golding uses the “character of civilization” to symbolize good and “the character of savagery” to stand for evil.

The Lord of the Flies essay has its own style not usually used in other essays as used in the novel. It must cover major points illustrated in the novel. There is use of a different sentence structure style; use of clear, simple, short sentences and informal English has been used to narrate the story. The writer of a Lord of the Flies essay has to be cautious, use selection of words and simple language evident in the novel Lord of Flies.

In addition, the writer of a Lord of the Flies essay should use symbolism and style as used in the novel of which; if he used another style the reader would not have the same reaction.