Fire In Lord Of The Flies Symbolism Essay

It is often said that civilization begins with order and grows with liberty and dies in chaos. In the novel “Lord of The Flies,” by William Golding, a group of young boys progress from well behaved orderly children hoping to be rescued, to who have transitioned into bloodthirsty hunters that no longer wish to return home. There is a conflict between the impulse to be civilized, well-behaved, to follow moral commands and to honour the good of the group against the instinct to value one’s own needs and to obtain dominance throughout the novel using symbols. The symbols presented time and time again in the text were Piggy’s glasses, the conch shell, as well as the fire.

Foremost, Piggy's glasses come to represent the strength of science and intellectualism within civilization. Without them, he cannot see anything, “‘[j]us’ blurs, that's all. [He can] hardly see [his] hand--’” (Chapter 2).

In the text, the symbol of fire represents technology and hope for the boys to be rescued, once extinguished the connection the group has with the civilized world is lost. The boys know that by making a fire “a ship may [come] near the island and notice [them]” (Chapter 2) thus organizing a moral method to be rescued. Nonetheless, once the fire dies, that connection to human civilization is lost along with the group’s sense of morality. The group chooses to use a signal fire to attract attention, a strategic approach, presenting the boys to be in a civilized mindset like the way they acted before the plane crash until the fire died. The boys then lose a piece of their past identities and resort to savage behaviours and no longer want to be rescued. They reduce their thinking to mere survival tactics and relentless killing to sustain power over one another and forget to honour the good of the group first as they become selfish and