Allegory In Lord Of The Flies

Often times in literature, writers use different techniques to convey their ideas. One of the most common techniques in literature is the allegory, a literary device that expresses hidden meanings through symbols, settings, and even characters. William Golding’s Lord of the Flies is a perfect example of an allegorical novel. Lord of the Flies is a novel in which several British boys are stranded on a remote island following a plane crash, and must cooperate with each other in order to survive. The reader can either choose to read Lord of the Flies from a literal perspective as an adventure story, or they can choose to read it from figurative perspective as physiological, religious, political, or social allegory. Golding successfully manages to incorporate issues of innocence, savagery, and religion through these allegories without even mentioning them specifically in the novel. The most commonly used allegory in the novel is the social allegory; Golding uses the novel’s four main characters, Ralph, Jack, Piggy, and Simon, to represent different parts of society. In Lord of the Flies, Golding uses the four main characters as social allegories; Ralph is used to represent fair/democratic government, Jack is used to represent power/dictatorship, Piggy is used to represent technology/intellect, and is used Simon to represent humanism.

Ralph represents the fair/democratic government found in human society. Originating from Britain, Ralph tries to mimic the Parliament by employing his own conch-led government system. When Ralph notices that they cannot have everyone talking at once, he says, “I’ll give the conch to the next person to speak. He can hold it when he’s speaking” (45). The definition of a democracy is a system of governm...

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...as to tell the boys that there was in fact no beast, it was only a dead parachutist.

Rather than being read from a literal perspective, the reader can choose to read Lord of the Flies as one vast social allegory. The four main characters, Ralph, Jack, Piggy, and Simon, are used as social allegories to represent different parts of society. Ralph is used to represent democratic government, Jack is used represents autocratic government, Piggy is used to represent the intellectual part of society, and Simon is used to represent humanistic part of society. While it may be just a narrative telling of several boys marooned on an island, Golding’s plentiful use of allegories gives Lord of the Flies a much more profound meaning than just that. Without these allegorical elements, Lord of the Flies would just be a common adventure novel with no significant moral meaning.