Conch Symbolism

The Lord of the Flies:
A sow, brutally killed, had her head cut off and stuck onto a stick, left for a creature, that they have yet to realize is but themselves. The Lord of the Flies, murdered by Jack and his group of hunters, was presented in Simon’s place of tranquility, a clearing within the jungle. Following the hunters’ departure, Simon comes along to find the head and goes into a sort of trance where the Lord of the Flies begins speaking to him of the true demon within all of the boys. The sow’s head symbolizes a Satanic figure of which expands the powers evil. It is darkness, and in a sense, it is the Beast itself. Beelzebub, is the Greek translation for the Lord of the Flies, and it stands to be the name of a demon sometimes considered

as the Devil.
Painted Faces:
Hidden behind a mask, yet their true self is what appears; painted faces, bring upon the loss of inhibition, the upheaval of violence. It is but mud and other semisolid liquids mixed together to make colors, yet even so, it signifies a savagery beyond return. Jack uses this paint to camouflage in the jungle so he can subtly sneak up to an unsuspecting pig and kill it. Following the example, other hunters do the same and fall into and under the same influence. That influence, being the power of the painted faces to unlock the evil inside each and every one of the boys.

The Conch:
Found in the very beginning by Piggy, the conch helps bring unity to the boy’s civilization.

It represents power for it was decided in an early meeting that only the person holding it may speak. In addition, the conch was used to call the boys to meetings, which shows how it is used to represent the coordination of their society. It also exemplifies the order of the boy’s civilization. In the beginning, the conch is vibrant in a pink and creamy white color, showing how the boys are organized. As the story goes on, the conch starts to wear down which expresses how the boys slowly started to fall apart and break down internally. During this decline, Jack feels the conch is no longer important and refuses to value its importance. When the conch is no longer valued as a powerful tool, order is lost in the boy’s society and everything starts to

deteriorate.
The Fire:
The fire’s role in the novel is not just used as a survival technique, for it was also used as a way to be rescued. The boys need some sort of way to attract any ships that might be sailing nearby and fire is the way they choose to do so. Having a signal fire on the island gives the boys hope that somebody will notice their presence on the island and come rescue them. Hope keeps the boys going day after day and helps them get through their rough time. In addition, at the beginning of the novel, when the fire was first created, a part of the island gets burned down, and one of the boys die in the flames. Furthermore, Jack, who is too preoccupied with hunting a pig, forgets about the fire at one point and lets it go out. However, as the story goes on, the boys learn how to control this fire just like they are learning to control their civilization.

Piggy’s Glasses:
These pair of lens, which Piggy is ever so dependent on, serves to be one of the most noteworthy materials on the island due to its rarity and numerous applications. Ralph uses it to ignite the signal fire, the hunters need it for cooking the boars they viciously butcher, and Piggy, of course, is reliant on it for his vision. Intelligence and knowledge are the main focuses Piggy’s glasses seem to symbolize. At one point in the novel, Jack strikes Piggy in rage, which cracks one of lenses of Piggy’s glasses. This portrays the start of the progressive loss of the boys’ collective intellect. In the climax of the Lord of the Flies, Piggy is decapitated by a boulder while wielding the conch. As a result, Piggy is killed and the conch is shattered, signifying the complete loss of reasoning in the boys. By the end of the novel, Jack wields Piggy’s glasses, displaying how intelligence can aid in the reinforcement of immoral, unprincipled behavior.
The Jungle:
In our initial impression of the jungle, it is made evident that the area is an attractive and serene environment, displaying the beauty of undisturbed nature. It bears resemblance to the Garden of Eden because of its wholesome essence, and parallels the ongoing war occurring outside the island. Over the course of the novel, the jungle is increasingly diminished, transforming from its once robust state into a charred, uninhabitable region. In the opening pages of Lord of the Flies, the audience is informed of a plane crash that causes a “scar” in the interior of the jungle which marks the arrival of a destructive force: a group of British schoolboys. Later in the novel, the boys’ carelessness results in a fire spreading into the jungle. The outcome of this is that a major portion of the jungle is defaced and one of the “littluns” is killed. Near the novel’s conclusion, another fire occurs, this time intentionally started. It encapsulates the jungle and ferociously breaks it apart, signifying mankind’s inevitable nature to manipulate and destroy.
William Golding’s View on Human Nature:
“I believe man suffers from an appalling ignorance of his own nature.” This stated by William Golding, in 1983, for his Nobel Prize in Literature speech, stated his philosophy of man’s basic instinct and proclivity for evil.

This is significantly apparent all throughout symbols and characters in his book, Lord of the Flies. The symbol of the pig’s head on a stick represents the devil and the terrors that he brings to influence the boys to go on with violence and savagery. The face paint used by the hunters, in the book, is also a very prominent motif in depicting evil, for these masks strip away the boys’ inhibition and allow their inner wickedness to take control of them. The conch shows how the boys have order in the beginning, but wear down over time and reject the moral code they were taught. Fire, initially used for survival, gives the boys a sense of hope, yet also represents how the boy’s society slowly becomes uncontrolled as their violence increases. Piggy’s glasses, as it continually gets foggy and cracks, represents the boys’ society and how it progressively deteriorates as the story goes on. The jungle depicts the consequence of human action in reference to how it is pristine and attractive at the beginning of the novel, yet with the boys inhabiting the island, it is ultimately burned down. Golding plays with different things inside his novel to explain the evil that is man. For whether it be the influence, the Lord of the Flies, the allowance, the painted

faces, or the progressive destruction of order, civilization, hope and beauty, the conch, fire and the jungle, all symbols lead to one thing: the fact that man is inherently evil and that wherever he goes, terror will follow.