How Does Golding Present The Conch In Lord Of The Flies

The opening of the novel introduces the reader to important themes, techniques and symbolism. The overarching theme of Lord of the Flies is the conflict between the rules of civilization and savagery. Another theme that is raised in chapter one is the cruelty of human life. Some techniques that are used are foreshadowing and personification which I talked about in the first paragraph. William Golding used a conch shell to become a powerful symbol of civilization and order in the novel. The conch represents law, order and power. The boys impose a “rule of the conch” on themselves, deciding that no one can speak unless the person is holding the conch shell. A quote that suggests that the conch portrays civilization is “Ralph smiled and held up

The shell, effectively governs the boy’s meetings. The conch is more than a symbol; it becomes a vessel of democratic power, but as the story progresses the conch might begin to lose its color thus making its influence and civilization to wane. On the other hand, at the beginning of the chapter, the conch is described as being “deep cream, touched here and there with fading pink”. The color of the conch, being a puerile color, proposes that when the boys set foot on the island, they were childish with no experience of living alone in the world, without the presence of an authoritative figure to govern them, but the conch shell being broken by the end of the book is a hint that the boys got more mature, stronger and independent; all of these being the characteristics of a powerful man. Furthermore, the conch was the reason that got all of the boys on the island together as a group. However, by the end of the book the conch gets broken which suggests that the bond that the boys shared together as a team gets broken too along with the shell. One of the main themes of the novel is “Civilization VS