Lord Of The Flies Theme Analysis

Director Peter Brook’s fascinating film “Lord of the Flies” is about how young boys turn from innocent children in to animals. The novel, however, was written by Mr. William Golding during the era of the cold war. The story takes place on an unpopulated island where a group of young school boys are stranded on after their plane crashed. The main characters of the story are two boys named Jack and Ralph. Jack represents the chaos on the island while Ralph represents how society acts when order is present. Along with the ideas that Ralph and Jack are symbolic characters, Brook uses the conch shell and the theme of loss of innocence to show how the transformation the boys go through is similar to how society transforms. Order is constantly being

Nine times out of ten, those who follow this path end up like Jack, cold hearted and blind from his own pride. This theme is the loss of innocence. As the movie goes on, the scenes become more violent. (5) The first violent scene that displays this loss of innocence it the scene were the boys kill the first pig and start to chant kill the pig, cut her throat, bash her in. In accordance to The Criterion Collection “they have painted their bodies and are screeching ‘Kill, kill, kill’” (Macnab) The boys are starting to pick up on violent behaviors which is leading them down the path of savagery. The same thing will happen if a child, who has been raise properly, starts to hang around the wrong crowd. The child will slowly lose everything that his parents tried to teach

(6)The boys of Jack’s tribe are celebrating around the campfire when they see Simon come down the mountain at night. Instead of investigating the area, the boys attack and murder Simon. The next day Jack is telling the boys that the best came down in a disguise. The boys are not taking responsibility for their actions. Obviously killing someone they knew does not phase them anymore. After Piggy is murdered, the boys hunt Ralph. (7) The boys take Piggy’s glasses light the place, near Ralph, on fire in order to kill Ralph. The boys have lost all of their morals since they have turned from hunting pigs to humans. The boys are now comparable to that of a serial killer. Since the first kill, they seem to be hungry for more deaths to those who are against them. The last scene of the movie kind of makes the loss of innocence stand out more to the audience. (8) As the boys are chasing Ralph through the island, Ralph stumbles into a naval officer. At this moment, it is clear to the audience how much the boys have changed. The boys themselves realize that they have gone out of control at this moment too.

In conclusion, Brooks takes Golding’s novel “Lord of the Flies” and shows how boys transform by using the symbolic conch shell and the theme loss of innocence. The conch shell represent the order and innocence that the children start off with. As the movie and novel continues, the children slowly become