More handpicked essays just for you.
The uses of symbolism in the novel Lord of the Flies
Symbolism esssay lord of the flies
Symbolism esssay lord of the flies
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
Lucy Bao
Mr. Keen
English/7
Lord of the Flies
10/19/14
There are many situations happening in daily life, some might be challenging, and others might be troublesome. Will people’s attitudes toward situations change as things get more despair? William Golding who composes a novel Lord of the Flies that he set a scene of a group of boys who get a plane crash during sometime between world war two, and they are on an island with no adult. Jack is against Ralph. In Golding’s fiction, things begin to fall apart as the situations on the island get harsh on the boys. However, this novel illustrate an idea that people lost leadership, civilization, and innocent when things gets bad, which can illustrate by the conch, Jack, and
…show more content…
The conch has an absolute power that is describes as “ and most obscurely, yet most powerfully, there was the conch.”(Golding 22) and latter, Ralph even “Held up the conch for silence”(23). The boys use this conch to build up leadership even though it has some defects but it works fine. The detects of this leadership get neglect by the boys, and when things gets out of control, these detects get enlarge. When fear begins to take over the boys, the leadership begins to fall apart as Jack says “Conch! Conch!” “We don’t need the conch anymore.”(101-102) The Conch represents leadership, and now Jack is ignoring it. When the boys are under the fear of the beast, the idea of leadership become vague and the absolute power of the conch begin to …show more content…
Golding ‘s description of the butterfly as “Even the butterflies deserted the open space where this obscene thing grinned and dripped.”(151) This description reveal that butterfly is like the boys’ innocent and now they are flying away because of the violence and savage. The lost of innocent get worse as things fall apart even more. At the end, when the boys got rescues by an officer, the description of Ralph is “Ralph wept for the end of innocence, the darkness in man's heart, and the fall through the air of the true, wise friend called Piggy."(202) Not only Ralph, but at the end, the boys finally realizes that their innocent is gone. The English boys that they use to be are killing by the “fire” that they set up. The boat can only rescues their physical body, but it can't save their innocent that is distorted by
The influence of power, or “power hungry”, has had a huge effect on many people who feel that they must be in charge. These people often have trouble being told no or being told that they can’t be in charge. People throughout history have done it in many ways. Our own government displays this when we elect a new president every four years. These candidates often tell the public what they want to hear and how they’ll make it a better place, when, in reality, they only mean half of it and they just want to be able to have the power of the president. In the novel Lord of the Flies, by William Golding, the antagonist, Jack, shows throughout the book that he craves power and feels that he deserves it more than anybody else.
In Lord of the Flies the moral is teaching you that man can go mad no matter what age. The kids start trying to build a society after they crashed landed on an island. The way they choose their leader doomed them from the start, Ralph finds a shell and declares him the ruler. There’s a famous saying, “power makes man corrupt.” This holds true in this story. After arguments with other people in the tribe about his ruling situation a sort of revolution erupts. This leads to the boys going back to the savage days of survival-of-the-fittest. The ones with most power start taking in kids as slaves showing how getting the advantage of power made them enslave their own friends. The story isn’t set back in the 1800s either when slavery was tolerated,
William Golding’s Lord of the Flies portrays the lives of young British boys whose plane crashed on a deserted island and their struggle for survival. The task of survival was challenging for such young boys, while maintaining the civilized orders and humanity they were so accustomed too. These extremely difficult circumstances and the need for survival turned these innocent boys into the most primitive and savaged mankind could imagine. William Golding illustrates man’s capacity for evil, which is revealed in man’s inherent nature. Golding uses characterization, symbolism and style of writing to show man’s inhumanity and evil towards one another.
The conch is used for the first time in the book and able to draw all of the boys to the same spot on the island showing its power. “Immediately, the thing sounded. A deep harsh note boomed under the palms...” (Golding 12) Soon after the conch is blown, the boys start to arrive one by one. The conch is able to reach over the whole island to get the boys to gather. Very quickly the conch is put on a high place of order. In fact, the boys cannot even talk in the assemblies unless they are holding the conch. The conch can calm everybody down. If everything is going crazy, all Ralph has to do is blow the conch and then the boys will assemble. In addition to the power of the conch, it represents civility, as the boys are savages without it. “‘If I blow the conch and they don’t come back, then we’ve had it. We shan’t keep the fire going. We’ll be like animals. We’ll never be rescued.’” (Golding 99) Ralph knows if they do not come back after he blows the conch then they have officially become savages; there would be no coming back from it. He does not want to blow the conch because he wants to believe that they are still civil and have order, but deep down he knows that they are savages. Throughout the novel, Ralph is always using the conch to bring order back to the boys. The boys are nothing without the conch....
The Conch was used to be a democratic power by Ralph. When Ralph become a chief of the boys, “ ‘Let him be chief with the trumpet thing’ ”(22). This quote proves that the Conch is very related to the power because only chief could hold it anytime and Chief has a power to control the boys. He was made to be chief by fair voting. Because the boys did a fair job to pick a chief without any pressure and they picked Ralph, who looked great for doing chief. He controlled the boys sometimes nicely and sometimes with power. "Ralph waved the conch. ‘Shut up! Wait! Listen!’ He went on in the silence, borne on in his triumph”(38). Because he used the Conch fairly, boys were fine to be ruled by Ralph, except Jack, who were a chief of the hunters, and because he was always the leader before, Jack disobeys Ralph and broke the rules. But before that, he was able to control the boys by the rule that nobody can interrupt when somebody has the Conch. Ralph had a leadership to control the boys. So the Conch and Ralph’s leadership had a great combination...
The conch was the only thing that held the boys with a moral glue that they knew what their limit was. Golding states the power the conch once had with the boys, "Conch! Conch!" shouted Jack. "We don’t need the conch any more.
Power is very dangerous, as shown in William Golding’s Lord of the Flies. The novel explores the use of power in both the hands of good and evil and for success and for failure. Also, how some characters respond to having power. An examination of William Golding’s LOTF will show how fear is powerful and how the characters use that to their advantage. Also, the power shifts between the characters and the aftermath of that.
Lord of the flies, William Golding best exemplifies the theme of the power through the conch shell and the pigs had as both control the boy’s emotions and actions throughout the course of the novel.
Circumstance and time can alter or determine the different paths a group of young boys will take. These paths can have the power to strip children of their own innocence. Such a statement can be explored in William Golding’s “Lord of the Flies” as it ventures into the pros and cons of human nature. William Golding’s tale begins with a group of English school boys who crash land on a deserted tropical island during World War II. In Lord of the Flies, the island that the boys crash on is beautiful, glamorous, and magnificent; yet, it proves to become a dystopia by the horror of the cruelty, violence, and inhumanity.
“Often fear of one evil leads us into a worse”(Despreaux). Nicolas Boileau-Despreaux is saying that fear consumes oneself and often times results in a worse fate. William Golding shares a similar viewpoint in his novel Lord of the Flies. A group of boys devastatingly land on a deserted island. Ralph and his friend Piggy form a group. Slowly, they become increasingly fearful. Then a boy named Jack rebels and forms his own tribe with a few boys such as Roger and Bill. Many things such as their environment, personalities and their own minds contribute to their change. Eventually, many of the boys revert to their inherently evil nature and become savage and only two boys remain civilized. The boys deal with many trials, including each other, and true colors show. In the end they are being rescued, but too much is lost. Their innocence is forever lost along with the lives Simon, a peaceful boy, and an intelligent boy, Piggy. Throughout the novel, Golding uses symbolism and characterization to show that savagery and evil are a direct effect of fear.
The conch was used to call meetings but is also symbolic of the government structure and power. One of the main themes in the novel “Civilization vs. Savagery” is fought between two egos, Jack the Id who represents savagery and the desire for power and Ralph the Ego and protagonist, who represents order and leadership. William Golding created a society that was controlled by the dominant ego and influenced mostly by the person with the most manpower. Jack who was the leader of the hunter group influences the rest to join his tribe to hunt and kill. However, not all of the children on the island had the same savage trait as some others. This created a clash between tribes and leaders. You were left with the Good vs. Evil or Civilization vs. Savagery scenario.
As time passes, the conch’s influence over the boys weakens
The Conch also illustrates order because you must have the Conch to Speak in an assembly or meeting similar to the rules in class. This is shown when Ralph explains the rules of the group after being elected: ”We can't have everybody talking at once. We'll have to have 'hands up' like at school." (Golding___). The “like at school” suggests the kids are trying to replicate society and keep order. In spite of this, the Conch starts to lose this power later on in the book. This can be seen when Jack dismisses the power of the
Power is misused by Jack and other members on the island, which eventually leads to the downfall of the rest of those survivalists. Jack rules out of fear rather than considering the ideas of the people. He is an absolute ruler and leads as a dictator rather than a democracy. For instance, Jack scares the little kids with the beast. This is an example of Jack ruling in fear, because he personally doesn't believe in the beast, however, he tricks the little kids into believing so. Jack does not display the true qualities of a leader, in that he is misusing power by scaring people rather than encouraging them. Next, Jack orders members of his tribe to go steal Piggy’s glasses so that they can make fie. Jack does not take into consideration that Piggy is practically blind without his specs. However knowing so, he still raids their shelters for his own selfish needs. Power is being misused because Jack hinders the group's progress rather than assisting it. Finally, Jack states, “Got any water?” Ralph looked up, frowning, from the complication of leaves. He did not notice Jack even when he saw him. “I said have you got any water? I’m thirsty.”(50) Unfortunately, Jack abuses power to suit his personal necessities. He is self-centered in that he is unwilling to sacrifice himself for the group. The group is simply being
Golding wrote Lord of the Flies to portray World War II’s destruction on to mankind that he himself experienced first-hand during the war. "The world, that understandable and lawful world, was slipping away” (82). War and violence ruined the civilized, British world that the boys in his novel had once lived in; Jack’s aggressive means ruined the semi-civilized tribe at the lagoon. Therefore, since the boys were accustomed to such cruelty back at home, they mirror the brutal actions on the island. In Lord of the Flies, Golding uses the contrast between characters, symbols, and locations on the island to show that in a world where violence and war are prominent, an individual often loses their sense of