Who Is The Conch In Lord Of The Flies

Lord of the Flies Summer Essay

They thought their society was stable; they thought it would last. It all started with the conch shell that gathered them. In the book The Lord of the Flies by William Golding, a group of boys became nomads on an island causing them to take on the biggest challenge of their lives, survival. The traits for a successful survivalist would include cooperation, maturity and responsibility. But if they can’t achieve those traits they will crash, causing chaos on the island.

Leadership and unity came hand and hand on the island of pig on a stick. One of the most important symbols in the book was the conch. The conch represented their civilization. Who knew one blow of a horn could could change everything, “the conch against his lips, took a deep breath and blew once more” (Golding 17). The boys listened to the sound of the conch and gathered. One by one they would file in and say their names, then came Jack.

Ralph, the keeper of the conch, was ransacked by Jack, who wanted nothing more than to be king of the island. Their relationship was uneasy and caused the island to divide into different leaderships and breaking the society into two: Dictatorship and Democracy. Similar plot in the book Animal Farm By George Orwell when the pig, Napoleon became a dictator on the farm and made the society there corrupt and Snowball wanted the farm to be fair and follow the rules they wrote. Within the different systems there was unity but sooner or later it became clear that it would be more productive if they all worked together. The broken society was revealed to the boys when the conch bursts “ The conch exploded into a thousand white fragments and ceased to exist” (Golding 181). When the conch broke, all hell broke loose. Their physical representation of their society was shattered, literally. Everything they swore to on the island vanished, rules, responsibility, everything. This could be related to the current events of the Michael Brown case in Ferguson because instead of being divided by civilization systems they were divided by race. Also they fought violently just like in the book when simon was brutally murdered. Knowing that their society was broken for a good part of the book unveiled other flaws the boys possessed.
To take on such tasks related to unity and leadership they also need responsibility to carry on those traits. Responsibility is the most important one of all because you need to be able to accomplish things without being told you are needed for them. Jack was a hunter so he was responsible for gathering the food. But they didn’t just have to be responsible for each other but also the island, “ his voice rose under the black smoke before the burning wreckage of the island” (Golding 202). The island, if you can’t tell already, practically burned down in flames. The respect the had for the island was awful. If they could barely respect each other, how could they respect the island they were living on? In reality, we have trouble keeping our environment clean too. Over the summer, an article came out about the Sacramento oil spill. The spill can never be undone, it happened. In LOF, the occurrences can never be undone; They can never get Simon back, they can’t fix the forest just like they can never fully fix the the ocean water that was contaminated. Their responsibility and common sense wasn’t used to it’s full potential but at least they tried.
When a leader is mature it can take them a long way up the ladder, but Ralph had difficulties reporting to this particular one.

One way he had trouble was showing his innocence and not being naive. Ralph being himself not know which step to take closer to civilization fell, tripping over himself by one action “lugged off his shorts and pants and stood there naked” (Golding 10). This shows immaturity because his clothes symbolized all the laws and rules he followed and breaking away from them; Now Ralph is completely free and uncontrolled. This was a bad move on Ralph’s part because that shows the other boys they can break away and do their own thing. Very much the same as when Jack tore away from the rest of the group when he wanted a dictatorship instead of a democracy. The immaturity was spreading on the island like a disease because of the unlawfully savage of a leader, Ralph. In perspective Piggy should have been leader because he was the only one to still believe in the world they once lived in because he kept his clothes

on.
In the end they cracked under pressure; they couldn’t make a successful survival. If the Naval Officer never came, they would have not lasted another week on the island because they would have ended up killing each other because they couldn’t survive successfully. Sadly, the cooperation, responsibility, and maturity because too much for the boys to handle.