William Golding Lord Of The Flies Allegorical Essay

The Lord of the Flies by William Golding is an allegorical novel since it contains a multitude of symbols exemplifying the stories allegorical and literal meanings. Lord of the flies takes place on an uninhabited island where a group of british school boys get stranded after their plane crashed. The island is a tropical paradise thriving with vegetation although there is more than what lies at the surface. The boys undergo extreme complications and fight for their lives against the the other boys and the great unknown(The Beast). The allegorical level reveals the large philosophic concepts within literature. In this case it reveals the stories savageness and capacity for evil. The literal level is what grabs our attention by using the characters and their internal/external conflict. The entire story deliberately expresses symbolism. By doing this the Island and children's behaviors allegorical representations become extremely evident. This story's double meaning plays a key role in the

understanding of the boys unfortunate situation.
The conch is a white shell discovered by two characters Ralph and Piggy at the beginning of the story.

The conches allegorical symbol is social order, respect, and power. It's used to call assemblies and is used as a kind of microphone that grants whomever is speaking the right to speak amongst the group. When the conch is discovered, it is simply just a white shell although it gives power to the beholder and becomes appealing to jack(another character striving to peculate Ralph's authority) . When Ralph and piggy realize how loud it is once blown into, it attained its first symbolic significance."We can use this to call the others. Have a meeting. They’ll come when they hear us—" (Lord of the Flies, William Golding, Chapter 1, Page 14). It's used to summon the boy’s and represents human ingenuity. It has the ability to to create order out of chaos. It's significant that some of the less mature children are drawn by the sound of the conch and the formality of the

gatherings.
“The beast” is what the boys fear most of all. “The Beast” is an imaginary being easily exemplifies evil and darkness. Although as it later becomes evident that it also epitomizes the boys themselve. At the beginning of the novel the beast was nothing more than a fragment of the boys imagination. The littluns( the small boys) became afraid of things they see in the night; instead of being blatantly afraid of the unknown they characterize their fear with a name and shape. "'Fear can't hurt you any more than a dream. There aren't any beasts to be afraid of on this island....Serve you right if something did get you, you useless lot of cry-babies!"(Lord Of the Flies, William Golding, Chapter 5, pg. 75). Simon says "'Maybe there is a beast....maybe it's only us.'"( Lord of the Flies, William Golding, Chapter 5, pg. 80) As the novel advances “The Beast” does appear. The beast reveals itself to to simon while hallucinating. Simon is the one to realize that the beast is a savage monster within them. It's absurd to think the beast is something they could “hunt or kill”. If it's inside all of them, they can't hunt it ,see it, or defeat it.
Piggy is one of the main characters and an important attribute about him is that he wear glasses. Piggy is intellectual and the most physically vulnerable. He is left out quite often and his glasses seem to be the only thing the boys are allured by. Piggy's glasses are the epitome of science and technology within the story. Piggy's spectacles are used to ignite fires and that shows how the boys are able to transform their environment with ingenuity. “Ralph moved the lenses back and forth, this way and that, till a glossy white image of the declining sun lay on a piece of rotten wood. Almost at once a thin trickle of smoke rose up and made him cough. Jack knelt too and blew gently, so that the smoke drifted away, thickening, and a tiny flame appeared”.(Lord of the Flies, William Golding, Chapter 2 page 41-42). As warmth is a necessity to live the boys scramble for fire. When the finally attain this power is signified as a door back to civilization.
The Lord of the Flies is a complex novel filled with an immense amount of double meanings. Almost everything within the narrative contains an allegorical side. When going into depth of the story you can realize that many simple objects or characters can hold a deeper meaning than what's on the surface. Every action taken by the boys contained a type of savageness and it became apparent to the reader that the boys hope at civilization was deteriorating. Throughout the novel mental and physical conflict held the boys from rejoining a civil and ordinary state of mind. Evil took ahold of the boys and they could not defeat it.