LUCRARE DE ATESTAT LA LIMBA ENGLEZA

LORD OF THE FLIES: NOT ONLY A FIRST

RATE ADVENTURE BUT ALSO A PARABOLE OF OUR TIME

CONTENTS

PAGE RATIONALE..4

SUMMARY5 CHAPTER I WILLIAM GOLDING LIFE AND WORK6 CHAPTER II LORD OF THE FLIES..9 2.1 SUMMARY.9 2.2 THE DRAMATIC STRUCTURE OF THE NOVEL13 2.3 THE ISLAND SETTING.16 2.4 CHARACTERS..17 CHAPTER III THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN SYMBOLISM
AND THEME IN

LORD OF THE FLIES..21

CHAPTER IV DEATH AND SOCIAL COLAPS 26 CONCLUSIONS28 BIBLIOGRAPHY..29

RATIONALE
From a wide range of subjects available, it was William Goldings Lord of the Flies who drew my attention. First of all Id like to say that I chose this topic as I considered it the most suitable to express the degradation of the human race in a place without rules. Society holds everyone together, and without these conditions, our ideals, values, and the basics of right and wrong are lost. Without societys rigid rules, anarchy and savagery can come to light. Moreover, after seeing the film, I was very impressed by the island setting. Everything on the island: the lagoon, the beach, the ocean or the exotic fruits turned it into a small paradise, a paradise in a total contrast with the events that take place or with the kids way of thinking. In addition to this the books appeal to me was given especially by the characters. Goldings characters are surprisingly sure of what they want: peace, order and progress, absolute power over others, or the pleasure of singing, dancing and a plentiful supply of roast meat they all know what kind of life they would like to lead, whether they achieve or not. To conclude with, I would say that when I read Lord of the Flies with adolescents or people in their early twenties, I began by being somewhat reluctant because I expected it to be a kids story. But on the contrary I discovered its deeper meanings. Lord of the Flies helped me understand that the evil is within each of us. As Platon said, people are evil by nature. But if they choose to do good is because they are afraid of the societys rules, as without rules the world would fall apart.

SUMMARY
Lord of the Flies is a novel by the contemporary English author, William Golding, and deals with fundamental human problems of our age, such as the conflict between good and evil, and scepticism towards the notion of progress coupled with mans moral development in the twentieth century. In this paper I tried to analyse the novel from different angles, beginning with a few words about the writer and ending with a large number of themes and symbols. So, in the first chapter I presented a short biography of William Golding, who received in 1980 the Booker Prize for Rites of Passage and in 1983 was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. The second chapter is the most complex as it deals with the presentation of the plot showing how very British boys destroy any social rule and end up as beasts. Moreover, this chapter includes the setting, which is a deserted island in the middle of the ocean, the characterization of the children each of them representing a symbol and the dramatic structure of the novel, as not a single boy who survives, is what he was at the beginning. To continue with, the third chapter makes us understand all the significances of the novel as it presents the relationship between symbolism and themes. Finally chapter four gives us detailed information in what concerns death and social collapse in Lord of the Flies. To conclude with, Id like to point out that the shape of society must depend on the ethical nature of the individual and not on any political system however apparently logical or respectable. The whole book is symbolic in nature except the rescue in the end, where adult life appears, dignified and capable, but in reality enmeshed in the same evil as the symbolic life of the children on the island.

Chapter I.

Sir William Gerald Golding achieved international fame and wide critical acceptance with his first published novel, Lord of the Flies , in 1954. Since that time his fictional canoon has won Golding a special niche in the pantheon of modern British fiction. It is a niche that deserves to be inscribed with the phrase sui generis , for Goldings fiction does not fit within any modern school of writing. Although his work can be categorized as broadly Christian in outlook, it advocates no specific church or political system, and it does not represent any ethnic subdivision within the British Isles. Each of his works, moreover, has been an attempt to treat a different subject in a different time and place, in a different manner. Born on 19 September 1911 in Saint Columb Minor in Cornwal, England, Sir William Gerald Golding was educated at the Marlborough Grammar School, where his father taught and later at Brasenose College, Oxford. Athough posit educated to be a scientist at the wishes of his father, he soon developed a great interest in literature, becoming first devoted to Anglo-Saxon and then writing poetry. At Oxford he studied English literature and philosophy. Following a short period of time in which he worked at a settlement house in small theater companies as both an actor and a writer, Golding became a schoolmaster at Bishop Wordsworth's School in Salisbury. During the second world war he joined the Royal Navy and was involved in the sinking of the German battleship Bismarck, but after the war he returned to Bishop Wordsworth's School, where he taught until the early sixties. In 1954, Golding published his first novel, Lord of the Flies , which details the adventures of British schoolboys stranded on an island in the Pacific who descend into barbaric behavior. Although at first rejected by twenty-one different publishing houses, Golding's first novel, become a surprise success. E.M. Forster declared Lord of the Flies the outstanding novel of its year. Golding continued to develop similar themes concerning the inherent violence in human nature in his next novel, The Inheritors , published the following year, 1955. This novel deals with the last days of Neanderthal man. The Inheritors posits that the Cro-Magnon "fire-builders" triumphed over Neanderthal man as much as by violence and deceit as by any natural superiority. Anoher tour

de force using a primitive setting, it shares certain thematic and technical characteristics with Lord of the Flies . His subsequent works include Pincher Martin (1956), the story of a guilt-ridden naval officer who faced an agonizing death. By publishing his third novel in three years, Golding appeared to be making up for lost time. But he was not simply repeating himself. The new work made use of contemporary times and some of the author's war experience in the navy. In its own way, it proved as distinctive as Golding's previous novels. By now, however, critics were able to discern a kind of fiction that could be called "Goldingesque". In fact, Pincher Martin may be Golding's most allusive work. It contains echo after echo of Shakespeare, John Milton, T.S. Eliot, Conrad, and a host of lesser writers. Other works are Free Fall (1959), and The Spire (1964), each of which deals with the depravity of human nature. The Spire is an allegory concerning the protagonist's obsessive determination to built a cathedral spire regardless of the consequences. As well as his novels and his early collection of poems, Golding also published a play entitled "The Brass Butterfly" in 1958 and two collections of essays, The Hot Gates (1965) and A Moving Target (1982). Golding's final novels include Darkness Visible (1979), the story of a boy horribly injured during the London blitz of World War II, and Rites of Passage (1980). This novel was awarded the Booker Prize, the highest literary award in Britain, in 1981. Golding has received honorary degrees from the University of Warwich (1981), Oxford University (1983), and the Sorbonne (1983). It inspired other novels, Close Quartes (1987) and Fire Down Below (1989). These three novels portray life aboard a ship during the Napoleonic Wars. He published another novel, The Paper Men, in 1984, the year in which he was made Companion of Literature, a Royal Society of Literature award. In 1983, Golding received the Nobel Prize for literature "for his novels which, with the perspicuity of realistic narrative art and the diversity and universality of myth, illuminate the human condition in the world of today", and in 1988 he was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II. Sir Wlliam died in 1993 in Perranarworthal, Cornwall. At the time of his death he was working on an unfinished manuscript entitled The Double Tongue, which deals with the fall of Hellenic culture and the rise of Roman civilization. This work was published posthumously in 1995. Like many novelists before him, Golding must have realized that his old work, bad as it might have been, no longer existed. For a decade and a half, he turned silent, allowing only a few odd pieces to be gathered together and published. Like some literary Lazarus, however, he reemerged with the publication, first, of Darkness Visible and then of the
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To the Ends of the Earth trilogy. With these works he achieved a good measure of reconsideration, as well as a considerable amount of selfsatisfaction. Golding's strength lies in the imaginative presentation of the other times and other places with figures that are potentially allegorical. It is probably in his ability to visualize in clearly poetic prose, in mythic form, that he surpasses other modern novelists. Lord of the Flies and The Inheritors, along with the To the Ends of the Earth trilogy, perhaps best demonstrate the qualities mentioned by the Swedish Academy in awarding the Nobel Prize to Golding for a series of novels that "with the diversity and universality of myth illuminate the human condition in the world today.

Chapter II

2.1 Summary
During the unnamed time of war, a plane carrying a group of British schoolboys is shot down over the Pacific. The pilot of the plane is killed, but many of the boys survive the crash and find themselves deserted on an uninhabited island, where they are alone without adult supervision. The novel begins with aftermath of the crash, once the boys have reached the island. The first two boys introduced are the main protagonists of the story: Ralph, who is among the oldest of the boys, and Piggy, as he is derisively called. Ralph finds a conch shell, and when he blows it the other boys gather together. Among these boys is Jack Merridew, an aggressive boy who marches at the head of his choir. Ralph, whom the other boys choose as chief, leads Jack and another boy, Simon, on an expedition to explore the island. They realize that they are, in fact, on a deserted island. When the boys return from their expedition, Ralph calls a meeting and attempts to set rules of order for the island. Jack agrees with Ralph, for the existence of rules means the existence of punishment for those who break them. Ralph proposes that they build a fire on the mountain, which could signal their presence to any passing ships. While Jack tries to hunt pigs, Ralph orchestrates the building of shelters for the boys. The youngest boys have not helped at all, while others have spent the day swimming. The boys soon become accustomed to the progression of the day on the island. The youngest of the boys, known generally as the littluns, spend most of the day searching for fruit to eat. Jack continues to hunt, while Piggy, considers building a sundial. A ship passes by the island, but the fire has burned out. Piggy blames Jack for letting the fire die, and Jack punches him breaking one lens of his glasses. Ralph becomes concerned by the behavior of Jack and the hunters and begins to appreciate Piggys maturity. He calls an assembly in which he criticizes the boys for not assisting with the fire while the others built the shelters. He insists that the fire is the most important thing on the island,
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for it is their one chance for rescue. Jack proclaims that there is no beast on the island, as some of the boys believe. The littluns begin to worry about the supposed beast, which they conceive to be perhaps a ghost or a squid. Jack decides to lead an expedition to hunt the beast, leaving only Ralph, Piggy and Simon. If Jack became chief the boys would never be rescued. That night, during an aerial battle, a pilot parachutes down the island. The next morning, the twins Sam and Eric are adding kindly to the fire when they see the pilot and believe him to be the beast. Jack decides to join them on their expedition to find the beast, despite his wish to rekindle the fire on the mountain. The hunters go into a frenzy, lapsing into their kill the pig chant once again. Ralph realizes that Jack hates him and confronts him about that fact. Jack mocks Ralph for not wanting to hunt, claiming that it stems from cowardice. Then, Ralph returns to the shelters to find Piggy and tells him that they saw the beast, but only Piggy remains skeptical. The hunters kill a pig, then cut of the head and leave it on a stake as an offering for the beast. Jack brings several hunters back to the shelters, where he invites the other boys to join his tribe and offers them meat and the opportunity to hunt and have fun. All of the boys, except for Ralph and Piggy, join Jack. Meanwhile, Simon finds the pigs head that the hunters had left, and then he sees the dead pilot that the boys perceived to be the beast and realizes what it actually is, Simon rushes down the mountain to alert the other boys of what he has found. Ralph and Piggy decide to find the other boys but they start arguing. As a storm begins, Simon rushes from the forest, telling about the dead body on the mountain. But the boys descend on Simon, thinking that he is the beast, and kill him. The only four boys who are not part of Jacks tribe are Ralph, Piggy and the twins, Sam and Eric, who help tend to the fire. At the castle rock, Jack rules over the boys with the trapping of an idol. In order to make a fire, the hunters decide to attack the four boys and steal Piggys glasses. After the attack, the four boys decide to go to the castle rock to appeal Jack as civilized people. But they have a fight and Roger tips a rock over on Piggy, causing him to fall down the mountain to the beach. The impact kills him. Jack declares himself chief and hurls his spear at Ralph, who runs away. Ralph hides near the castle rock, where he can see the other boys, whom he no longer recognizes as civilized English boys but rather as savages. While Ralph hides, he realized that the other boys are rolling rocks down the mountain and that they are setting the forest on fire in order to smoke him out.

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Ralph finally reaches the beach, where a naval officer has arrived with his ship. He thinks that the boys have only been playing games, and scolds them for not behaving in a more organized and responsible manner, as is the British custom. As the boys prepare to leave the island for home, Ralph weeps for the death of Piggy and the end of the boys innocence. When one reads Lord of the Flies for the first time, one can ask himself whether the ending match the rest of the novel or not and in the same time be surprised at finding that Ralph is saved at the last moment. The mounting horror of the plot, from Simons death onward, predisposes the reader to expect that Ralph will succumb as well. He is rescued by a sudden twist which seems to be as incongruous as the happy endings tacked on to many popular novels and films. Is the ending really happy? The author explains in Fable: By the end, he (Ralph) has come to understand that what stands between him and happiness comes from inside him. He has matured; he no longer expects a fairy-tale conclusion leading to a happy ever after existence. One ironical angle of the last pages is that Ralphs ingenuous prediction, has nearly come true; he has been rescued by a naval officer, even if not by his own father. His pursuers have been rescued as well, and the mere presence of an adult with the authority (and the weapons) of their home country has changed them back into little boys. The sharp sticks in their hands are contrasted with the revolver, the sub-machine gun and the trim cruiser. The boys means of dealing death may be crude, they may have only two murders and one murderous attempt to their credit, but it is merely their young and lack of opportunity, which prevents their spreading havoc on a much larger scale. Just before the end, there is another stroke of dramatic irony, which makes it evident that the reader in not dismissed with the assurance: It came right after all. Ralph has burst into tears, weeping for the human predicament, and suddenly the other little boys began to shake and sob too. They seem to revert to childhood, after having acted out the adults worlds anarchy; however, there is no way back to the status quo, the happy, friendly mood of the first day after their arrival. In The Pyramid, Oliver, the central figure, wishes he could expiate his sins, so that the days of our innocence might return again, knowing full well that this must remain a wish-dream. Finally, the reader does not know to what kind of world they will be taken back. Piggy, a reliable witness, claims he heard the pilot say that the atom bomb has been dropped and done its work in a very efficient manner. There is also a hint at the whole of civilization having been wiped out. The cruiser must have come from a place where at least some of the outward signs of civilization survived. Even if the children arrive
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there, they will not find the earth any more hospitable than the island they leave behind.

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2.2 The dramatic structure of the novel

Fiction can be dramatic because the action carries us swiftly along, as in Emily Brontes Wuthering Heights or in some of Scotts novels. On the other hand, there is fiction with hardly any action in the conventional sense of the word, foe example some of Joyces, Kafkas, and Virginia Woolfs books. A story can be dramatic, although very little seems to happen, if a character is under the impact of other characters or of a new situation. Lord of the Flies is a dramatic novel on both counts. As the reader progresses, he finds the action accelerated to such a degree that he feels almost breathless. Moreover, not a single boy who survives, is what he was at the beginning. The youngsters have changed the island into a barren waste, and their stay on the island has transformed them. The beginning with its abrupt introduction into the setting and into the situation, in which two of the protagonists find themselves, is highly dramatic. We have to gather a great deal of the information as we read on, instead of being given a long-winded explanation, as was the custom of the more conventional 19th century novelists. The first sentence tells us something about Ralph, showing him in unusual surroundings, and makes us eager to find out more. Some of the best-known narratives of our time start with the same shock administered to the reader. Kafka begins Metamorphosis with the statement that Gregor found himself transformed into a huge insect. Brave New World opens with a short paragraph which prepares us for the horrors to come, as it deals with a building called Hatchery and Conditioning Centre. The reader knows that hatchery is normally applied to the breeding of fish or fowls, but conditioning allows him to guess that here creatures of a higher species, probably human beings, are hatched. In 1984, we are told as soon as the novel commences, that the clocks are striking thirteen, and it appears probable that with the tradition of dividing the day into twice twelve hours, many other customs and attitudes have gone by the board. The story of Lord of the Flies is told in a straightforward manner, without such devices as the flashback, which Golding uses in Pincher Martin, Free Fall and The Pyramid. Reminiscences would not have fitted into a novel centered round a group of boys, or indeed a family of prehistoric people, as children and primitive adults live in the present rather than in the past. In fact, the tears which Ralph sheds in memory of his dead friend, of his romantic dream which turned into a nightmare, and the end of innocence, and in which the other boys join, are a sign that

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each has his own fall from grace to mourn, and in one respect they are children no longer. There are novels in which the reader is taken unawares by the authors use of coincidence. Oliver Twist and Dr. Zhivago are constructed with the help of this device, which never fully convinces because it occurs seldom in reality, and because one suspects it provided an easy way out for the writer. In Lord of the Flies, one incident leads to another with an inevitability which is awesome. Obviously a work of literature, which develops the whole of the action out of the interplay of characters, carries more conviction. Perhaps the best example of such a piece of writing is Othello, where everything that happens has a casual connection with the chief characters, even Desdemona dropping the handkerchief. It is easy to understand why Golding avoids lucky or unlucky accidents. He wants to show that man, not fortune, is responsible for what he achieves or suffers, that the only enemy of man is inside him. The climax of the book is Simons martyrdom in chapter9. the process of evil penetrating into paradise is slow, and at the outset almost imperceptible. It begins with Jack refusing the choirs requests to let them shed their stuffy, unsuitable clothing and make themselves comfortable in the shade, instead of standing to attention in the cruel heat. But Ralphs exposing Piggy to the jeers of the crowd, is even more calculatedly cruel, and shows that people who are normally kindly, have the potentiality of evil. The first undisguised manifestation of wickedness is Rogers sadistic game with Henry. He is interrupted by Jack, who neither knows nor cares what Roger has just been doing, but is completely absorbed in what appears to be a public-spirited attempt to provide the meat which the community needs. In reality, both boys are preparing themselves for the parts they have to play: Roger, who intentionally missed Henry, will as intentionally hit Piggy. Jacks camouflage is the first step towards his becoming the all-powerful leader of the barbarians. The first serious blow at democracy is aimed by Jack, when he renounces his place in the assembly and goes off on his own, inviting others to join him. From then on, Jacks party grows steadily, while the low-abiding members of the assembly dwindle away until only Ralph is left. Jack is not particularly scrupulous about his methods to win adherents, such as the kidnapping of Samneric. In Macbeth, Shakespeare manages not only to diversify the numerous murders, which are committed by Macbeth and his emissaries, but to make each successive killing appear worse than the previous one. When he assassinates Duncan, Macbeth at least does it himself, whereas from then on he relies upon hired murderers. The elimination of Duncan
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and Banquo seems to him necessary for his political plans, whilst the killing of Macduffs wife, children and servants is an unmistakable act of revenge, for which Macbeth cannot even plead expediency. In a similar fashion, there is a difference between the lynching of Simon, the death of Piggy, and the manhunt, which nearly ends Ralphs existence. Simon loses his life during an outbreak of mass hysteria; Piggy is killed in cold blood. Finally comes the concerted attack on Ralph, who is probably, meant to be tortured before death. Kinkaid-Weekes and Gregor, Golding, think that Jack wanted to substitute Ralphs head for the sows as an offering to the devil. Even after the climax, the author manages to increase the tension until the swift and sudden dnouement.

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2.3 The island setting

The island in Lord of the Flies is never actually pointed out in the real world. The tropical location has a beach, where Ralph and Piggy emerge from the scar to find the conch. Further inland is the dense jungle, towards the center of which is Simons mat of creepers. That is also where pigs are hunted and the Lord of the Flies is eventually found. The mountain located at the very left is where the boys climb to the summit in order to take in their surroundings. It is also the location of the fire and the dead parachutist. Castle Rock, in other high rising formation found on the opposite end of the island, rises high above the sea. The area is turned into a fortress for Jack and his tribe, and is the location of Piggys death. The island is described as being in the shape of a boat. The bat shape of the island is an ancient symbol of civilization. The water current around the island seems to be flowing backwards, giving the subtle impression that civilization may be going backwards, for the island of its inhabitants. It would be too superficial to conclude that island as settings of adventures stories are popular in English literature because the British have always been sailors and discoverers. Beginning with Robinson Crusoe there was in each instance a very good reason why the tale unfolded on an island. Gregor and Kinkead-Weekes, explain that Golding examines what human nature is really like if we could consider it apart from the mass of social detail(of) our daily livesto create a situation which will reveal in an extremely direct way this real self, and yet keep our sense of credibility, our sense of the day-to-day world, lively and sharp. Defoe and Ballantyne marooned his heroes on deserted islands because it gave him an opportunity to show how civilized man can live, even make himself comfortable, and above all keep his moral standards, under the most primitive conditions. Golding is much nearer to Shakespeare than to Ballatyne, Defoe, and possibly Stevenson. Mans surroundings matter comparatively little; even under alien conditions, Goldings Ralph and Shakespeares Prospero have all the qualities of leadership, except their being too trustful. In The Tempest , Stephano and Trinculo sink below the human level, just like Goldings savages with their orgies and their camouflaged faces.

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2.4 Characters
In the novel Golding displays the two different personalities that mankind possesses, one civilized, the other primitive. Golding uses the setting, characters, and symbolism in Lord of the Flies to give the reader a detailed description of these two faces of man. The storys setting is essential for the evolution of both sides of man. When an airplane carrying a bunch of schoolboys crashes on an island, only the children survive. The island the children find themselves on is roughly boatshaped. It is ironic that the children are stuck on an island shaped like the thing that could save them. Despite this irony, they are trapped. They are surrounded by ocean and no one knows where they are. The boys, isolated from society, must now create their own. The storys characters serve as archetypes that display the struggle between mans quest for civilization and his urges to become primitive. The most important characters in the story are Ralph, Piggy, Simon, and Jack. Roger, Sam and Eric, although not as important as the others, also serve to add color to the story and lend to its progression towards savagery. Ralph is the storys protagonist. Ralph is twelve years old with blond hair, and is the most charismatic of the group. He is described as being built like a boxer, and is initially chosen as leader due to his many positive qualities. He maintains a conflict with Jack throughout the entire novel, attempting to keep order whereas Jack isnt concerned with it. Ralph and Piggy together represent the struggle for order and democracy. He is a natural leader because of his superior height, strength, and good looks. He is also the democratic man, the keeper of the civilized ways. He was chosen chief by a vote from his peers and strives to maintain order, to rule through persuasion, with the consent of the governed. Ralph is the very man, a combination of reason and instinct and starts to regress to a primitive state. This is shown near the end of the story when he has trouble reasoning things through. Then, at the moment of greatest passion and conviction, that curtain flapped in his head and he forgot what he had been driving at. Ralphs regression continues until he is no more than an animal, who uses its most basic instincts to escape the fire, which threatens to burn the island down and the rest of the tribe who want to hunt him down. He shot forward, burst the ticket, was in the open, screaming, snarling, bloody. Piggy is a fat, short, overweight boy, nearly blind, and asthmatic. He also embodies reason and intelligence. Piggy represents rationality, logic, science, and the ways of thinking that a civilized society depends
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on. He insists on collecting the names of all the stranded children, using the conch to call assemblies, and having meetings. Piggy is the brain behind Ralphs leadership. Piggy is the first one who suggests using the conch Ralph found to assemble the others. He is the one who brings Ralph back to the topic and hand near the end of the novel when Ralphs reasoning starts to deteriorate under the constant pressure of trying to remain civilized. He assumes that civilized society is all powerful because it seems more reasonable for people to co-exist with rules and mutual respect, rather than obedience and terror. Simon is younger than the two boys above, but older than the other littluns. He is very good and pure, and has the most positive outlook. He insists multiple times that they will get rescued, even when Ralph is strangly doubting the possibility. Simon is the Christ figure of the book and the voice of revelation. He consistently reveals a kindness that no one else seems to posses whether it be through his comforting of Ralph, offering food to Piggy, or getting fruits for the younger children. He is the most self-conscious of the boys, and prefers to withdraw into solitude for lonely mediations. He is the first to suggest that there is no beast, that, maybe its only us. Simon seeks to confront his fears and comes to accept the evil that exists both in him and in everyone. He does this by speaking to a pig head that was put on a stick and climbing the mountain to find that the beast is really just a dead pilot. Simon is mistaken for the beast when he comes back to explain to the rest of the children what he had found and is ironically killed by those he wished to save. Jack is about Ralphs age, with a skinnier build and red hair. His freckled face is described as being ugly without silliness. From the very beginning he seems to harbor emotions of anger and savagery. Jack is the novels antagonist. He is the opposite of Ralph, distinguished by his ugliness and red hair. He loses both elections when voting on who will become the leader of the group and is obsessed with power. This is why he is so intent on hunting, it is a way of imposing his will upon a living thing. Jacks rise to power begins when the younger childrens fear starts to distort their surroundings: twigs become creepers, shadows become demons. Jack uses this fear to become the younger childrens protector. If they do what he says, the beast cannot get them. Jack soon decides to form his own society. It becomes based on this kind of ceremonial obedience to himself and is shown by those sacrifices by which the tribe creates its beast, thereby sanctifying the fear and irrationality that govern the childrens actions. Roger is a small boy with dirty and shaggy black hair; he represents pure evil and wrongness, even more than Jack. He is Jacks
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henchman. He has a sadistic soul and delights in tormenting others. An example of this is when he throws stones at a younger child when nobody is watching. As the childrens society degrades, Roger slowly loses the inhibitions that society has imposed upon him. Where once he was afraid to hit a child with a stone when no one was around, he soon becomes a deadly enforcer. He kills Piggy by pushing a bolder on him while in plain sight of everyone and also tortures Sam and Eric until they tell him where Ralph is hiding. Roger gladly enacts the evil deeds that help the story progress in its downward spiral towards savagery. Sam and Eric are identical twins in this novel. In the beginning, they are two separate beings, but as times goes on they merge into one being, Samneric. They represent the average man of good who will stick to his principles for as long as possible, but will eventually join the majority when it becomes too hard to stand alone on his own ground. This is shown by their fierce loyalty to Ralph, even when almost all of the other kids have abandoned Ralphs group for Jacks tribe. Only after being tortured do they agree to become part of the Jacks tribe. In anthropological terms, the boys society could be seen to mirror the societies of prehistoric man; theirs seems a genuine primitive culture with its own gods, demons, myths, rituals, taboos. Then again, viewed from the position developed by Hannah Arendts The Banality of the Evil, Lord of the Flies can show how intelligence (Piggy) and common sense (Ralph) will always be overthrown in society by sadism (Roger) and the lure of totalitarianism (Jack). One question that has been asked for so many times is why did Golding choose children as characters. Well, in a fable, a certain degree of simplification is usually necessary in order to convince the reader that the conclusions have a general application. Anatole France wrote a fable enacted by birds, Orwell chose farmyard animals, and Huxley chose people of a distant future who are hatched from bottles and regard mother as a dirty word. One reason for Goldings choice was naturally his own experience. He explains in Fable, At this time I was teaching them I have lived for many years with small boys. V.S.Pritchett , who was a sensitive critic of Goldings books, find a close similarity between Lord of the Flies and Richard Hughess High Wind in Jamaica, a best-seller of 1929. Hughess novel tells of a group of 19th century children who find themselves on a pirates ship where they are treated with unusual kindness. One of the youngsters commits a murder, which in no way burdens her conscience. When the pirates are captured and put on trial, it is the childrens evidence who leads to the execution of all the accused. Pritchett quite rightly sums up Hughess

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attitude: Children are not small, fanciful adults, but are a cut-off, savage race. This is not what Golding wants to impress upon us. He does not show the gulf between children and adults which is wide open in High Wind in Jamaica. To him the boys are convenient representatives of the human race. Man is a fallen being I looked round me for some convenient form in which this thesis might be worked out, and found it in the play of children. Children are physically nimble and mentally alert; they are far more adaptable than adults, hence can start from scratch once they land on the island, instead of having to overcome regrets, remorse, indignation and sheer mental rigidity, as would have been the case with adults. This resilience of childhood is evident where Ralph amuses himself by playing he is a fighter plane, and machine-gunning Piggy, a short while after their own plane has been shot down, and the pilot has perished with an unspecified number of children. 18th century sentimentality, as e.g. expressed in some childrens portraits by Reynolds and others, as well as a biased interpretation of certain New Testament passages, e.g. Matthew ch. 18, 2-3, were responsible for the superficial view of childhood as a state of innocence. Golding does not exempt children from his verdict on all humanity; their capacity for evil is potentially as great as their elders. In pointing out that no age group has a right to exult over another, he shows metaphorically what he says in Fable without the use of images: I know why the thing rose in Germany. I know it could happen in any country. It could happen here.

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Chapter III

In real life, common objects that are used everyday are often taken for granted and even unusual sights, as well as ideas, are often unrecognized. However, this is seldom the case with similar objects and ideas that literary characters encounter. Many authors use seemingly ordinary, trivial objects in addition to unique elements to symbolize ideas or concepts that help to reveal the theme of their works. In William Goldings Lord of the Flies, the boys who are stranded on the island without supervision come in contact with many such elements. Through the use of symbols such as the beast, the pigs head, and even Piggys specs, Golding demonstrates that humans, when liberated from societys rules and taboos, allow their natural capacity for evil to dominate their existence. One of the most important and most obvious symbols in Lord of the Flies is the object that gives the novel its name, the pigs head. This is a faithfull translation of the Hebrew term Baalzevuv, in Greek Beelzebub. Its literal meaning is lord of the insects, a term used to designate one of the gods of the Philistines (fierce enemies of the Jews). In the New Testament the term represents the principal devil. Goldings conception of the term is somewhat different; the lord of the flies as symbolizing all the destructive and demoralizing forces threatening our human civilization. Goldings description of the slaughtered animals head on a spear is very graphic and even frightening. The pigs head is depicted as dim-eyed, grinning faintly, blood blackening between the teeth, and the obscene thing is covered with a black blob of flies that tickled under his nostrils. As a result of this detailed, striking image, the reader becomes aware of the great evil and darkness represented by the Lord of the Flies, and when Simon begins to converse with the seemingly inanimate, devil-like object, the source of that wickedness is revealed. Even though the conversation may be entirely a hallucination, Simon learns that the beast, which has long since frightened the other boys on the island, is not an external force. In fact, the head of the slain pig tells him, Fancy thinking the beast was something you could hunt and kill! You knew, didnt you? Im part of

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you?. That is to say, the evil, epitomized by the pigs head, that is causing the boys island society to decline is that which is inherently present within man. At the end of this scene, the immense evil represented by this powerful symbol can once again be seen as Simon faints after looking into the wide mouth of the pig and seeing blackness within, a blackness that spread. Another of the most important symbol used to present the theme of the novel is the beast. In the imagination of the boys, the beast is tangible source of evil on the island. However, in reality, it represents the evil naturally presented within everyone, which is causing life on the island to deteriorate. Simon begins to realize this even before his encounter with the Lord of the Flies, and during one argument over the existence of a beast, he attempts to share his insight with the others. Timidly, Simon tells them, Maybe, maybe there is not beast. What I mean is maybe its only us. In response to Simons statement, the other boys, who had once conducted their meetings with some sense of order, immediately begin to argue more fiercely. The crowd gives a wild whoop when Jack rebukes Ralph, saying Bollocks to the rules! Were strong we hunt! If theres a beast, well hunt it down! Well close in and beat and beat and beat!. Clearly, the boys fear of the beast and their ironic desire to kill it shows that the hold which societys rules once had over them had been loosened during the time they have spent without supervision on the island. The evil within the boys has more effect on their existence as they spend more time on the island, isolated from the rest of society, and this decline is portrayed by Piggys specs. Throughout the novel, Piggy represents the civilization and the rules from which the boys have been separated, and interestingly, as Piggy loses his ability to see, so do the other boys lose their vision of that civilization. When the story begins, Piggy can see clearly with both lenses, of his spectacles intact, and the boys are still fairly civilized. For example, at one of their first meetings, the boys decide that they cant have everybody talking at once and that they have to have hands up like at school. However, after some time passes, the hunters become more concerned with slaughtering a pig than with being rescued and returning to civilization. When they return from a successful hunt in the jungle chanting Kill the pig. Cut her throat. Spill her blood, Ralph and Piggy attempt to explain to the hunters that having meat for their meals is not as important as keeping the signal fire burning. In an ensuing scuffle, Jack knocks Piggy specs from his face, smashing one of the lenses against the mountain rocks and greatly impairing his vision. Finally, after jack forms his own tribe of savages, he and two of his followers ambush Ralph, Piggy, and Samneric, and in the midst of a vicious snarling in the mouth of the shelter and the plunge and thump of living things, Piggys specs are stolen, leaving him virtually blind.
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Meanwhile, Jack returns to Castle Rock, trotting steadily, exulting in his achievement, as he has practically abandoned all ties to civilized life. The storys setting presents two more symbols that assist in showing the decline of civility on the island. A majority of the island is taken up by the jungle, which is used by many authors as an archetype to represent death and decay. In fact, since the jungle is the lair of the beast, it, too, symbolizes the darkness naturally presented within humans that is capable of ruling their lives. This evil eventually spreads to almost every boy on the island, just as in the jungle, darkness poured out, submerging the ways between the trees till they were dim and strange as the bottom of the sea. At one end of the island, where the plane carrying the boys most likely crashed, there is a long scar smashed into the jungle. While Golding does not include a large amount of description about the scar, the image of broken trunks with jagged edges is sufficient to give the reader an idea of the destruction caused to the island. Symbolically, this scar represents the destruction that man is naturally capable of causing and can be related to the harm the boys ultimately cause to one another, including the death of three boys, before they are rescued. The degeneration of the boys way of life is also very evident through the symbolic masks. When concealed by masks of clay paint, the hunters, especially Jack, seem to have new personalities as they forget taboos of society that once restrained them from giving in to their natural urges. For example, when Jack first paints his face to his satisfaction, he suddenly becomes a new, savage person. He began to dance and his laughter became a bloodthirsty snarling. He capered toward Bill, and the mask was a thing of its own, behind which Jack hid, liberated from shame and self-consciousness. Certainly, Jack would not have acted in such a way if he had been in his home society, but behind the mask of paint, Jack feels free to act like a savage. It is also noteworthy, that the first mask that Jack creates is red, white and black. These colors archetypically symbolize violence, terror, and evil, respectively, and in this novel, Golding uses these colors to illustrate those characteristics that are inherently present in humans. The feeling of liberation that results from wearing the masks allows many of the boys to participate in the barbaric, inhumane pig hunts. Those hunts can be interpreted as symbolizing the boys primal urges or even anarchy. In fact, many of the boys become so engulfed in their quest for the blood of a pig that they seem to forget about their hopes of returning to civilization and neglect to keep the signal fire burning. When Ralph tries to explain how important the signal fire is, Jack and the other hunters are still occupied with thoughts of the successful, gruesome hunt in which they just participated. There was lashings of blood, said Jack, laughing and shuddering, you should have
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seen it!. Also during a later celebration over another successful hunt, the boys become carried away while reenacting the slaughter. However, the boys have become so much like savages that they are unable to control themselves, and for a moment, they mistake Simon for the beast. The sticks fell and the mouth of the circle crunched and screamed. The beast was on its knees in the center, its arm folded over its face. As a result of their uncontrolled urges, the boys soon kill one of their own. Finally, one of the most memorable symbols, that is used to show the violence and darkness, which comes to rule life on the island, is the rock, which Roger releases to kill Piggy. As an archetype in literature, a rock can symbolize strength and power, and since this rock is red, it also represents violence. It is Roger who feels strong and powerful as he stands on the ledge above Piggy. High overhead, Roger, with a sense of delirium abandonment, leaned all his weight on the lever. When the rock lands below, it not only strikes Piggy, but it also shatters the conch shell. Up to that point, Piggy and that conch had been two of the new representations of civilization and common sense on the island. However, when the rock causes both of these to cease to exist, all order on the island is brought to an end, and the boys, who express no regrets over the death of Piggy, have fully become savages. In conclusion, Lord of the Flies is a story that portrays the dark, deteriorating life that results from mankinds inherent capacity for evil, which is allowed to control humans when they are freed from the rules of society. Throughout thes novel, Golding uses many different objects as symbols to illustrate this theme. Some of those objects would be insignificant in real life and would most likely be taken for granted. However, in Lord of the Flies , each of the previously mentioned symbols is vital to the storys theme.

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Symbolism in Lord of the Flies OBJECT/CHARACTER

Piggy(and glasses)

REPRESENTS
Clear sightedness, intelligence. Their state represents the status of social order and civilization. The glasses serve as a marker for their societys progression into darkness. Democracy, free speech and order. Pure Goodness, Christ Figure Evil, satan. Savagery, anarchy. A microcosm representing the world. Mans destruction, destructive forces. The evil residing within everyone, the dark side of human nature. The Devil, great danger or evil, anarchic, amoral, driving force.

Ralph, the conch Simon Roger Jack The island The scar The beast Lord of the Flies

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Chapter IV

It has been said: We die ourselves every time we kill in others something that deserved to live. Mans relationship with death from the hour of his birth and his inherent concern for himself above others are themes often used in literary works to depict mankinds mental, spiritual, and social weaknesses. Death is a prominent motif in William Goldings Lord of the Flies and specific events throughout the novel are important in the development of the story and in expressing the tragedy that ultimately results from manifestations of evil in mankind. The demises of the mulberry-marked boy, the sow, Simon, Piggy, and the attempted murder of Ralph are among the most important events used by Golding as catalysts in the expansion of the plot. The death of the mulberry-marked boy is the first of several events that ultimately leads to the destruction of the society in the novel. He is the first of the boys to introduce the beast and is also the first to die. His death results from irresponsible actions on the part of the other boys and foreshadows evil to come. The boys untimely end serves as a reminder of guilt for Ralph, who does not even notice that the child is missing until Piggy notifies everyone. Ralph also feels remorse because of his earlier ridicule and humiliation of the boy. The mulberry-marked boys demise signifies a weakening of the newly formed societal structure on the island and predicts further instability. The sows death is symbolic in several ways. First of all, it demonstrates Rogers true self; he is an evil, uncompassionate individual who simply enjoys inflicting pain in others. The pigs death also indicates a further weakening of the structure of the civilization on the island. Meat is not necessary for the boys survival, yet Jack and his hunters become obsessed with killing pigs. They enjoy having the power of life and death over another living creature and sadistically torture the sow while they slaughter her. This pleasure in malevolence further epitomizes Goldings idea that evil exists in everyone. The sow symbolizes motherhood and nurturing, and the boys murder of her signifies their acquisition of savage and barbaric characteristics and their lessening concern for life. The boys insufficient exposure to society prevents adequate comprehension of the power of death; it simply comes naturally to them.

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Jack is the primary symbol of the longing for power. He seeks, charitable in his happiness. His mind is crowded with memories; memories of the knowledge that comes to them when they close in on the struggling pig, knowledge that they have outwitted a living thing, imposed their will upon it, taken away its life like a long, satisfying drink. Jacks feelings toward the kill as satisfying and enjoyable facilitate the evolution of plot and theme in the novel. Again, evil gradually appears. Simon is the silent, solid listener and the symbol of hope in the boys island society. He recognizes the decline that is occurring with increasing velocity in the social structure and in the peaceful beauty of the island. Simon is the one of the few on the island with the capability to understand the danger in such degeneration. The decline of Jack and the choirboys from angels to torturing hunters is similar to the fall of Lucifer; because Simon, one of Jacks original choirboys, does not fall with them, he remains an angel in a civilization of sinners. His death, almost martyr-like, signifies a tremendous deterioration of humanity and the disappearance of hope for the boys. Piggys death illustrates the complete collapse of human society on the island. He is a scholar, secretly responsible for everyones survival on the island and he counsels Ralph in all matters. When the boys kill Piggy, they basically destroy their only hope for extended survival on the island. His death further typifies the destruction of social order and the increasing influence of evil. Roger kills Piggy purely for entertainment, once again illustrating wickedness in humanity. The attempted murder of Ralph, a direct result of the complete collapse in societal structure on the island, exemplifies the loss of reasoning and rational thinking. The fact that the boys hunt him with the intention to kill him and place his head on a stake is the final illustration of the evil that has overcome the island like a cloud of volcanic ash, eating away at humanity like acid. William Golding further enhances his theme by his portrayal of death and the crumbling structure of civilization on the island. The correlation between malevolence and complete social collapse is evident in the paired symbolic and literal uses of death and evil in the boys isolated community; indeed, each of the deaths in the novel is instrumental in the authors depiction of inborn evil and effectively acts as a catalyst in the chain of events culminating in the complete destruction of the society on the island.

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William Goldings lord of the Flies, the Robinson Crusoe of our time, enjoys like the earlier island story of shipwreck and survival a pre-eminent place in cultural lore. Both cultural document and modern classic, the novel has provoked enormous critical attention at the same time as it has prompted great general interest, and has sold millions of copies. An obdurate and uncompromising fable about how British boys will be beasts if the constraints of authority are with drawn from their closed world, Lord of the Flies has proved to be a literary and popular success known and discussed beyond the confines of the academy. The novel is spare, deliberate in its intentions; and certainly Golding himself has little hesitation in referring to it as a fable. Lord of the Flies is economical, so that the plane crash is not only a plausible device to isolate the boys, but is also essential as a commentary on the world outside the island. The novel is an examination not of the idiosyncratic nature of small boys, but of the essential nature of humanity itself, the heart of darkness. The island becomes a microcosm of the adult world, which is also destroying itself. The grim account of propitiation and murder on the island, Golding suggests, is re-enacted in the greater world continuously. The beast cant be found because it isnt a thing but it lives inside all of us. We all have a little of the Lord of the Flies. Golding uses the novel to teach us that the most dangerous enemy is not the evil found without, but the evil found within each of us.

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Bibliography:
- Kirkpatrick, D.L, Relerence Guide to English Literature, Second Edition, Volume 3, St. James Press, Chicago and London, 1991. - Layman, Clark, Concise Dictionary of British Literary Biography Contemporary Writers, Volume 8, Gale Research Inc., Detroit, London, 1991. - John Pozienski, Irmgard Richter, Lord of the Flies by William Golding Verlag Morits Diesterweg Meusprachliche Bibliothek, Frankfurt-Main-Berlin-Mnchen. - Susanne Turk, An Interpretation of William Goldings Lord of the Flies, Verlag Morits Diesterweg Meusprachliche Bibliothek, Frankfurt-Main-Berlin-Mnchen.

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