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LORD OF THE FLIES I am doing my Limited Literary Analysis of the novel Lord of the Flies, by William Golding, on the Lord of the Flies. I chose to write this paper on the Lord of the Flies because it is one of the main objects of symbolism in the book. In some way it represents many of the other objects of symbolism in the book. And if you go deep enough it seems that the Lord of the Flies controls the whole island.
The Lord of the Flies is meant to symbolize evil, in the boys and all humanity, and the devil. The author does a very good job of showing how the Lord of the Flies represents this. The Lord of the Flies is what causes the evil in the boys, or so it seems from what is said during the Lord of the Flies one actual appearance in the book (pages 143 and 144). During this appearance the Lord of the Flies is given shape and voice by Simon s mind. This hallucination is caused by Simon s epilepsy, because he is about to slip into a seizure while the conversation between the Lord of the Flies and Simon is going on. The Lord of the Flies said that if he told the other boys the truth we shall do you (pg. 144).
To me the Lord of the flies saying we means that he and the other boys will be the ones to kill Simon, but the Lord of the Flies is not an actual being, so he must represent something in the boys. The only thing that he could represent in the boys that would give him an actual part in the killing of Simon is the evil that has begun to overtake the boys. The Lord of the Flies is also what many of the other objects of symbolism really are. The Lord of the Flies comes right out and states that he is the Beast.
This makes a lot of sense because all the beast was was the evil in the boys and their fear of the evil in each other, and possibly themselves too. It s quite ironic how many of the things that the Lord of the Flies represents tie in with each other. The Lord of the Flies is the beast, which is really just the evil in the boys. It was the evil in the boys that left the pigs head on the stick as a sacrifice to appease the beast, which is just the evil in themselves. So the boys, in leaving the pigs head on the stick, are unknowingly making sacrifices to themselves. If you look deep enough into the story, and think of how the Lord of the Flies represents different things, you can begin to see that the Lord of the Flies represents everything on the island, except the Conch.
If you do this the book is no longer about the struggle of a small group of boys to survive on their own. It becomes a book about the break down of society and order, a book showing the evil that can lie unseen in the human heart and mind. As the book progress s the Lord of the Flies pretty much gains control of all the boys. They are so engulfed in the evil that they no longer care about each other as human beings.
Even Ralph, after the Conch was destroyed, began to become engulfed in evil. He was thinking as a savage would while he was being chased by Jack s tribe. At one point in the book he wishes he could do away with Jack. When the boy s in Jack s tribe find he s in the thicket he stabs one of them with his spear, like a savage. So once the Lord of the Flies, or the evil, had begun to gain control of all the boys left living it pretty much controlled the island.
Because it controls the island s only inhabitant s it must control the island, because the inhabitant s of the island are the only one s that can make changes on the island. Changes that include changing the population of the island. So if the island is a microcosm of the world that means that if given the chance evil will overtake all but those who are protected by order, society, and democracy, like the boy s were until they turned away from the conch and finally destroyed it. The choice of the title is also significant in showing the importance of the Lord of the Flies. Since the book is named after the Lord of the Flies that suggests to me that the book is about the Lord of the Flies and how it can gain control of people so easily.
If the book was meant to be about the boys and their struggle it would have some other title. By naming the book after the Lord of the Flies the author came right out and stated that the book is not about the boys at all, they are just narraraters that move the story along, and help to show what the Lord of the Flies is. So the Lord of the Flies is so symbolic not to create a story but to show the author s ideas of what people are like. I feel that the author did a superb job of showing his purpose of explaining the importance of the Lord of the Flies, but not completely giving away the purpose. He explained just enough to leave it open enough for you to be able to sit and think of what it all really means and what it all is really about. William Golding's use of symbolism is what makes this possible.
By disguising the Lord of the flies as so many other objects on the island he creates a sense of everything being tied together by some evil force, and since the island is a microcosm of our world, that the boys struggle against that evil is humanities struggle against that evil. 32 a
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