Allegories In Lord Of The Flies Essay

In the novel Lord of the Flies written by William Golding has many allegories, but the most prominent allegory is the Freudian/Psychological allegory. In this novel there are british school boys who get their plane shot down and are stranded on an island that is described as “paradise”. The novel goes on about what they do and their spiral into madness. This novel is clearly a psychological allegory in which Golding uses characters that are going crazy and psychological symbols to tell a universal story that goes beyond just british school boys stranded on an island.
In the novel, we are introduced to a character named Jack, who is described as having blue eyes, red hair and ugly. Jack is obsessed with hunting from the day they get to the

Next time there would be no mercy. He looked around fiercely daring any of them to contradict” (31 Golding). In this part of the novel after attempting to kill the pig he is frustrated he didn’t; doing this he is letting his Id take over more of his personality. However he still does have his ego because he did not kill the pig he attempted to. “ Jack, his face smeared with clays, reached the top first and hailed Ralph excitedly with a lifted spear. We've killed a pig we stole upon them and we got in a circle”(69 Golding). Again we can see Jack's Id taking over more of his personality. He is explaining excitedly to Ralph how he brutally killed the pig. Killing the pig was a symbol

Ralph is not like Jack; he was voted leader of the tribe which lasted a while, and he is described as tall, strong and “attractive”. Ralph isn't entirely good just as Jack is not entirely evil. “Ralph flung back his hair. One arm pointed to the empty horizon. His voice was loud and savage and struck them into silence”(70 Golding). This shows that Ralph is not entirely good and does give into his Id sometimes. “On a third level Ralph is every man or every child and his body becomes the battleground where reason and instinct struggle even to assert itself”. This article written by Claire Rosenfeild says that ralph is going threw the affects of Id trying to take over because as i have previously stated the Id needs validation to assert itself. So ralph isnt entirely good but he is not bad either. Golding did this on purpose aswell to give the readers a character they can relate to because most of mankind is not good or bad people are a little bit of both. Golding was trying to show us what would happen if we would give into are Id as a society