Lord of the Flies is a book written by William Golding that has many symbolic features hidden within itself. It starts with a plane crashing into an island somewhere in the Pacific Ocean. The book goes through many twists and turns, where the characters drift apart. Lord of the Flies ends with the characters of the book getting rescued while the rest of the island is burning down. Lord of the Flies includes symbols by showing them throughout the novel, whether they´re important or not. These symbols work together to create many substories within the original story. When all the symbols join together, we see another side of all the characters and the story. The first character we’re introduced to is Ralph. Ralph is the leader of the children trapped on the island. He represents democracy and what is right. Ralph’s symbol is the conch shell. The conch …show more content…
This symbol represents leadership, communication, media, law, authority, and participation. The shell represents communication because the children pass it around to show who gets to speak and when. On page 39 William Golding wrote, “We’ll have to have ‘Hands Up’ like at school…’” (Golding, 39). He wrote on the same page, “Then I’ll give him the conch…’” (Golding, 39). These two quotes were regarding their rule on communication. The first quote regards the fact that they need to use rules from their previous life so they know who wants to address the group and who is just talking because they want to. The first quote not only shows the communication part of the conch, it also represents law and authority. The second quote on page 39 shows the leadership aspect of the conch. It shows this through the one person getting to decide who is to talk next. The shell represents democracy because it’s part of their meetings and it’s also the reason why Ralph got chosen as leader. On page 23, the children vote for Ralph. “‘Him