Fire In Lord Of The Flies

On the verge of the next World War, a plane full of Boys of different ages crashes on a deserted Island. In the beginning they celebrated because they had freedom. They were far away from civilization and they could do anything that they wanted. In the novel "Lord of the flies" by William Golding, he uses symbols throughout the novel to make the reader understand his purpose on human nature which is that once you are away from a civilized society you become primal and savagery takes a toll on you. The conch, the signal fire, and the beast are three symbols used throughout the novel to show this.

The conch is one symbol that first kept the Boys in order but then Jack persuaded them that it didn't matter so they lost interest in it. Ralph and

The Boys focus on maintaining the fire but Jack told them that they were never going to get rescued and they lost the feeling that they had about the fire in the beginning of the novel. The Boys were building the fire and Ralph was telling them what to do and they finally got it. "Life became a race with the fire and the boys scattered through the upper forest. To keep a clean flag of flame flying on the mountain was the immediate end and no one looked further" (41). The signal fire is a symbol of hope, rescue, and civilization throughout the novel. The boys' focus on maintaining the signal fire to show their initial affinity for civility. "The fire is the most important thing on the island. How can we ever be rescued except by luck, if we don’t keep a fire going? Is a fire too much for us to make?...Look at us! How many are we? And yet we can’t keep a fire going to make smoke. Don’t you understand? Can’t you see we ought to—ought to die before we let the fire out?" (31). Ralph is asking the boys to focus on the importance of having a signal fire, but they do not share the same feelings. The inability to maintain a signal fire compares with the boys' inability to create a civil society on the island. “There’s another thing. We can help them to find us. If a ship comes near the island they may not notice us. So we must make smoke on top of the mountain. We must make a fire”(38). The fire is a sign of hope for the boys, as they

"We'll make sure when we go hunting. Ralph was annoyed and, for the moment, defeated. He felt himself facing something ungraspable. The eyes that looked so intently at him were without humor."(37) The beast is not real is just the fear of the Boys. They will go hunting for their fear and do stuff uncivilized. "What I mean is... Maybe it's only us."(89). Simon became inarticulate in his efforts to express mankind's essential illness and show that it's just their fear that they have and show that they are willing to do things uncivilized just to catch their fear. "The world, that understandable world and lawful world, was slipping away. Once there was this and that; and now-and the ship had gone."(91). The fear that the Boys have show that there is something called the Beast which is not real and with the beast they are trying to catch it and they are willing to do many stuff uncivilized like killing and they had too much focus on the beast instead of the ship and the ship passed and didn't get