Double Bacon Cheeseburger with Extra Mayo, Hold The Flies William Golding’s allegorical novel The Lord of The Flies displays the bleak reality of society’s inner workings in the form of a group of posh schoolboys who are stranded on a deserted island after their plane is shot down, stripped away from any contact with the outside world. One of the most overlooked characters in an unlikely bunch of boys is twelve-year-old Piggy, an intellectual boy who, though he is one of the oldest in the group, is scorned and mocked for his chubby build and needy nature. As the boys live out a life isolated from responsibility, Golding depicts Piggy as the brilliant, yet mistreated, side of civilization, and through his actions to restore order and civility, Piggy symbolizes the futility of intelligence in a corrupt …show more content…
Alongside the beach, Piggy discovers a beautiful conch shell, “covered with a delicate, embossed pattern” (16). Being ever resourceful, Piggy tells Ralph to blow into the conch to alert any surviving boys on the island, which heavily symbolizes the conch as an emblem of communication and diplomacy, bringing the boys together under the same ideals. Gathering on “a great platform of pink granite” (12), the young boys commune together and decide to instill a set of rules, including an agreement to only allow the person holding the conch to speak during meetings. The boys also choose Ralph to be chief, solely off of the power he exudes with the conch in his grasp. Golding portrays a heavy sense of irony in Piggy’s discovery of the conch, as though much of the planning and Ralph’s new role as chief is because of Piggy. The conch’s symbolism of order and balance represents all that Piggy stands for, yet paradoxically, he is rarely able to bring about change in the