Juxtaposition In Lord Of The Flies

In Lord of the Flies, William Golding tells the story of a group of once-innocent schoolboys who flee their homes during a world war. However, the plane they traveled in crashed on a deserted island far from any civilization on the way to safety. Trapped with no adults or authority figures, the boys have to survive on their own with little or no guidance. As the boys stay on the island and try to find outside help, their humanity shifts into savagery. In William Golding’s Lord of the Flies, he shares his belief that without the structure of society, humans are savage by a conch shell symbolizing structure and humanity on the island, as well as using juxtaposition to contrast those who represent humanity and savagery.

Throughout the novel,

Golding shows the juxtaposition between these in Simon representing humanity, goodness, and light and the Lord of the Flies representing savagery, evil, and darkness. Simon, throughout the novel, helped others as much as he could, even at the expense of himself. One time when the littluns were hungry and searching for food, “Simon found for them the fruit they could not reach” (50). Rather than being selfish, like many of those in Jack’s tribe who took from others and did not share, Simon shared the food that he could have kept for himself with those who could not get it themselves. In Jack’s tribe at the end of one of their hunts, they put a stick in the head of a pig and stuck it up out of the ground. This behavior and the pig’s head, or Lord of the Flies, represents a spreading evil and darkness on the island between the boys. With Simon often described as light, the Lord of the Flies is directly contrasting him when Simon saw him as “a blackness that spread” (133). When Ralph was anxious about not being able to make it off the island, Simon reassured him that everything was going to be alright and that “[He’ll] get back to where [he came] from” (103). Simon knew Ralph had the best intentions for the island and the boys, so he supported him to make him feel better. Although this was a comforting thing for Simon to say to Ralph, by only saying “you” will be rescued instead of “we” suggests that Simon would not make it off of the island alive. Later, this is confirmed when the Lord of the Flies speaks to him in the forest, telling him he “[shouldn’t] try to escape” (136) because he knows “perfectly well” (136) that he will not. As the island was divided over whether or not the beast was real, Simon believed it was not and wanted to help the others come together once again by proving that the beast they feared was only inside