In the book, the constant darkness is a symbolic feature of the island that stands for fear. “At last the way to the top looked like a scramble over pink rock, with no more plunging through darkness.” (48) The quote shows that the boys are afraid of the dark and yearn to get away from it, trying their hardest to stay together and where they can keep an eye on one another. Although darkness is seen as fear and terror, it is also seen as the birthplace of the “beast”.
The novel Lord of the Flies, by William Golding is about a plane that crashes on a deserted island, whilst transporting a group of young boys. The group of boys were the only survivors. Without any adult supervision the survivors had to govern themselves, and the results were disastrous. The eldest being about 12, and the youngest being about 6, they slowly decline from their known civilized ways, into ones that are savage and cruel. The fate of Piggy’s glasses illustrates this decline as a physical, as well as symbolical representation.
Simon use to go to the forest glade in chapter 3 because it was a paradise of peace and calmness but when Simon returned to his haven the peace was destroyed. There was the bloody sow’s head impaled upon a stake in the middle of the clearing. The bloody offering to the beast has disrupted the paradise that existed before—a powerful symbol of innate human evil disrupting childhood innocence. On page 181 Piggy was murdered by a boulder Roger pushed. Roger in chapter twelve is so different from the innocent boy he once was.
This shows the human nature of children and men when they are away from society and order for a long time. If they do not get what they want, then they will drive themselves crazy trying to fight and in turn, become savages, who are focused on killing and hunting. They are blinded by their anger and illusions that they forget about the real point, which is trying to escape from the island and their new goal is to kill each other off so they alone can be the chief of the island, but eventually all the boys will have to end up dying from natural causes or battles if they are not saved by a ship. Their morals are ruined and this leads to further chaos on the island. Once the chaos starts to happen on the island, Ralph also starts to rethink his idea of being chief.
1. The fall of man on the uninhabited, peaceful, and pure island represents how man is inevitably entropic and anthropocentric. Man is centered on humankind being the most important element of existence which is a threat to the surrounding nature. Jack and his team symbolize the arrogance of man and "mankind 's essential illness," which is the evil inside of us. Hence the creation of anarchy where the boys have the temptation to conquer everything.
The tribe including Piggy, Ralph, and Samneric continue to beat Simon until he dies and is dragged out to sea. The tribe knows that it’s Simon after some time, but they continue to scratch and claw at him. “There were no words, and no movements…”, this savagery is past the point of human. It can only be described as primitive, where the boys further themselves from civilization. The pure savagery in the boys comes out and despite Simon’s constant screams of pain and terror, they continue clawing at Simon, claiming that it is the beast.
The Lord Of The Flies by William Golding is a book about a plane full of boys crashing on an island. The boys are by themselves no adults so they have to survive on their own and establish their own government. Piggy is one of the first characters we meet as a boy with poor eyesight, a weight problem and asthma so the readers already like him even if no one else likes him. Piggy is the closest thing the boys have to an adult on the island. Throughout the story Piggy embraces the character traits of being intellectually intelligent, Mature and loyal.
The character, Simon was like a stronghold for the boys, he was the one who discovers that the beast, rather than a physical object, was themselves, “maybe it’s only us” (…). However, this was not what the boys wanted to hear. Like Jesus, Simon who wanted to save the boys and tried on multiple occasions, was killed for trying to save mankind, or in this case all the boys on the island. Upon his death, Golding depicts Simon death as,
J.I. Packer, a Christian theologian, once stated, “Wisdom is the power to see and the inclination to choose the best and highest goal, together with the surest means of attaining it.” In the novel, Lord of the Flies, written by William Golding, a group of English boys are stranded on a tropical island during the time of war. They discover that the island is inhabited and attempt to create their own civilization while waiting for rescue. However, as time passes by, things begin to get out of control and the boy’s own inner savagery quickly consumes them.
William Golding’s fictional, British novel, Lord of the Flies, presents a character that serves a two-part function as a “scapegoat” and a certain commentary on life. During WWII, a group of British boys are being evacuated via plane when they crash and are stranded on an island without adults. As time progresses, the innate evilness of human nature begins to overcome the savage society of young boys while Piggy, an individual representation of brains without brawn, becomes an outlier as he tries to resist this gradual descent of civilness and ends up shouldering the blame for the wrongdoings of the savage tribe. Up until his untimely death, Piggy is portrayed as the most intellectual and most civil character in the group of stranded boys. Right from the beginning, Piggy realized that “[they] got to do something,” (8) and he recognized the shell Ralph had picked up as a conch.
Author, William Golding, in his novel, "Lord of the Flies," follows a group of British boys who are stranded on an uninhabited island and try to govern themselves. One of the boys, Piggy, is constantly bullied and considered a nuisance by the power-hungry boys on the island. Golding's use of an isolated setting in the midst of the other boys illustrates Piggy's struggle to liberate himself from their oppression. However the need to survive reveals Piggy's inventiveness and rational mindset.
After a pig run with the hunters and Ralph, things seemed to fall apart quickly. Jack and Ralph have an argument which makes the kids choose between Ralph being leader and Jack being leader. This is where the strict bold lines of civility and savagery appear. The kids in Jack’s tribe were chanting and making a dance around the fire, they accidentally kill Simon thinking he was the beast. Ironically, Simon was going over to them to tell them there is no beast, since he just finished having a hallucination of the pig head speaking to him naming himself ‘The Lord Of The Flies’.
One of the primary areas we saw this in is on page 153. “At once the crowd surged after it, poured down the rock, leapt on to the beast, screamed, struck, bit, tore. There were no words, and no movements but the tearing of teeth and claws”, Goulding had written. Here we can see the brutal murder of Simon, or the so called Beast, by his beloved friends. None of his friends meant to kill Simon, yet they got caught up into a frenzy of emotions which drove them in order to do it.
The collective fear of the unknown leads to the untimely and accidental death of Simon. The distress present in the boys causes their impulsive action, of Simon’s horrific murder. Fear of “the beast” an imaginary creature causes the boys to act irrational, and provokes survival instincts as a result of life threatening terror. The fear of the boys in this moment is epitomized when they chant, “Kill the beast!, Cut his throat, Spill his blood!” (168).
(Golding, 77). Although the boys laugh at Simon’s idea, his belief conforms Golding’s idea that inner evil exists. The boys develop into the beast when they kill Simon. Simon was desperate to explain the unidentified creature on the mountain but the boys weren’t in the mood for listening to him. With his brutal murder by the other boys, chaos takes over civilized order on the island.
