Lord Of The Flies Allegory

Human Nature: “the distinguishing characteristics—including ways of thinking, feeling, and acting—which humans tend to have naturally, independently of the influence of culture” (“Human Nature”). With the beginnings of Greek philosophy, humans have questioned their nature; whether it be good or evil, fixed or malleable. Lord of the Flies presents this question about human nature as well.

William Golding’s 1954 novel Lord of the Flies occurs during a war of some kind. A group of British schoolboys traveling on a plane get stranded on an uninhabited island somewhere in the presumed Atlantic Ocean. The eldest of the lot—Ralph, Piggy, and Jack—all have conflicting ideals on how to go about organizing their population, procuring rescue, and how

Lord of the Flies, literally translating into Beezelbub, or the devil, is another Biblical allegory in the novel. It manifests itself in the form of a rotting pig’s head, offered to the beast by Jack. It speaks to Simon in his disoriented haze, saying “‘What are you doing here all alone? Aren’t you afraid of me? There isn’t anyone to help you. Only me. And I’m the Beast...Fancy thinking the Beast was something you could hunt and kill!...You knew, didn’t you? I’m part of you?’” (Golding 143). The Lord of the Flies reveals itself to Simon as a part of him, a part of everyone that is evil. The “beast” was something that was within all the boys all along. Following the deaths of Simon and Piggy, Ralph stumbles upon the Lord of the Flies. Its former gory and disgusting iteration is now described as a “pig’s skull [that] grinned at him from the top of a stick....the skull that gleamed as white as ever the conch had done and seemed to jeer at him cynically” (Golding 185). The Lord of the Flies described in this passage shows the two sides of humanity, the good and the bad. It symbolizes the “beast” or the evil and sinful side of human beings. But, as shown in this quotation, it is compared to being “as white as ever the conch had done”, and these words are symbols of purity and goodness. Therefore, at the core of the gory, disgusting, and decaying Lord of the Flies—which symbolizes the bad sides of humanity—is a pure, unstained, gleaming heart of white—a symbol of goodness and