Outline For Lord Of The Flies

1. PLOT

Lord of the Flies by William Golding follows twelve-year-old Ralph and his fellow schoolboys, as they awake on an unknown island and confront the darker natures of mankind. Ralph is elected "chief" of the newly-formed boy-tribe, while arrogant Jack Merridew and his choir accept the title of "hunters". The initial quest of the boys – to create shelter, hunt pig, and signal passing ships – fades with the appearance of an elusive, dangerous (and imaginary) beast and the rising enmity between Ralph and Jack. Jack mutinies Ralph's chieftainship and crafts a tribe of savages. In his scrabble for power, he murders two boys, tortures others, and hunts Ralph. Lord of the Flies concludes when sailors rescue the island-inhabitants.

2. STRUCTURE/FORM

Effectually, the lens through which the audience views Lord of the Flies is immature and biased. Golding enhances his tale with young, unknowing words, as in his gross painting of Piggy's death – "Piggy fell forty feet... His head opened and stuff came out and turned red" (181) – and with frequent shifts in point of view.

4. MAIN CHARACTER

Ralph, a twelve-year-old schoolboy with a mild face and boxer's body (Golding 10), fair hair (Golding 1), and increasingly tan skin, is the central character of Lord of the Flies. He is selfish but civilized (Golding 80), and plainly the ideal chief for the tribe. He is indirectly characterized by his continuous motto, "The best thing we can do is get ourselves rescued" (Golding 53) and his actions to ensure the boys are saved. Throughout the novel, Ralph emphasizes the importance of being discovered and attempts to maintain the signal fire. Toward the end of the story, he forgets the vitality of the fire.

5.

CRITICAL REVIEW

Spitz claims that the characters included in Lord of the Flies are based from Golding’s personal experience in teaching schoolboys. This is true, for Golding taught at a public school in 1935; Golding admitted that at one time he allowed his students to conduct an open debate, which concluded as sourly as Lord of the Flies.

Spitz correctly evaluates the setting of the island as an “earthly paradise”, in which “neither work nor robbery (is) essential for existence” and “there (are) no classes, no divisions, no inequalities based on previous status; except for Jack”. Rightly, the island is a flavor of utopia, but there are inequalities among the schoolboys other than Jack’s outfit. Ralph is the first: “The being that had blown that, had sat waiting for them on the platform with the delicate thing balanced on his knees, was set apart” (Golding 22). The second is between the younger children and the older children. No one in the tribe “had any difficulty in recognizing biguns at one end and littluns on the other” (Golding 59). “The undoubted littluns, those aged about six, led a quite distinct, and at the same time intense, life of their own”, including elongated feasting, possessing stomachaches and diarrhea, suffering night-terrors, playing in the sand, crying for their mothers, and obeying summonses (Golding 59). Furthermore, contradictory to Spitz’s assertion that on the island, “the only enemy of man (is) himself,” the boys endure an initial lack of shelter