The Conch In Lord Of The Flies, By William Golding

Golding said, “It was simply what seemed sensible for me to write after the war when everyone was thanking god they werent Nazis, I’d seen enough to realize that every single one of us could be Nazis.” The book Lord of the Flies by William Golding, is based during World War II. The novel begins with a plane filled with British boys aged 6-12 getting shot down. They end up on an island, confused, and scared with no adult to help, meaning that they are now in charge. A conch is found on the island at the beginning of the book, serving as a symbol about the structure of civilization. The conch starts by representing rules, structure, and order, but as time goes on, it starts to show the increase of savagery and evil resulting from violence and

As the book begins Piggy and Ralph find a conch while examining the island. They use it to call the other boys on the island, “Ralph found his breath and blew a series of short blasts. Piggy exclaimed, ‘There’s one!’” (Golding 16). The boys start coming together creating an assembly and group. This is showing us how the conch is the reason the civilization forms, as it essentially creates our civilization foreshadowing the end of the book. The conch brings all the boys together and they start talking about nexr steps. The conch creates the civilization, and brings order by using it to bring rules in the civilization. Additionally, we

With this mindset switch, the conch starts losing its importance as well. First, we see Jack refusing the conch as he thinks it's unnecessary and that only a few people should be able to speak, “It's time some people knew they've got to keep quiet and leave deciding things to the rest of us”(Golding 101-102). Jack is one of the first schoolboys to start creating an evil mindset. This is a key part of that as he believes not everyone should be able to share their ideas. This is parallel to the conch as while Jack's savagery grows, the conch starts losing its importance.Without something that keeps civilization stable, the boys start to go into their savagery and turn evil. We see this at the end of the book when Piggy is killed by a boulder being thrown at him, when this happens the conch also breaks, "The rock strikes Piggy a glancing blow from chin to knee; the conch exploded into a thousand white fragments and ceased to exist" (Golding 181). This represents the complete loss of civilization and structure, while the savagery grows tremendously exactly when Piggy dies. This shows