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What Does Hair Symbolize In Lord Of The Flies

779 Words4 Pages

James Marcinowski
Ms. Hedges
Freshman English
Thursday 14, 2022
Hair Motif Lord of the Flies Essay The novel, Lord of the Flies, is about a group of boys who become stranded on an island and have to create a society to survive. As time passes not only does their physical appearance change but the island brings out a more primal version of themselves which inevitably climaxes into the murder of two boys. The author, William Golding, creates a motif about hair and how the hair symbolizes how the characters change throughout the story. Golding writes about how the boys slowly return to a more primal version of themselves that lies deep within all humans. The hair represents the savagery inside of people and as their hair grows over their eyes, …show more content…

When the boys first arrive on the island they all have well-kept and clean hair, similar to their sanity and desperation. They have just arrived on the island and haven’t been away from society long enough for them to change. At this point, the boys care about their hair and take care of it, shown here, “Ralph pushed back his fair hair” (Golding __). Ralph pushed back his hair represents Ralph's fight against disparity at the start of the novel and he is trying to stay civilized. Before speaking the boys find importance in moving their hair, “He passed a hand through his fair hair and spoke. ‘We’re on an island. We’ve been on the mountain top and seen water all round…” ( Golding__). Ralph moving his hair in this situation represents Ralph fighting against savagery, or his hair, and thinking logically, by moving his hair. Ralph needs to move his hair from covering his eyes, so he can see the situation clearly and think …show more content…

After mere weeks most of the boy’s hair has grown to the point where the movement of their hair is necessary to be able to see. Jack’s hair, for example, has noticeably grown and with it so is his savagery. Jack's hair is “considerably longer than it had been when they had dropped in,”. (Golding ___) With his hair growth so is his animalistic behavior, “ Jack himself shrank at this cry with a hiss of indrawn breath, and for a minute became less a hunter than a furtive thing, ape-like among the tangle of trees” (Golding__). Jack no longer feels the need to take care of himself and his hair, which in turn brings him farther away from civilization and the norms of society. Now, isolated from civilization, Jack devolves into someone more ape than human and shrieks like an animal. Jack’s hair growth is inevitable when being away from society for long enough and can not stop growing, similar to how without civilization Jack’s savagery is unavoidable and

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As the boys have been on the island for increasingly long amounts of time, their hair grows and they start to have to stand with “one hand holding back [their] hair, the other clenched.” (66) By implying that their hair has gotten so long that they have to “clench” it, Golding is also saying that long periods of time have gone by and they have become more accustomed to the island. Not only is this quote implying that time has passed by, but since hair is also a symbol for savagery, it is showing that the boys have become even more savage. Another interesting occurrence with hair length is the fact that “[Piggy] was the only boy on the island whose hair never seemed to grow. The rest were shockheaded, but Piggy’s hair still lay in wisps over his head as though baldness were his natural state and this imperfect covering would soon go, like the velvet on a young stag’s antlers” (63).

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