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What Does The Fire Symbolize In Lord Of The Flies

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In both Lord of the Flies and Animus there are strong symbols for the character's connections to civilization. In Lord of the Flies, a book by William Golding, there are approximately 50 boys stranded on a deserted island with no adults. These boys decide to make a bonfire to signal passing ships in hopes of being rescued. In Animus, a book by Antoine Revoy, there is a spirit boy named Toothless who is bound to a playground and cannot leave. He recruits two school children, Hisao and Sayuri, to help him escape the playground so that he can go into the spirit world. In Lord of the Flies, Golding uses the bonfire as a symbol to connect the boys to civilization; while in Animus, Revoy uses the playground to connect Toothless to civilization. …show more content…

The leader of the boys, Ralph, makes this fire his top priority and the first thing that he orders the children to do when they arrive on the island. Ralph states many times throughout the book, “‘The fire’s the most important thing. Without the fire we can’t be rescued. I’d like to put on war-paint and be a savage. But we must keep the fire burning. The fire’s the most important thing on the island because’ … ‘Rescue.’” (Golding 145) When Jack and his tribe break away from the rest of the group, Ralph and his friends are in danger of being killed yet Ralph still continues to show concern for the fire. This symbolizes Ralph’s dedication to the fire. His constant thought about it shows how strongly he is connected to civilization and how much he wants to leave the island. Golding uses the fire and the character’s feelings about it to symbolize each of their connections to civilization. By letting the fire go out in order to hunt, Jack shows his unconcerned attitude towards the fire which symbolizes his detachment from civilization. Altogether, the fire represents the boys’ connection to civilization because it is their ticket to getting …show more content…

Toothless never specifically states that the jungle is why he is stuck, but he implies it through his conversations with the children. After he explains what all of the other equipment on the playground does, he is hanging on this jungle gym and says “As for this jungle gym … well … you don’t wanna know what this one does. … I can’t leave this world. I was taken from my home. Loooong ago. Taken. And buried alive. I can’t go into the afterworld unless I am found and released into the open air.” (Revoy 62-63) Toothless avoids telling the children what the jungle gym does, but he does talk about how he is stuck in their world at the playground which leads to the assumption that the jungle gym is the reason he is trapped. The playground connects him to civilization because it is the reason why he is stuck on earth and restricted from moving on to the spirit world. He is trapped until the children can find a way to free him and therefore he has a strong connection with civilization through the jungle gym which keeps him

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372 Words | 2 Pages

Ralph is furious at Jack for letting the fire out, scared that this was their only time to be rescued. I also think that it represents survival as fire ends up being how they get rescued and fire stays prominent throughout the novel. The way they are rescued ends up not actually being through the signal fire but because of them trying to kill Ralph and smoking

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504 Words | 3 Pages

Jack wants to hunt down pigs and get meat to eat while Ralph wants to focus on building the shelters and keeping the fire lit. On page 42 Ralph says “We've got to have special people for looking after the fire. Anyday there could be a ship out there” This quote shows how the fire is the key to them getting rescued from the island and surprisingly, jack initially agrees to it and assigns his hunters the job of watching the fire. Unfortunately when the time comes Jack had taken all of his hunters on a hunt with him leaving the fire unattended to burn out and die. Showing Jack's true

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989 Words | 4 Pages

So when Golding tells us that in Jack’s “left hand dangled Piggy’s broken glasses.” (191), it demonstrates that Jack’s savage boys now have the power to make fire. The fire symbolizes hope when on the civilized side but its inner demon is of destruction and evil. Predictably this demon does in fact come out when in the end Jack and his boys “had smoked him (Ralph) out and set the island on fire” (Golding 224), in order to kill Ralph. Ironically, the fire instead fulfills its civilized purpose, of a signal instead of killing Ralph. The purpose and the extreme strength of the fire here shows us that the boys had become brutal savages, literally killing civilization out of the their systems.

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1224 Words | 5 Pages

Fire was the only physical beacon of hope on the island and was heavily enforced by Ralph. We've got to have special people for looking after the fire…” (Golding 42). The fire symbolized hope for rescue and survival. The ultimate demise of the fire was due to the selfish desire of the other boys to be wild and disregard Ralph and his rules.

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551 Words | 3 Pages

The fire symbolizes hope, which every human needs to have the will. There must always be hope or something to work towards to get you out of bed in the morning. Though hope isn’t always a tangible thing, Golding enhances the story by representing the boys hope as the fire, it represents their best hope of getting rescued and off of the island. As Ralph is addressing the boy’s failure to keep the fire going, "The fire is the most important thing on the island. How can we ever be rescued except by luck, if we don’t keep a fire going?

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480 Words | 2 Pages

This book can be interpreted to see fire as a symbol for wants and desires. The fire was a very important in the beginning of the book as a way to call for help and escape the island. Later, after the group splits into two separate tribes the fire becomes so important that Jack leads an attack on the others to attain the fire and Piggy’s glasses which are used to make it. Early in the book the fire also gets out of hand and kills the boy with the mulberry mark. This shows how people can often times let their desires consume them.

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928 Words | 4 Pages

Imagine a group of helpless boys stranded on an isolated island fighting for their lives with no reassurance of survival. In William Golding’s novel, Lord of the Flies, uses three symbols to……: Piggy’s specs, the beast, and the conch. While they try to achieve civilization, the specs and the conch are overtaken by the fear of a “Beast”. In the novel, Piggy’s specs represent rationality, intelligence, and order; the beast represents fear and violence, and the conch represents power, unity and democracy. Throughout the rest of Golding’s novel, these three important symbols unfold and change the characters completely.

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581 Words | 3 Pages

The first most important thing that the fire does in the book is, it makes a signal. The boys are stranded on this island with no one around. No adults, just them and a big island. Even though the boys are young, they are pretty smart and think of a way to get someone’s attention if they come close enough to them. The smoke or blaze of the fire would get someone’s attention.

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758 Words | 4 Pages

“If a ship comes near the island they may not notice us …. we must make a fire.” The fire acts as a possible ----- to be rescued so it’s rather important to the group. But later in the story the fire acts as an evil and destructive force. “Then Ralph was running beneath trees ….

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1077 Words | 5 Pages

Throughout the beginning of the novel, Ralph is the leader of the fight to keep and maintain the fire, but he is starting to give up hope and lets the fire die. Lastly, fire symbolizes hope during the end of the novel. Jack and most of the other boys have turned on Ralph and want to “hunt” him. They decided that the best way to get Ralph to come to them on the beach was to light the whole forest on fire so Ralph would be forced out to the beach. Ralph was trying to run out of the forest as “the roar of the forest rose to thunder and a tall bush directly in his path burst into a great fan-shaped fan.

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1331 Words | 6 Pages

The fire has developed into yet another symbol of dispute between Ralph and Jack because their viewpoints never seem to align. Also, the way Ralph and Jack individually use the fire is a key part of what it symbolizes. Ralph can be seen using the fire as a way to get them to safety sooner and as a tool to help everyone. On the other hand, Jack can be seen using the fire as a tool for destruction, which leads to the fire being used as one of the major parts of the island’s demise. The fluctuations in how the fire is being used is a large factor in what the fire represents throughout the story.

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1057 Words | 5 Pages

Ralph says, “The fire is the most important thing on the island. How can we ever be rescued except by luck, if we don’t keep a fire going? Is a fire too much for us to make” (80). As an effort to show the boys their dire circumstances, he tries to convict them, including himself, of their ignorance. On the contrary, Jack Merridew counters Ralph’s authority with the proposition of thrill and amusement.

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1284 Words | 6 Pages

In life, humans constantly change, and one of the most common change is civilization. This change happens for multiple reasons. As time progress and people get older, they have different opinions about certain people, rules, and systems. In the novel The Lord of the Flies, William Golding uses subtle images and symbols to illustrate the boys highly structured and civilized origins; however, as the boys begin to lose their sense of self and their civil leanings, symbols begin to reflect their slow descent into savagery. The change is made evident by symbols that Golding uses in the novel, such as the conch, the fire and the beast to represent the contradictory forces acting on the boys throughout the novel.

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835 Words | 4 Pages

The fire was also a symbol of civilization, that the boys would survive and get rescued. Fire is quite profound in what it reveals about humans. The fire was the object that the hunters didn’t have, it was desirable because it was limited. The fire brought out the innate greed that humans possess. The hunters weren’t content with asking for fire from Ralph, they were too prideful and savage to be civil in any manner, so they stole it.

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845 Words | 4 Pages

Ralph reminds the group that "[the] fire is the most important thing on the island. How can we ever be rescued except by luck, if we don 't keep the fire going?" (80). The signal fire is set as a reminder to Ralph to maintain the goal of being rescued and not being distracted by other things. Ralph as the leader of the group, finds a way to get rescued by explaining to the survivors that "[we] can help find them to find us.

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