What Does The Glasses Symbolize In Lord Of The Flies

In the Lord of the Flies, many symbols are used to portray the transformation the young boys go through during their time on the island. Three of the most meaningful symbols are Piggy’s specs, the conch shell, and the fire.
In the beginning of the book, during the first description of the chubby boy named Piggy, the reader is notified that he has “thick spectacles”. (Golding7) The glasses themselves are literally just two pieces of glass Piggy uses to help him see, but symbolically, the glasses represent intelligence in society. Piggy relies on his glasses to see, but he also needs them to see wrong from right. When the glasses break, their last tie to their old life, has been broken. They no longer care about their past lives or being rescued, all they want is to hunt and play dangerous games, which is their way of masking how terrified they truly were. Also, when the glasses break, Piggy has lost the ability the world around him clearly, making him blind. The shattering of Piggy’s glasses personify how the boys are blind without them too, because without their last connection to society, they completely let go and let the barbarism take over. In another sense, when the glasses are used to help light the fire, they symbolize the power

The conch was was first brought them all together, and it symbolizes civilization. Throughout the beginning of the story, whenever the conch is blown, all the boys gather on the beach, after being separated. It unifies them again and again, over and over, until, it stops working, and the boys refuse to listen to it. When the conch is broken, the boys lose their sense of civilization. At the beginning of the book, they had respect for the conch and whoever was holding it. But as the broke the shell and threw rocks at Ralph while he held it, it was clear that the boys had lost their grasp of civilization and order in a working