What Is Piggy's Glasses Symbolize In Lord Of The Flies

The symbolism of Piggy’s Glasses in William Golding’s Lord of the Flies Most people dismiss an everyday item like glasses as something that does not withhold great significance or importance. Items like glasses only become relevant when a group of young boys find themselves stranded on an island with very few resources to survive. Average everyday items, like glasses, symbolize progression and critical meanings throughout a novel. In William Golding’s novel, Lord of the Flies, Piggy’s glasses convey significant themes throughout the novel. Golding uses the symbolism of Piggy’s glasses to illustrate logic, power, and ultimately savagery. Piggy’s glasses symbolize the concept of logical thinking and technological advancement on the island.

As previously mentioned, Piggy possesses the only resource to create fire and any hope of rescue on the island, his glasses. Throughout the progression of the novel, tension builds between two slowly separating groups on the island, Ralph and his group, and Jack and his hunters. Once the tension builds to the point where the groups separate to separate sides of the island with only one pair of fire-making glasses. Piggy, a member of Ralph’s group, has the glasses but they quickly become a symbol of power when Jack’s hunters launch an attack to capture Piggy’s glasses. Jack’s hunters eventually attack Ralph and Piggy’s shelters and as they walk away, Golding describes the hunters returning to the Castle Rock “far off along the bowstave of beach, three figures trotted toward the Castle Rock. The chief led then, trotting steadily, exulting in his achievement. He was a chief now in truth; and he made stabbing motions with his spear. From his left hand dangled Piggy's broken glasses.”(Golding 174) When Jack and his group of hunters steal the glasses, they effectively seize control of the ability to make fire, take away the boys' ability to signal for rescue, and leave them without the tools they need to survive. Once this happens, Piggy's glasses begin to symbolize the desire for power on the island. This point in the novel displays significance because it highlights the

Since the hunters steal Piggy’s glasses, Piggy and Ralph go to the Castle Rock to ask if the hunters would return them to Piggy. Piggy and Ralph intend to discuss the matter with the hunters with benevolence, not trying to cause conflict. Upon their arrival at the Castle Rock, Jack and his hunters have other plans. The conversation becomes heated and Roger pushes a rock down at Piggy and Ralph that kills Piggy. After Piggy’s death, when the boys get rescued, Ralph cries Golding does not describe the role of the glasses in Piggy’s death, but the conflict over control of the glasses sets up Piggy’s death. At the end of the novel, upon rescue, Ralph “wept for the end of innocence, the darkness of man's heart, and the fall through the air of the true, wise friend called Piggy”(Golding 206). This illustrates Ralph’s realization that order and logic do not exist on the island anymore because the boys ultimately turn to savagery. The act of killing Piggy symbolizes the destruction of reason and order on the island, which Piggy previously represents in the novel. Piggy’s glasses are no longer a tool for making fire or signaling for rescue, just a symbol of lost civilization and hope. The boys fully embrace their savage instincts and the rationality or morality of the "proper world” that they came from does not exist anymore. Piggy’s glasses symbolize the turn to savagery on the island in