William Golding's Lord Of The Flies: Literary Analysis

The novel, Lord Of The Flies, is filled with many motifs and symbols that illustrates to the reader the book's purpose and meaning. The book takes place during a world war where a plane crashes with a group of schoolboys on an unknown island. The boys find that the island is uninhabited and that there are no adults on the island. At first they take the advantage of having no adult supervision and enjoy their freedom. As time moves on, law and order starts to fall apart. William Golding uses many symbols that represents law, order and savagery throughout the book.

At the beginning of the book Ralph and Piggy find a conch shell. The conch quickly becomes a symbol when Ralph blows the conch calling the other boys. Later on, Ralph is voted the leader of the tribe and makes the first law that you can only speak if you have the conch, symbolizing law and order. “They obeyed the summons of the conch, partly because Ralph blew it, and he was big enough to be a link with the adult world of authority.” (59). This quote is describing the littluns adapting to life without an adult by associating Ralph as the adult of the group because he was the one to call

At first the beast is something from the littlun’s imagination. But the beast later becomes a symbol of fear within the boys. The more savage and less civilized the boys become, the more realistic the beast is. During a assembly one of the older boys, Jack, concludes that the beast is real and leads the other boys to go hunt the beast. “The assembly shredded away and became a discursive and random scatter from the palms to the water and away along the beach, beyond the night-sight.”(92). Back to the symbol of the conch, the conch starts the loose it meaning and is now just an object that the boys sometimes obey. Law and order is now starting to become a less important matter; it's beginning to “shred”