Symbolism In Lord Of The Flies Essay

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Lord Of The Flies approaches the defects of human nature when put into survival situations. A plane crash on the dawn of a world war full of schoolboys on a remote island with no parents sets up a fantasy reality of the way that humans rely on the rules and set standards of society today. With no adult supervision the boys are celebratory with their newfound freedom that is until it comes to having to find food, make shelters, keep order between conflicting individuals and getting rescued from the savage beast of the island. A clear turning point from civilisation to pure savage survival instincts is the killing of the boar – its head staked and left for the beast as a peace offering. William Golding has turned a realistic nightmare from our …show more content…

The ‘lord of the flies’ is a symbol for the change in humanity when put into a pure survival situation in the wildness of the wilderness. The struggle of between civilisation and the wildness is shown poetically through Ralph and Jack respectively. Ralph represents civilisation through the use of his ‘parliament’ set up of creating a chief and his set of brains behind him Piggy, whose use of glasses to create their ‘signalling’ fire (which break and shatter throughout the text as the resilience of the boys finds start to crack – a progressive decay of rational influence). The turning point in the text between Jack and Ralph (the point in the text in which Golding grabbed your attention again) is the killing of the sow. “The spear moved forward inch by inch ad the terrified squealing became a high-pitched scream. Then Jack found the throat and the hot blood spouted over his hands… At last the immediacy of the kill subsided.” The pig decapitated, its head staked from a sharpened stick shoved into a crack in the rocks given as a sacrifice to the beast (lord of the flies as he becomes known as). The sacrifice is the point at which the audience knows that the boys will not return, they must here make there choice of survival – continue to comply to the rules and regulations of a society or let it all go allowing

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