Piggy's Glasses, Irony, Power, and Doomed Heroes in Lord of the Flies by William Golding

•Piggy’s glasses and his limited vision are important in the novel. How are they significant, and what themes do they represent?

Piggy’s glasses play an important role in showing Piggy’s personality. The stereotype of a person with glasses is that they are smart and intelligent. These Glasses are very important in showing Piggy’s characteristics, as these glasses symbolize his wisdom. In the novel, Ralph even admits that he cannot think like Piggy. Piggy’s glasses also symbolize that he is weaker and more nurturing than the other boys who just want to go hunting.

William Golding has been very clever in pointing out this by means of what he looks like. Once the glasses were broken this was also showing the state of social order on the island (since Jack punched Piggy and broke his glasses the social order dropped). As the condition of the glasses got worse so did the level of social order of the boys.

The glasses that Piggy wears are also very important to the boy’s survival and getting off the island, as the glasses create fire. Along with fire comes warmth and smoke. The smoke is a very vital part as the ongoing ships can see the smoke and then the ship can rescue the boys.

Piggy’s glasses are also a symbol of science because they create fire. This symbolism of science has been occurring since they first landed on the island and made a fire though the lenses.

As the glasses represent science, I believe that Piggy can as well because the boys find what science produced was useful, but they did not care about the science involved.

Ralph and the rest of the boys did not like Piggy as much as they would like the next man. The boys did not treat him as fair as each other and thought that he was useless. Soon Ralph came around to realize just how much he depends on Piggy and his wisdom.

• Provide a definition of irony and select three places where it is used in the novel.

The Australian English dictionary defines irony as, “mildly sarcastic use of words to imply the opposite of what is said”.

The first use of irony would be when Jack wants to kill a pig when he first landed on the island.