As the boys are playing, the heat is a ‘threatening weight’ and the lagoon ‘attacked them with a blinding effulgence’ personifying the afternoon sunshine and setting a perfect mood in the reader’s mind.
Firstly, the island is seems like every young boys’ dream and the boys make the island feel like a long lost treasure that children have been in search of, but soon realize this hard-to0belive island is deceptive and they need laws in order to survive and stay safe. These laws come to place with the conch. The conch is also an attachment to the island that represents authority, consensus and civilization. It is used to call the island assemblies and has a ‘white gleaming tusk’ that has a positive impact on the island. Lifting the conch, ‘sends a sudden breeze that scatters light’ this is full of meaning and reflects the democracy over the platform and within us all. However this also has a change in phase in conjunction the island and starts to lose its power in the boys’ everyday lives.
The lagoon is peaceful ‘like pink icing on a cake’. Using a simile, it symbolises an affable and pleasant ambiance. ‘The breezes that chased their tails like kittens were finding their way to the platform’. This is another simile and to some extent foreshadows their future relationship with the boys as the island won’t leave them alone.
Animals on the island get victimized by the hunters. An example of this is in Chapter 8 during the pig killing. When killing the pig it is described in a sexual manner and is a horrific symbol of how fat the violence of the boys has come. This emphasises the Bible story of the Fall of the Man when Adam and Eve are were cast out of the Paradise as a punishment for disobeying God. This island becomes a terrible waste of land from a heavenly paradise, as if it is a punishment for all the sins the boys have committed whilst on the island.
The sea is a barrier between society and the seclusion on the island. During Simon’s death it represents supernaturalism power far beyond the limited excellence of the island community. This is explained in the quote ‘the long, grinding roar of the breakers on the beach’.
The island also shows that besides human changing, even nature has two sides to it, but nature change is caused by humans. In order to be rescued, the boys create a fire as a signal to any ships or aircrafts that come the island way, though they don’t realize that they are destroying nature, and only Piggy is aware of the relationship between nature and humans due to his intellectual personality. Ralph slowly realises the importance of nature which is clearly shown in Chapter 5 ‘the fire is the most important thing in the island; we ought to die before the fire goes out’. This explains how highly important the environment is in lives of mankind. The fire helps to prepare the food and gives safety, protection and comfort throughout the night as well as some hope of being rescued to the boys.
Even the food that is available on the island can sometimes be perfect ‘everywhere was the scent of ripeness’, it makes the island feel warm and homely but this also leads to a dark side as ‘there was now stomach-aches and chronic diarrhoea’.
Throughout Lord of the Flies, there is depth in the imagery and how it affects the readers’ response. The weather is a tool that is used to change the readers’ response. Throughout the day it is described as ‘golden sun’ and there is no conflict from the sea as it is calm, however in the more denser and scarier parts of the island, it is dark and scary and is ‘pitch black’ and there is always a sea storm. The weather symbolise the boys’ mood as well as helping the reader picture what is going on in detail.
We realize that the naivety and innocence of the boys makes the island bad, but nearer to the end of Lord of the Flies, we see that the anger and hatred of the island influences on the boys and slowly they turn into savages and forget the path of humans and society.
