Perhaps Raplh’s most notable quality is his concience which leads him to puzzle and worry over the welfare of the other boys. At the end of the book when he has been hounded to exhaustion and believes himself likely to be executed by the other boys, we find his moral instinct is still preserved; “he was down…crying for mercy”. It is also he who has the insight to sum up the lost opportunities of the island “he wept for the end of innocence… and the fall through the air of true, wise friend called Piggy.
Jack Merridew is clearly a character Golding has intended the reader to dislike. He enters the novel dramaically at the head of a procession of choirboys which appear as ‘something dark…the creature’. He is wearing a swirling black cloak, part of his religious uniform. Thereafter he is always associated with shoadows and lack of light. He is completely in charge of his choir and Ralph immdeiately recognises that he has “the voice of one who knew his own mind”.He contrasts physically with Ralph being ‘ugly without silliness’. He differs too from Ralph in his lack of sympathy for the other boys. He lays claim to be chief early on, on trhe irrelevant grounds that he is head boy of his school and can sing C sharp. He never accepts defeat gracefully and sets himself in competition from the start, eventually taking over leadership because he can offer more ‘fun’ than his rival. There are occasions where he can be quite vulnerable, as when he finds himself incapable of slaughtering a pig, but generally he tends towards physical toughness, lack of moral scruples and and a love of the exercise of power. However, he understands better than Ralph that the children’s fears cannot be dismissed. He learns to exploit these, partly because he shares them.
Jack represents more completely than anyone else in the novel the theme of ‘reversion to savagery’. He finds that behind the disguise of paint and mask he can assume a more self-confident personality.His main contributions to to the survival of the boys is to track the pigs and provide meat. For him it becomes a ‘compulsion to track down and kill that was swallowing him up’. Meat is not absolutely essential to their survival, (The islannd has fruit, and shellfish aswell) yet he insists on its importance. In this sense he represents ‘Man the Hunter’; although he sees the whole experience on the island as a game, he exhibits a basic, primieval instinct – the urge to hunt.
Unfortunately, his simplistic and single-minded approach is self-destructive and laching in foresight. Two examples which illistrate this are: the boys kill a sow, which would have bred and provided future meat; and, in their hunt for Ralph they destroy the fruit trees.These two over hasty actions means that they would have eventually starved.
Jack’s physical appearance throughout the novel is a a deliberate and blatant warning sign. His red hair stands out. As well as being associated with a fiery temper it also, significantly, indicates danger. When he masks his appearance with paint, far from neutralising his venom and aggressiongives it free reign. When he is “safe from shame or self-conciousness behind the mask” he can act as he wishes and realise his most evil potential.
Jack’s lack of humility, along with his bravado and dictatorial leadership are all intended to conflict with the ideals Golding creates in other characters. Jack’s final appearance in chapter 12 portrays him as a little boy, perhaps re-emphasising how thin the veneer of of conditioning and respectability can be when set against the primal instincts shown in his earlier actions.
By chapter four it is possible to see the growing gap between Ralph and Jack. Jack is is determined and single-minded in his pursuit of the pigs yet proud and pungacious in the incident involving Piggy. He apologises for letting the fire go out but not, significantly, for breaking the glasses. He lashes out at Piggy partly because the he is embarassed at the truth of his omission, but also because he feels cornered as he cannot lash out at Ralph. The apology is a painful, and unusual, experience for him.
Ralph exhibits real despair at the passing of the ship, possibly because he is beginning to feel the pressure of his overall responsibility for the boys. He has also been involved in work, building the shelters and the idea that the island is fun is wearing thin. He is also beginning to re-assess the usefulness of his fellow castaways. In the next chapter, however, Ralph’s opinion of Piggy the ‘bore’ alters.
‘Lord of The Flies’ follows standard novel form with a simple and direct storyline. The structure is dictated by the characters and setting: Golding places his characters on an island, hence the events are largely a product of these people, their reactions and relationships as they engage each other and that environment. The use of characters would appear uncompromising, but the rivalry between Ralph and Jack, the result of their conflicting natures, together with their supporting cohorts, and Simons subplot carries the story.
Although no other living character visits the island during the boys stay the descent of the parachutist injects and important elemnt into the structure of the action. The ‘beast’ in whatever shape – the dead pilot, the ‘fear’ or as Simon, mistakenly killed in its place – provides another source of tension. These two strands of human conflict on one side and fear of the beast on the other grow as the story develops. This expansion is coupled with the gradual and simultaneous disentigration of morals and morale towards and inevitable, and perhaps anticipated, climax.
Golding uses a wide variety of literary devices and figures of speech. Golding’s use of irony is both interesting and highly relevant to the tone and message of the novel. Irony provides a powerful vehicle for statements about life and fate. An example of this is when Jack’s hunters set fire to the bushes to smoke out and kill Ralph. However, it is this fire which draws attention to the island and efects the boys rescue. Another example of irony is Piggy’s anger about the forest fire and the disappearence of the ‘litlun’ with the birthmark – but Piggy’s glasses were used to start the fire, so he is indirectly responsible.
Golding has also used a number of symbolic objects to cover deeper issues. An example of this is the conch. The conch is more than just a shell, useful for attracting attention and summoning boys to the meetings. It is like a church bell calling the faithful, and embodies some of the ritual of religious ceremonies. For the boys on the island it also imposes a sense of order. Only one person can hold the conch, so only one person can talk at a time and, unlike Jack’s assemblies, everyone is given that right. The conch can therefore symbolise free speech, democracy, order and unity.
‘Lord of the Flies’ also contains imagery in the form of similes and metaphors, which allow us to better imagine an incident or scene by drawing on our own experiences. An example of a metaphor is on page 7. “Glittering fish flicked hither and thither. Ralph spoke to himself sounding the bass strings of delight.” The shows Ralph persieves the island like it is a pradise with no adults, a child’s dream. An example of a simile is “the sun gazed down like an angry eye”. This shows the change in the environment from a paradise to sinister.
“Lord of the Flies” is an allegorical novel, and many of its characters signify important ideas or themes. Ralph represents order, leadership, and civilization. Piggy represents the scientific and intellectual aspects of civilization. Jack represents unbridled savagery and the desire for power. Simon represents natural human goodness. Roger represents brutality and bloodlust at their most extreme. To the extent that the boys’ society resembles a political state, the littluns might be seen as the common people, while the older boys represent the ruling classes and political leaders. The relationships that develop between the older boys and the younger ones emphasize the older boys’ connection to either the civilized or the savage instinct: civilized boys like Ralph and Simon use their power to protect the younger boys and advance the good of the group; savage boys like Jack and Roger use their power to gratify their own desires, treating the littler boys as objects for their own amusement.
‘Lord of the Flies’ does echo certain Christian images and themes. Golding does not make any explicit or direct connections to Christian symbolism; instead, these biblical parallels function as a kind of subtle motif in the novel, adding thematic resonance to the main ideas of the story. The island itself, particularly Simon’s glade in the forest, recalls the Garden of Eden in its status as an originally pristine place that is corrupted by the introduction of evil. Similarly, we may see the Lord of the Flies as a representation of the devil, for it works to promote evil among humankind. Furthermore, many critics have drawn strong parallels between Simon and Jesus. Among the boys, Simon is the one who arrives at the moral truth of the novel, and the other boys kill him sacrificially as a consequence of having discovered this truth. Simon’s conversation with the Lord of the Flies also parallels the confrontation between Jesus and the devil during Jesus’s forty days in the wilderness.
