Lord of the flies: How does Golding Present the Loss of Innocence?

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Zoe-Alexandra Oparah 10.4

Lord of the flies:

How does Golding Present the Loss of Innocence?

In Goldings’ Lord of the flies, the boys slowly loose their civilisation and become savages as they also loose their innocence as their original sin is revealed represented by the ‘beast’. He slowly describes them in ways to show us the change from what we know as good to evil.

As Golding unveils the boy’s original sin, he slowly begins to refer to the boys as savages and even devils.  He writes “…behind the tribe and the anonymous devils’ face swarmed across the neck.” This is very effective as it indicates to the reader that Golding now I confirming the boys are drenched in Original sin as he labels them ‘devils’ after they have killed Piggy.

The innocence of the boys is lost as two of the boys are killed by other boys on the island. Piggy is killed when Roger releases a very large rock and it plunges him to his death. It says “…Piggy fell forty feet and landed on his back…his head opened and stuff came out and turned red.” In this quote, Golding uses quite colloquial language to describe Piggys’ death. By using the word ‘stuff’ rather than the distinctive language he used to show us the meaning of Simons’ death, the effect of this is that although Piggy was a main character, he did not have a special meaning in this book.

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At the start of the book were Jack was faced with the challenge of killing a pig, as he was still civilised, he could bring himself to do it. Jack says “ I was choosing a place…I was waiting for a moment to decide were to stab him…They knew very well why he hadn’t…the knife descending and cutting into living flesh; because of the unbearable blood.” This indicates to me that Jack is still to innocent and he knew that he could not harm this pig for it had done nothing to him.

However, thing soon change as Jack ...

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A very good answer to the question showing knowledge and understanding of the novel. Deals with some of the biblical symbolism and issues that Golding explores in the novel. Some lapses in expression which make the meaning of certain phrases and therefore the argument unclear.