Lord of the Flies. 'What's your name?' 'Ralph'. How does this opening prepare the reader for the rest of the novel?

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From its beginning ‘Lord of the Flies’ establishes itself as a story packed with allegorical meaning; it dramatises the conflict between the civilizing instinct and the barbarising, savage instinct that exist in all human beings, using characters and objects to symbolise the two separate ideals. The novel is a meditation on the nature of human political society, dealing with such concerns as the development of political systems and the clash in human nature between instinctual and learned behaviour. In this manner, Golding establishes the deserted island as a clash between two different conceptions of pre-civilized humanity. The artistic choices Golding makes in the novel are designed to emphasize the struggle between the ordering elements of society, which include morality, law, and culture, and the chaotic elements of humanity’s savage animal instincts, which include anarchy, bloodlust, the desire for power, amorality, selfishness, and violence. Over the course of the novel, Golding portrays the rise and swift fall of an isolated, makeshift civilization, which is torn to pieces by the savage instincts of those who comprise it.

Golding’s first chapter describes a new world, an uninhabited tropical island. The first lines are that about one of the chief characters in the novel; Ralph, the tall boy with ‘fair hair’. The adjective ‘fair’ in itself endears readers to him because it is a complimentary term, and those the first associations of him as the novel’s protagonist, or one of them, are made. In the very first paragraph, the novel’s first negative adjective is introduced; ‘scar’. The imagery of a scar is negative in itself as it is by definition a deformation or a lingering sign of damage or injury, either mental or physical; in this case it is the latter. It is clear that some act of considerable force has deformed the landscape the boy is exploring as he ‘clambers’ through the ‘broken trunks’, and the word ‘scar’ makes a very strong impact, immediately drawing the reader into the scar’s creation, which is later explained in the chapter.

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The ‘witch – like cry’ of a bird, also mentioned in the opening paragraph adds to the sense of negativity of the boy’s arrival, echoing the first sentiments that he is an intruder on this seemingly idyllic, tropical paradise; the mention of a ‘lagoon’ build up this imagery. A second character initially referred to as ‘it’, another negative reference, is introduced in the following paragraphs. In response, the ‘fair boy…stockings… Home Counties’. This once again gives the sense that these humans are intruders by changing the atmosphere of the land they are in, introducing new customs or forms of ...

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