Piggy soon finds the conch, and this becomes a symbol of good. Even though Piggy found the conch, he is not the main leader of the group. Instead, the conch is handed to Ralph who takes control. Piggy is not seen to be responsible, just because of the way he looks. The conch helps the boys take control of the situations they are in and reassures the boys that there is good on the island. They sort of confide in the conch and when the conch is held up, it is a sign of respect for each other, and the respect of law and order. Many meetings were held to discuss plans and the conch is the centre of these assemblies. Who ever is in possession of the conch, has the right to speak and speak his mind. When the island begins to fall apart, the conch is soon dismissed and no one pays attention to it. ‘The conch exploded’ and ‘ceased to exist’, and when this happens, the boy’s don’t have any respect for each other, especially piggy, and begin to lose sight of what is good and what is evil.
The boys start hunting for their food, and when they come across the pig for the first time, Ralph Cant help himself and kills the pig, it seems like he does this for pleasure and he enjoys the experience. The hunting seems exciting to the boys and they all eventually want to hunt. He later kills many more pigs and they eventually turn into savages. They eventually turn into animals themselves and they can’t help killing and it becomes natural for them to kill. Jack has a natural skill for hunting. They eventually progress from animals to people, and the use of weapons becomes greater. They actually become a group of real hunters, they chant, and use camouflage and their hunting skills are improving all the time.
The boy’s begin to hunt for the beast. Even though the boys are fearful of the beast, they still want to hunt it down and destroy it. The beast is the main reason for the break up of the boys’ relationships and it creates a lot of tension between the boys and they can’t concentrate on anything except for the beast and how they are going to capture the beast. They don’t realise that the beast is a made up creature, made in their imaginations, all because the ‘littluns’ supposedly saw the beast in the jungle the first night. It represent what Ralph calls the ‘darkness of mans heart’, and everyone has a dark side to them. The beast is exaggerated by the littluns and this makes the older boys a little more aware of things around them. At first the beast is dismissed by the older boys, but then they start having nightmares about the beats. The boys then think that the beast is actually real and the environment gets a darker mood and none of the boys can think straight. Jack admits to some fear of the beast while out hunting – his solution is to hunt it down. This puts more savagery into their lives; the thing he doesn’t realise is that there is nothing to hunt. The fact that they can’t find the beast irritates the boys and makes them more eager to find the beast, this only puts more evil into the boys’ minds and they go on the search. Simon is the only one that realises that the beast is just a creature, created in their minds. His lack of communication skills is a great downfall as he cannot explain this to the others. I the end, the other boys murder Simon as they think it’s the beast. This symbolises that evil is overpowering the good as the evil boys, are butchering Simon, who is the only sign of purity and goodness on the island. Surprisingly, when they kill Simon, they end up realising what they have done and are ashamed of themselves. All this is because of the beast, and the feelings of fear it created in the hearts of the boys.
Overall, Golding creates many symbols in the novel which represent death and evil. He uses the beast to represent mans weaknesses and man’s darkest side, which eventually kills them, even though created by them. The Actual story represents society and all of the symbols are correspondent to today’s real life situations, but are just exaggerated a bit more and made into a story which explains these situations in a more interesting way.
