Lord of the Flies Analysis

        Jack symbolizes the great evil in this book and what it conceives. He show how innocence is thrown away through the creation of the mask. When Jack creates the mask,

“ he looked in astonishment, no longer at himself but at an awesome stranger. He spilt the water and leapt to his feet, laughing excitedly. Beside the pool his sinewy body held up a mask that drew their eyes and appalled them.” Jack show his loss of innocence here, because he turns into a totally different person. The mask serves as a tool to take blame for what is committed by the owner.

        Many segments of the novel are understood only through Simon’s thoughts. The disintegration of civilization is first noticed when Simon says, “there rose before his inward sight the picture of a human at once heroic and sick.” He was thinking that when the beast had entered his mind. What the boys don’t know about the beast, is that the beast is really themselves. A beast is defined as a cruelly rapacious person. That is quite ironic, because that is what the boys really are. No ordinary person would brutalize a pig and give its head as an offering. Soon the boys are involved with cult like tribal dances over the

hunt. During these tribal dances they ran around and chanted, “ Kill the pig! Cut his throat! Spill his blood!” Also while they were in their stupor, they played games resembling the hunt that happened earlier. In one game a boy named Robert was hurt and that was the one of the hundred times the boys could be seen as savages. This case showed what they are capable of terrible acts and foreshadow murder in their clan.

        Further on, their most gruesome killing involved a mother sow, “ with a row of piglets that slept or burrowed and squeaked.” The murder of this sow symbolized the acts any evil man could make such as rape. When the sow was cornered she was, “ struck down by heat…..the hunters hurled themselves at her. The dreadful eruption from an unknown world made her frantic; she squealed and bucked.” From good boys they turn into killers and monsters. The irony is clearer after reading this part, because their true nature is revealed and they can be associated with beasts.

        If the theme was missed, it was restated at the end of the novel. The boys started to look like they weren’t menacing when Ralph, “ wept for the end of innocence.” He realizes that his innocence was lost and began to sob. They were all guilty of it, because all participated in killing Simon and all coped the same way by crying on the seashore.  

         f all the irony, the most understood occurs at the end when they are rescued. The officer that saves them talks about why their behavior was so awful, not knowing that his own behavior is the same in the war. The scene that lay behind him had a, “ cutter… her bows in stern-sheets another rating held a sub-machine gun.” This shows the end of their lost innocence and what is being portrayed here is that Golding wants people to also lose their innocence by showing that there is violence and war in the world. Look at the world now, there is hate, war, famine, etc. All this theme was trying to do, was to make the readers realize what terrible acts they committed throughout history.