Lord of the flies

The Conch:

One of the most important symbols in the novel is the Conch which represents Power and Civilisation on the land. When Piggy and Ralph saw a shell on the sandy beach, Piggy realizes that they can blow the shell to gather the children together and announce meetings. Also, they decide that whoever wants to speak or say something that they will need to hold the Conch so everyone has a chance of saying something in their own view. This shows democracy between them.

The Conch breaks when Piggy dies ‘the conch exploded into a thousand white fragments and ceased to exist’. This tells us the description of the Conch. Also, when the Conch breaks everyone wasn’t settled, organised and went their own ways. For example Jack and his tribe set the island on fire.

So Golding uses the conch as a symbol to keep everyone together.  

Piggy’s Glasses:

Piggy’s glasses symbolize intelligence because without his glasses he cannot think or see. With his glasses are his visions because he is the one who gives ideas to Ralph because he is the leader. He decides what is wrong, right, safe and harmful. He is the only one that had brains.

Also when Piggy dies everyone goes disorganised without Piggy’s intelligence. ‘What was the sensible thing to do? There was no Piggy to talk sense’. This shows that Piggy is the one that that had the intelligence to know what they were doing and understand situations so that a resolution can be found.

On the other hand, Piggy’s glasses symbolize fire because when Jack takes his glasses to make a fire with the reflection of the sun. ‘My specs, give me my specs’. Piggy does not like it when Jack to be snatching it, teasing him by calling him fat.

The Fire:

Fire is a symbol of survival and warmth because they need heat to warm up their body. Also without fire they can not cook the meat that Jack’s tribe found. ‘His specs-use them as burning glasses’. This shows that Jack’s tribe make the fire with Piggy’s glasses. They need his glasses to make the reflection from the sun.

Fire is also a symbol of danger and rescue because when Piggy dies Jack’s tribe wanted to kill Ralph and put him on a sharp stick just like the Pigs Head they set the island on fire to smoke out Ralph. On the other hand, when Jack and his tribe set the island on fire they got rescued by the officers.

The Beast:

The Parachute symbolizes Beast from the Air because Ralph, Jack and everyone else thought that a Beast was on the island coming to haunt them from air. But they discovered it was a dead man pilot. Before that they were finding solutions of way to call the beast.

The Beast symbolizes the Pigs Head because ‘There isn’t anyone to help you, only me, and I am the Beast’. The boys were afraid of the beast but Simon was the only one who realized that the beast existed within them. The Beast symbolizes Jack because he was obsessed with meat (pork). He and his hunters killed a pig. ‘Kill the beast, cut his throat, and spill his blood’. This shows and they were celebrating and chanting about the pig. Although Jack wasn’t satisfied by killing one pig, he felt it was necessary to kill more pigs. The evil inside him grew even more.

The Pigs Head:

The Pigs Head symbolizes Lord of the Flies because when the pigs head was stuck to the sharpen stick and was covered with flies. ‘Fancy thinking the Beast was something you could hunt and kill! I’m part of you… I’m the reasons why things are no go’. This tells us that Simon knew that there was no beast to eat but there was a beats within us. Simon was scared and lost consciousness

Lord of the flies as a Fable:

Lord of the flies is the literal translation of the Hebrew ‘Beelzebub’ or Satan. His message of the novel and its most important symbols is

‘It seemed to me that man capacity for greed, his innate cruelty and selfishness was clear. I believed that man was sick-not exceptional man, but average man. I believed that the condition of man was to be a morally diseased reaction’.

Golding experience of the war is that everyone can be cruel, selfish and greedy in some ways but for a good reason.

Conclusion:

This novel is important because it explores what kids will do when they are evacuated on a deserted island. He uses powerful symbols to symbolize each object. He uses it effectively for say the Conch. But he uses weak symbols like the Pigs Head because he didn’t use it effectively.