a-essay


 * //LORD OF THE FLIES//: A SHORT SUMMARY**

William Golding’s //Lord of the Flies// is a story about a group of boys that was abandoned in an island. Also, it is a commentary on evil as an inherent part of mankind and on how savagery can consume us when we are free from the barriers of civilization. The novel begins with a group of British boys that are lost in an island after a plane accident during the war. Since they are the only inhabitants of the island, they have to work together in order to survive. At first, the boys are still civilized and a boy named Ralph is elected their leader. The boys are divided into groups and assigned tasks, such as starting and keeping a signal fire, building shelters and hunting meat for the group. The logical thinking behind this comes from Piggy, an overweight shy boy who wears glasses.  Soon enough, things start going wrong, and the signal fire burns a large patch of the forest, killing one of the little boys. The group starts losing their connection to civilization and avoids facing the hard reality in which they are inserted. Jack, the head of the hunting pack, paints his face and kills a pig with the help of the twins Sam and Eric, who let the fire go out while a ship is passing by. The boys start feeling frightened, as they believe that there is a Beast that inhabits the island. A group sets off to search for the Beast and they mistake a dead parachutist for it in the dark.  The boys start dividing among themselves, and Jack leaves the group to start a new tribe. He hunts a sow and places its head on a stick as a sacrifice to the Beast. Simon sees it from his hiding place in the forest and hallucinates that the head, who is the Lord of the Flies, talks to him about the real nature of the Beast. He tries to warn the other boys about what he has just learned, but he is caught in one of the dances the hunters make after killing a pig. All the boys are there in Jack’s tribe, and they kill Simon in the heat of the moment.  In the end, all of the boys join Jack’s savage tribe, except Ralph and Piggy, whose glasses are stolen since they are needed to start the cooking fire. The two boys walk up to Jack’s castle to get the glasses back, but they are unsuccessful. Piggy dies and Ralph flees. Jack’s tribe then proceeds to hunting Ralph, setting the whole island on fire. The fire attracts a passing ship, and a British military officer arrives just in time, finding the boys and saving Ralph, who cries over everything that has happened.

**INTRODUCTION **

 //Lord of the Flies//, written by Nobel Prize-winning British author William Golding, is a novel that describes the story of a group of boys who end up in a deserted island after their plane crashes during a war. Distant from civilization and deprived of adult assistance, the boys try to organize a small society, but as their natural instincts surface, chaos is installed. The novel was written in 1954, after the Second World War, a period characterized by a loss of faith in progress, science and mankind. The evolution of science carried a promise of progress and better life conditions, but instead, science was used for the development of armaments and nuclear bombs. Even with the creation of the League of Nations after the First World War, mankind slipped back into a military conflict involving several nations of the world. Also, with the Holocaust and the violence in the battle fields, the world witnessed the cruelty of men. Thus, all of these events led to the characteristic loss of faith and skepticism of the period in which //Lord of the Flies// was written. This loss of faith in mankind is present in Golding’s //Lord of the Flies//, as the boys in the story reveal their violent instincts and surrender to savagery. The novel also presents the evil side of the boys, which reflect the evil that is within men. However, these notions are not presented objectively in statements throughout the text; they are presented through the use of symbolism. In //Lord Of The Flies//, William Golding uses symbols to express the notion that evil and savagery are inherent parts of humankind, and that even though society can control them, it cannot eradicate them.


 * SYMBOLS (done, but grammar still needs to be checked) **

Before analyzing the symbols that are present in the novel //Lord of the Flies//, it is important to establish the definition of this key concept. According to MEYERS (1999): A symbol is a person, object, or event that suggests more than its literal meaning. […] A literary symbol can include traditional, conventional or public meanings, but it may also be established internally by the total context of the work in which appears. […] A literary symbol can be a setting, character, action, object, name, or anything else in a work that maintains its literal significance while suggesting other meanings. (MEYERS, 1999, p.215, 216) Simply put, a symbol is something that represents something else and has multiple meanings, which are determined by the context in which they appear.

William Golding’s //Lord of the Flies// is constructed with a series of symbols, which include: the island in which the boys are trapped; the conch blown by Ralph to call the assemblies; the painted mask that Jack uses for hunting; the Beast; Piggy, Ralph, Jack and their fates in the story; the hunts and ritual dances; and the fire the boys start in order to signal their presence to passing ships. Each of these symbols will be analyzed below.

First of all, the island in which the story is set serves as a microcosm, as it is a secluded place where the boys are free from civilization and thus are able to let their natural instincts surface. According to Dickinson (1990), "the isolated island provides an appropriate stage for the survival story of the deserted boys, but also suggests an universal, timeless backdrop for symbolic action" (DICKINSON, 1990, p. 12). The island not only represents a small universe itself, it serves as the ideal background for all the other symbols that Golding inserts in the story. As the island acts as a microcosm, all the events that happen inside it can be amplified to draw conclusions about the nature of mankind in general.

Second, as the conch symbolizes the political organization of the boys' small society, the destruction of the conch represents the inefficiency of politics and rules in eradicating the evil inside man. ALTHAUS (2007) states that: <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 13.3333px; text-align: justify;"> "Ralph and Piggy blow the conch to gather the boys at the beach and hold an assembly. Thus the conch is introduced as a symbol for union, order, and democracy. Everybody is allowed to hold the conch but only the one who holds it is entitled to speak. The conch is the 'vessel of political legitimacy and democratic power." (ALTHAUS, 2007, p. 5) <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 16px; text-align: justify;"> The conch is destructed only when most of the boys have surrendered to their savage instincts and moved to Jack’s tribe. In a violent and uncivilized moment, as Roger flings a great rock towards Piggy, who was holding the conch, “the conch exploded into a thousand white fragments and ceased to exist” (GOLDING, p.260). Therefore, the shattering of the conch represents the inefficiency of democracy and politics, as it is overpowered by man’s evil instincts.

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 16px; text-align: justify;">Third, Jack's mask is another symbol of man's inherent savage instincts, because it allows him to free himself from the restrains of civilization and be his violent self. When Jack is hiding behind his painted mask, he no longer needs to listen to his civilized conscience. In the novel, Golding describes this transformation as Jack’s paints the mask on his face: <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 13.3333px; text-align: justify;"> “He looked in astonishment, no longer at himself but at an awesome stranger. He <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 13.3333px; text-align: justify;">spilt the water and leapt to his feet, laughing excitedly. […] He began to dance and his laughter became a bloodthirsty snarling. He capered toward Bill, and the mask was a thing on its own, behind which Jack hid, liberated from shame and self-consciousness.” (GOLDING, p. 89) <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 16px; text-align: justify;"> Behind the mask, free of “shame and self-consciousness”, Jack is allowed to be himself. And it is in this natural state that his savagery and violence surface. Therefore, the mask symbolizes the savage instincts that are a natural part of man.

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 16px; text-align: justify;">Additionally, the Beast in the story symbolizes the evil inside man. According to ALTHAUS (2007): "The beast is symbolic of the beast in themselves. It is the desire in man to live savagely and behave violently towards others. The more the boys bestialize the more they are convinced that there really is a beast" (ALTHAUS, 2007, p. 5). Simon achieves this realization as he speaks to the Lord of the Flies, which is the sow’s head that Jack places on the stick. The name “Lord of the Flies” is a reference to “Beelzebub,” which is the name of the devil in the Holy Bible, the personification of evil. In the novel, the Lord of the Flies tells Simon that the Beast is not external, but is actually part of him: <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 13.3333px; text-align: justify;"> “Fancy thinking the Beast was something you could hunt and kill!’ said the head. For a moment or two the forest and all the other dimly appreciated places echoed with the parody of laughter. ‘You knew, didn’t you? I’m part of you? Close, close, close! I’m the reason why it’s no go? Why things are what they are?” (GOLDING, p. 206) <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 16px; text-align: justify;"> In this speech, Golding reveals that the Beast is not something destroyable, something that can be hunt or killed, because it is an inherent part of man. It is because of this inner darkness that the boys cannot control themselves or maintain an organized society. Ultimately, the evil inside the boys is responsible for their own destruction. Therefore, Golding uses the Beast as a symbol for the evil that is inside mankind.

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 16px; text-align: justify;">Furthermore, Piggy’s death, Jack's rise to power and the defeat of Ralph symbolize the downfall of reason and science, the rise of evil and savagery, and the collapse of civilization, respectively. Piggy represents the scientific and rational side of man, as he is the responsible for the logical thinking in the group. After the boys become savages in Jack’s tribe, Piggy is violently killed by a rock flung by Roger, as he tries to reason with them. His death, then, symbolizes the notion that neither science nor reason can beat the evil inside man. Also, Jack, who represents the savage and violent side of mankind, is the one that rises to power after the boys are free from the restraints of civilization. This event symbolizes the rise of evil and savagery, because even though society can control man’s savage instincts, they cannot be eradicated and will triumph when man is left in his natural state. Moreover, Ralph is the character that represents the civilized and political part of man, but in the end of the story, he is left alone, hunted by the savage boys, defeated. This represents the collapse of civilization, as man’s evil instincts overpower the artificial civilized state of man.

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 16px; text-align: justify;">In addition, the hunts and ritual dances are symbols of violent instincts and savagery that are inherent in mankind. As the boys start to hunt and dance in the story, their natural instincts of violence and savagery, once suppressed by the society, begin to emerge and, because of that, their acts start to be more like animals than humans: Simon is killed by the other boys while they are dancing and pretending to hunt a pig. Quoting Dickinson (1990): “In Lord of the Flies a series of hunts, for either pigs or human, symbolically demonstrates the boys' gradual deterioration into savages. Moral order is corrupted and the end result is chaos” (DICKINSON, 1990, p.16). In final analysis, the dancing and hunting bring to surface the boys’ instincts of violence and savagery, which were censored by the society, leading them into a complete disorder in the island.

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 16px; text-align: justify;">Finally, the fire in the story can be understood as a symbol of the boys’ connection to the civilization. The fire that is created to catch the attention of a passing ship in order to save the boys has also a symbolic meaning of maintain the connection between them and the society. While Jack and most of the boys show a savage behavior because they are more concerned with hunting and less with the fire, Ralph and Piggy show a more civilized thought as they try to keep the fire burning. According to Althaus (2007), "the fire is thus intended as a link to world of grown-ups and a symbol of civilization" (ALTHAUS, 2007, p.6). In conclusion, we can analyze the fire as the way of the boy’s rescue from the island, but also as the source of salvation from the savagery as it is a symbolic link between them and the civilization.

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'; font-size: 16px; text-align: justify;">**CONCLUSION**

William Golding’s //Lord of the Flies//, published in 1954, is a reflex of the characteristic loss of faith in science, progress and mankind of the period in which it was written. The novel, which is set in a deserted island, tells the story of a group of boys that try to maintain a civilized society, but fail at this attempt as they give in to their natural savage instincts. In this story, William Golding uses symbolism in order to convey the idea that evil and savagery are inherent parts of man and that society cannot eliminate them.

The island, for instance, is a symbol of a microcosm, a space where the boys can be free from the society that regulates their instincts. Also, the conch is a symbol of political organization among the boys, and hence, its shattering symbolizes the inefficiency of this system in eliminating the evil part of man. Moreover, while Jack’s mask is a symbol of man’s natural savage instincts, the Beast is a symbol of the evil inside man. In addition, Jack’s rise to power, Ralph’s defeat, and Piggy’s death represent the rise of savagery and evil, the downfall of civilization, and the collapse of science, respectively. Furthermore, the ritual dances and the pig hunts symbolize the savagery and violence that lie within mankind. Finally, the fire is a symbol of the boys’ link to civilization. Therefore, it is clear that William Golding uses symbols in his work //Lord of the Flies// in order to express the concept of evil and savagery as innate part of humankind, as well as the belief that even though society can control these aspects of man, it cannot destroy them.