LORD OF THE FLIES

Where Written: England

When Published: 1954

Literary Period: Post-war fiction

Genre: Allegorical novel / Adventure novel

Setting: A deserted tropical island in the middle of a nuclear world war

Climax: Piggy's death

Point of View: Third person omniscient

AUTHOR:
William Golding's parents brought him up to be a scientist. But he always had an interest in
reading and writing, and at Oxford University he shifted from the sciences to literature. Golding
fought in World War II, and was involved in the D-Day landing at Normandy. His experience in
the war greatly influenced his views of human nature. After the war, he began writing novels in
addition to teaching. Lord of the Flies was Golding's first novel, published in 1954, and was a
critically acclaimed bestseller in both England and the United States. Though Golding never
again achieved the same commercial success, he continued to write and went on to publish many
more novels, including The Scorpion God (1971), Darkness Visible (1979), and Fire down
Below (1989). He won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1983 and died in 1993.

EXTRA CREDIT:

Beelzebub.

The phrase "lord of the flies" is a translation of the Greek "Beelzebub," a devil mentioned in the
New Testament. In the Bible, Beelzebub sometimes seems to be Satan himself, and at other
times seems to be Satan's most powerful lieutenant.
Coral Island.

William Golding based several of the main ideas in Lord of the Flies on Coral Island (1858), a
Somewhat obscure novel by Robert Ballantyne, a 19th-century British novelist. In Coral Island,
three English boys create an idyllic society after being shipwrecked on a deserted island. They
battle wild hogs, typhoons, hostile island visitors, and eventually Pirates on the South Seas.

HISTORICAL CONTEXT:
World War II influenced the themes and setting of Lord of the Flies. The war changed the way
people in general and William Golding in particular viewed the world. World War I was for
many years called the War to End All Wars. World War II proved that idea wrong and created a
new sense that people are inherently warlike, power hungry, and savage. While the world war
raging in Lord of the Flies is not World War II, it can be viewed as Golding's version of World
War III. Only a few brief references to the war outside the boys' island appear in the novel, but
references to an atom bomb blowing up an airport and the "Reds" make it clear that the war
involves nuclear weapons and places capitalist allies including the British against the communist
"Reds.

SUMMARY OF FULL STORY:

A group of English schoolboys are marooned on a jungle island with no adults after their plane is
shot down in the middle of a war. Two of the boys, Ralph and Piggy find a conch shell. Ralph
blows into it like a horn, and all the boys on the island assemble. At the assembly, a boy named
Jack mocks Piggy for being fat and runs against Ralph to become chief of the group. Ralph wins
the election, and declares Jack the leader of the group's hunters. Soon after, Ralph, Jack, and
another boy named Simon explore the island and discover wild pigs.

At a second assembly, the boys set up rules to govern themselves. The first rule is that whoever
wants to speak at an assembly must hold the conch. At the meeting, one young boy claims he
saw a "beastie" in the jungle, but Ralph dismisses it as just the product of a nightmare. Ralph
then suggests that they build a signal fire at the top of a mountain so any passing ships will see
its smoke and rescue them. The boys use Piggy's glasses to light the fire, but they're careless, and
accidentally set part of the forest on fire. The boy who saw the beastie vanishes during the fire
and is never seen again.

Time passes. Tensions rise. Ralph becomes frustrated when no one helps him build shelters. Lots
of boys goof off, while Jack obsesses about hunting and takes every opportunity to mock Piggy,
who is smart but weak. Simon, meanwhile, often wanders off into the forest to meditate. The
rivalry between Ralph and Jack erupts when Jack forces the boys who were supposed to watch
the signal fire come hunting with him. They kill their first pig, but a ship passes while the signal
fire is out, which causes a tremendous argument between Ralph and Jack.
Ralph calls an assembly hoping to set things right. But the meeting soon becomes chaotic as
Several younger boys talk about the beast. Now even the bigger boys are fearful. That night,
after a distant airplane battle, a dead parachutist lands on the mountaintop next to the signal fire.
The boys on duty at the fire think it's the beast. Soon Ralph and Jack lead an expedition to search
the island for the beast. While searching, they find a rock outcropping that would make a great
fort, but no beast. Tempers between the two boys soon flare up, and they climb the mountain in
the dark to prove their courage. They spot the shadowy parachutist and think he's the beast.

The next morning, Jack challenges Ralph's authority at an assembly. Ralph wins, but Jack leaves
the group, and most of the older boys join him. Jack's tribe paint their faces, hunt, and kill a pig.
They then leave its head as an offering to the beast. Simon comes upon the head, and sees that
it's the Lord of the Flies—the beast within all men. While Jack invites everyone to come to a
feast, Simon climbs the mountain and sees the parachutist. When Simon returns to tell everyone
the truth about the "beast," however, the boys at the feast have become a frenzied mob, acting
out a ritual killing of a pig. The mob thinks Simon is the beast and kills him.

Jack's tribe moves to the rock fort. They steal Piggy's glasses to make fire. Ralph and his last
allies, Piggy and the twins named Samneric, go to get the glasses back. Jack's tribe captures the
twins, and a boy named Roger rolls a boulder from the fort that smashes the conch and kills
Piggy. The next day the tribe hunts Ralph, setting fire to the forest as they do. He evades them as
best he can, and becomes a kind of animal that thinks only of survival and escape. Eventually the
boys corner Ralph on the beach where they first set up their society when they crash landed on
the island. But the burning jungle has attracted a British Naval ship, and an officer is standing on
the shore. The boys stop, stunned, and stare at the man. He jokingly asks if the boys are playing
at war, and whether there were any casualties. When Ralph says yes, the officer is shocked and
disappointed that English boys would act in such a manner. Ralph starts to cry, and soon the
other boys start crying too. The officer, uncomfortable, looks away toward his warship.

PLOT ANALYSIS:

The major conflict in Lord of the Flies is the struggle between Jack and Ralph. The fight for who
will lead the island represents the clash between a peaceful democracy, as symbolized by Ralph,
and a violent dictatorship, as symbolized by Jack. Both boys are potential leaders of the entire
group, and though Jack grudgingly accepts Ralph’s leadership at first, as the plot develops their
rivalry grows and intensifies until it is a struggle to the death. Ralph and Jack (and the boys who
align themselves with each) represent different values and different aspects of human nature.
Ralph represents respect for the law, duty, reason, and the protection of the weak, whereas Jack
represents violence, cruelty, mob rule, government through fear, and tyranny. As we see Ralph’s
hold over the other boys weaken and crumble until he is cast out and hunted, the story seems to
be showing us that humanity’s violent and savage impulses are more powerful than civilization,
which is inherently fragile. And while Ralph is rescued at the last minute by a representative of
civilization in the person of the naval officer, the fact that a global war is taking place underlines
the idea that civilization itself is under serious threat from the forces of violence.

Set against the backdrop of global war, the book serves as a caution against the specific
consequences of nuclear armament, as well as a broader examination of human nature and the
destabilizing presence of man in the natural world. In telling its story through the experience of
young boys isolated from the rest of civilization, and making few references to the world outside
the confines of the island, the novel creates a sense of inevitability and universality to the
specific tale of a small group battling nature and each other. By making the two main characters
emblematic of two approaches to society, Golding creates a conflict that seems to lead
inexorably to the destruction of one of the characters, but is instead resolved by the surprise
introduction of the outside, ‘adult’ reality. In this way the preceding events act as allegory for the
more consequential, and far more dangerous, actions of man beyond the island.

The book opens in the immediate aftermath of the plane crash that lands the boys on the island,
so the novel’s inciting incident happens offstage. The reader first meets Ralph, who is introduced
as graceful and physically appealing, and Piggy, who is presented as Ralph’s physical opposite.
The boys discover a conch and use it to summon the rest of the survivors of the crash,
introducing us to Jack, who appears confident and is already leading a group of boys. The boys
vote for Ralph to be the group’s chief, despite the fact that “the most obvious leader was Jack,”
partly because Ralph possesses the conch. Jack reluctantly accepts Ralph’s leadership, and the
two bond in exploring the island together. Jack asserts himself after the humiliation of losing the
vote for chief by slamming his knife into a tree and declaring that he will be a hunter,
establishing the boys’ primary roles: Ralph will be in charge of communication and working to
get them rescued, while Jack will be responsible for hunting for meat. Which of these two roles
is more important will be the source of escalating conflict between the two for the remainder of
the book.

The rising action of the novel takes place over the following chapters, as each boy on the island
establishes his role in the order of the newly formed society, and Jack and Ralph find themselves
increasingly at odds over what the group’s priorities should be and where they should expend
energy. Ralph insists that a signal fire must be maintained constantly in case any ships pass the
island, and believes the best use of resources is in collaborative work to watch the fire, build
shelters, and gather fruit. Jack discovers a passionate enjoyment of hunting, and allows the signal
fire to go out while killing a pig, leading to a clash with Ralph, who has seen a ship pass while
the fire was out. The younger boys on the island express growing fears about a beast they believe
comes out at night to menace them. In a scene the reader sees but none of the boys witnesses, a
paratrooper crashes onto the top of the mountain, and the boys subsequently mistake his form for
the beast, increasing their fears and making them vulnerable to Jack’s equation of killing pigs
with vanquishing their fears, as their chants change from “kill the pig” to “kill the beast.”

After the boys kill Simon in a frenzy of fear and violent excitement, the rift between Jack and
Ralph reaches a crisis point, and the climax of the book occurs when Jack and his tribe steal
Piggy’s glasses, then kill Piggy when he comes to get them back. When Jack’s tribe steals the
glasses, Ralph and Piggy think they are coming for the conch, but at this point the conch has lost
most of its symbolic power, and Jack understands the glasses, which are necessary to start a fire,
are the real item of value. This devaluing of the conch suggests that the agreed-upon symbols of
democracy and due process no longer apply, and the fragile civilization the boys have forged is
imploding. The next day, Piggy and Ralph go to retrieve Piggy’s glasses and a member of Jack’s
tribe releases a large boulder, smashing the conch and killing Piggy. The democracy is
demolished, and Jack’s despotic monarchy is cemented. Realizing his life is in imminent danger,
Ralph flees Jack and his tribe, who have become bloodthirsty and increasingly sadistic under his
violent influence.

Up to this point the boys have maintained a fragile balance, with Jack’s willingness to enact
violence offset by Ralph’s control of the means of lighting the fire and the symbolic power
conferred by the conch. Once this balance is destroyed, and Jack controls both the means of
sustaining the fire and keeping the boys obedient to his rule, Ralph is rendered powerless. Unlike
Ralph, who expects the boys to be intrinsically motivated to work together, Jack is willing to
exert external influence on boys who disobey him, and leads by force, rather than persuasion.
Motivated by a fear of Jack’s violence as well as a mob mentality, the boys pursue Ralph across
the island, even though he poses no actual threat. Even the twins Samneric, initially sympathetic
to Ralph, give themselves over to Jack after he tortures them to reveal Ralph’s hiding place. The
boys set a fire to flush Ralph out of the jungle, which signals a passing ship. The ship’s officer
comes on shore, reintroducing civilization, and the boys realize the horrors they have endured
and perpetuated. The book ends with the island destroyed, and the boys rescued but scarred by
their glimpses into “the darkness of man’s heart.”

SETTING:
Lord of the Flies takes place on an unnamed, uninhabited tropical island in the Pacific Ocean
during a fictional worldwide war around the year 1950. The boys arrive on the island when an
airplane that was presumably evacuating them crashes. From the moment of their arrival, the
boys begin destroying the natural harmony of the island. The scorched land where the airplane
crashed, ripping up trees, is described as a “scar.” The boys set a fire that burns out of control,
kill the wild pigs living on the island, use the beach as a bathroom, and finally burn the entire
island, so that is “scorched up like dead wood.” Although the boys initially rejoice at the
adventures they’ll have on the island, saying it’s “wizard,” the island itself is described as an
inhospitable terrain, as though the land is attempting to reject its new inhabitants. The coconuts
are “skull-like,” the sun’s rays are “invisible arrows,” the sound of the trees rubbing against each
other is “evil.” The natural world is violent and impartial to the civility and order of human life,
as evidenced when the tide reclaims the brutalized bodies of Simon and Piggy.

CHARACTERS:

1. RAPLH:
Ralph is the athletic, charismatic protagonist of Lord of the Flies. Elected the leader of the boys
at the beginning of the novel, Ralph is the eldest, physically strong and primary representative of
order, civilization, and productive leadership in the novel. While most of the other boys initially
are concerned with playing, having fun, and avoiding work, Ralph sets about building huts and
thinking of ways to maximize their chances of being rescued. For this reason, Ralph’s power and
influence over the other boys are secure at the beginning of the novel. However, as the group
gradually succumbs to savage instincts over the course of the novel, Ralph’s position declines
precipitously while Jack’s rises. Eventually, most of the boys except Piggy leave Ralph’s group
for Jack’s, and Ralph is left alone to be hunted by Jack’s tribe.

Ralph’s commitment to civilization and morality is strong, and his main wish is to be rescued
and returned to the society of adults. In a sense, this strength gives Ralph a moral victory at the
end of the novel, when he casts the Lord of the Flies to the ground and takes up the stake it is
impaled on to defend himself against Jack’s hunters. In the earlier parts of the novel, Ralph is
unable to understand why the other boys would give in to base instincts of bloodlust and
barbarism. The sight of the hunters chanting and dancing is baffling and distasteful to him. As
the novel progresses, however, Ralph, like Simon, comes to understand that savagery exists
within all the boys.

Ralph remains determined not to let this savagery overwhelm him, and only briefly does he
consider joining Jack’s tribe in order to save himself. When Ralph hunts a boar for the first time,
however, he experiences the exhilaration and thrill of bloodlust and violence. When he attends
Jack’s feast, he is swept away by the frenzy, dances on the edge of the group, and participates in
the killing of Simon. This firsthand knowledge of the evil that exists within him, as within all
human beings, is tragic for Ralph, and it plunges him into listless despair for a time. But this
knowledge also enables him to cast down the Lord of the Flies at the end of the novel. Ralph’s
story ends semi-tragically: although he is rescued and returned to civilization, when he sees the
naval officer, he weeps with the burden of his new knowledge about the human capacity for evil.

2. JACK:
The strong-willed, egomaniacal Jack is the novel’s primary representative of the instinct of
savagery, violence, and the desire for power—in short, the antithesis of Ralph. From the
beginning of the novel, Jack desires power and dominance above all other things. He is furious
when he loses the election to Ralph and continually pushes the boundaries of his subordinate role
in the group. Early on, Jack retains the sense of moral propriety and behavior that society
instilled in him—in fact, in school, he was the leader of the choirboys. The first time he
encounters a pig, he is unable to kill it.
But Jack soon becomes obsessed with hunting and devotes himself to the task, painting his face
like a barbarian and giving himself over to bloodlust. The more savage Jack becomes, the more
he is able to control the rest of the group. Indeed, apart from Ralph, Simon, and Piggy, the group
largely follows Jack in casting off moral restraint and embracing violence and savagery. Jack’s
love of authority and violence are intimately connected, as both enable him to feel powerful and
exalted. By the end of the novel, Jack has learned to use the boys’ fear of the beast to control
their behavior—a reminder of how religion and superstition can be manipulated as instruments
of power.

3. SIMON:
Whereas Ralph and Jack stand at opposite ends of the spectrum between civilization and
savagery, Simon stands on an entirely different plane from all the other boys. Simon embodies a
kind of innate, spiritual human goodness that is deeply connected with nature and, in its own
way, as primal as Jack’s evil. The other boys abandon moral behavior as soon as civilization is
no longer there to impose it upon them. They are not innately moral; rather, the adult world—the
threat of punishment for misdeeds—has conditioned them to act morally. To an extent, even the
seemingly civilized Ralph and Piggy are products of social conditioning, as we see when they
participate in the hunt-dance. In Golding’s view, the human impulse toward civilization is not as
deeply rooted as the human impulse toward savagery. He is brave and part of hunters group but
never became one. He helps Ralph build shelters and is not afraid to go to the jungle alone.
Some critics give him the name of Jesus Christ.

Unlike all the other boys on the island, Simon acts morally not out of guilt or shame but because
he believes in the inherent value of morality. He behaves kindly toward the younger children,
and he is the first to realize the problem posed by the beast and the Lord of the Flies—that is,
that the monster on the island is not a real, physical beast but rather a savagery that lurks within
each human being. The sows head on the stake symbolizes this idea, as we see in Simon’s vision
of the head speaking to him. Ultimately, this idea of the inherent evil within each human being
stands as the moral conclusion and central problem of the novel. Against this idea of evil, Simon
represents a contrary idea of essential human goodness. However, his brutal murder at the hands
of the other boys indicates the scarcity of that good amid an overwhelming abundance of evil.

4. PIGGY:

Piggy is the first boy Ralph encounters on the island after the crash and remains the most true
and loyal friend throughout Lord of the Flies. An overweight, intellectual, and talkative boy,
Piggy is the brains behind many of Ralph’s successful ideas and innovations, such as using the
conch to call meetings and building shelters for the group. Piggy represents the scientific and
rational side of humanity, supporting Ralph’s signal fires and helping to problem solve on the
island. However, Piggy’s asthma, weight, and poor eyesight make him physically inferior to the
others, making him vulnerable to scorn and ostracism. Piggy is also the only boy who worries
about the rules of English civilization, namely what the grownups will think when they find the
savage boys. Piggy believes in rules, timeliness, and order, and as the island descends into brutal
chaos, Piggy’s position comes under threat of intense violence.

Piggy’s independence and thoughtfulness prevent him from being fully absorbed by the group,
so he is not as susceptible to the mob mentality that overtakes many of the other boys. However,
like Ralph, Piggy cannot avoid the temptations of savagery on the island. The morning after the
frenzied dance, Piggy and Ralph both admit to taking some part (although they remain vague) in
the attack and murder of Simon. While Piggy tries to convince himself that Simon’s murder was
an accident, his participation suggests that his willingness to be accepted by the group led him to
betray his own morals and better judgment. Piggy’s death suggests that intellectualism is
vulnerable to brutality. While Simon’s death can be viewed as an accident or an escalation of
mob mentality, Piggy’s murder is the most intentional and inevitable on the island, and the
moment when the group’s last tie to civilization and humanity is severed.

5. ROGER:

Introduced as a quiet and intense older boy, Roger eventually becomes a sadistic and brutal
terrorist over the course of Lord of the Flies. Midway through the book, Roger’s cruelty begins
to surface in an episode where he terrorizes the littlun Henry by throwing rocks at him. Still
beholden to the rules of society, Roger leaves a safe distance between the rocks and the child,
but we see his moral code beginning to crack.
As Jack gains power, Roger quickly understands that Jack’s brutality and willingness to commit
violence will make him a powerful and effective leader. When he learns that Jack plans to torture
Wilfred for no apparent reason, he thinks about “the possibilities of irresponsible authority,”
rather than trying to help Wilfred or find out Jack’s motivation. Roger gives into the “delirious
abandonment” of senseless violence when he releases the boulder that kills Piggy. He then
descends upon the twins, threatening to torture them. The next day, Samneric tell Ralph “You
don’t know Roger. He’s a terror.”

6. SAM AND ERIC:

Introduced as a quiet and intense older boy, Roger eventually becomes a sadistic and brutal
terrorist over the course of Lord of the Flies. Midway through the book, Roger’s cruelty begins
to surface in an episode where he terrorizes the littlun Henry by throwing rocks at him. Still
beholden to the rules of society, Roger leaves a safe distance between the rocks and the child,
but we see his moral code beginning to crack. As Jack gains power, Roger quickly understands
that Jack’s brutality and willingness to commit violence will make him a powerful and effective
leader.
When he learns that Jack plans to torture Wilfred for no apparent reason, he thinks about “the
possibilities of irresponsible authority,” rather than trying to help Wilfred or find out Jack’s
motivation. Roger gives into the “delirious abandonment” of senseless violence when he releases
the boulder that kills Piggy. He then descends upon the twins, threatening to torture them. The
next day, Samneric tell Ralph “You don’t know Roger. He’s a terror.”

SYMBOLS:
1. PAINTED FACES:

The painted faces of Jack and his “tribe” symbolize man’s return to primitivism and barbarism.

2. CHARACTERS:

All the characters possess their symbolic value. Ralph symbolizes civilization and order. He
shows the sophisticated side of man and holds the position of a democratic leader. Piggy
represents the voice of reason in civilization. Clearly Simon is the Christ- figure, the voice of
revelation. Jack and Roger symbolize evil. Jack shows the power-hungry and savage end of
society while Roger represents brutality and bloodlust. The littluns represent the common
people.
3. DEAD PARACHUTIST:

The introduction of the dead parachutist symbolizes the fall of adult supervision. It also
symbolizes the start of destruction. The appearance of the naval officer symbolizes the return of
both adult supervision and civilization.

4. THE CONCH SHELL:

Piggy finds the conch, a shell, on the seashore and tells Ralph what it is. He also tells him an
innovative idea of how and why to use it. It is then used to gather boys and call an assembly. In
this connection, it becomes a symbol of authority, order, and law. It wins not only respect and
obedience but also proves that the person who is holding the conch has the ultimate authority.
When it is with a person, every boy is bound to pay respect and obey him. That is why Jack
attacks conch to end the authority and establishes his own rule. The end of conch is an end of the
era of law and order.

5. PIGGY’S GLASSES:

Piggy is handicapped and wears glasses. He also has asthma. His asthmatic disability has blessed
him with rational power. On the other hand, his glasses have given him an edge to start a fire.
Hence, it becomes a symbol of life which is used to prepare a fire to use as a signal for rescue. It
becomes so much significant among the boys that Jack and his hunters attack Ralph and Piggy
and their group to snatch the glasses to make their own fire.

6. THE SIGNAL FIRE:

The signal created by fire by the boys is actually a symbol of life and safety. It also shows that
civilization is alive on the island. When the boys determine to stay alive and to return to the
civilization, they instantly accept Piggy’s suggestion to light the fire, using his glasses. However,
as the boys become lazy and oblivious, they ignore to keep it alive. Hence, the fire eventually
dies. Even by the end, it becomes clear that the signal fire is important for the civilized behavior
and helped in the safe rescue of the boys.

7. THE BEAST:

The beast is actually the head of the parachuting dead soldier hanging by the branches of trees. It
is infested with maggots and flies. The only boy who knows the reality of this beast is Simon.
However, he fails to explain it to other boys. Therefore, it has transformed into a symbol of
something dreadful and terrifying. In fact, this head symbolizes the inner savagery and barbarism
of the boys in specific and mankind in general.

8. THE LORD OF THE FLIES:

This is the head of a pig that the hunters from Jack’s group impale and plant on a stick to offer a
sacrifice to the beast. They believe that the beast which supposedly terrifies them will be
pleased. It is a physical representation of their awe towards that beast. The phrase ‘the lord of the
flies’ refer to their naming it as the lord of those flies which swarmed the head of the dead
soldier. It symbolizes something that is to be presented as a gift to the beast to hold sway over
the flies as it is their lord.

9. NAVEL OFFICER:
The naval officer is a British officer of the Royal Navy. He appears by the end of the novel who
comes to the island after seeing the fire. He confronts Ralph who is running for his life from
Jack’s hunters. When he sees the boys playing the barbaric game, he scolds them for showing
dirty and rude manners unbecoming of the British boys. He asks Ralph about their game and
their presence on the island over which Ralph’s eyes are filled with tears. He is hardly able to
narrate the barbaric episode to the officer when other boys appear. They instantly become a pack
of civilized dirty boys after seeing the officer in uniform with a pistol in his holster. In other
words, the naval officer represents order, authority, and culture. His uniform and pistol are
symbols of the rule of law and the tools to establish it.

10.THE OCEAN:

The ocean symbolizes the unconscious, the thoughts and desires buried deep within all humans.

11.THE ISLAND:

The tropical island, with its bountiful food and untouched beauty, symbolizes paradise. It is like
a Garden of Eden in which the boys can try to create the perfect society from scratch.

THEMES:
1. ABSENCE OF LAWS:
When the children land on the island, they are left on their own. They do not have any social
setup with traditions and rules. Ralph and Piggy try to set up a decent society through the
assembly with the help of the conch. However, due to the absence of responsible adult
supervision and guidance, they soon resort to violence. The strong group of hunters see that there
are no binding laws and punishing authority. Therefore, they form a separate strong group and
try to break their rules. Once the rules are broken, they are on the loose. Unfortunately, Piggy is
killed in this mayhem. Lack of a leader makes them bolder, and they try to kill Ralph too, who
fortunately saves himself when the British officer arrive. This shows that absence of laws creates
chaos and disorder that leads to killing the innocents and the weak.

2. DEHUMANIZATION OF RELATIONS:

Relations between human beings is one of the greatest mysteries. This novel shows when
relations between human beings degenerates they reach to low-down state. Seeing the corrupt
humans, you may want to believe the animals are better. Jack instantly orders the killing of
Piggy when they become two parties, and war for domination ensues. Ralph and Jack are just
two boys with normal relations. However, when Jack becomes his enemy, their relationship
deteriorates.
This is called dehumanization of relations; both boys turn against each other.
 3. VICE AGAINST VIRTUE:
Vice against virtue is another major theme of the novel. William Golding has deliberately put
children in the wilderness to evaluate how virtue is an innate feature of human nature, and how it
loses against the vice. Although simple at first, a devious immoral action of Jack to dominate the
children by taking leadership from Ralph turns into a vice. It gradually dominates others, and by
the end of the novel, Ralph is left alone to represent virtue on that island.

4. ABSENCE OF SOCIAL NORMS:

A major latent theme that William Golding has put into Lord of the Flies is the presence of social
norms and traditions. The idea behind this theme is that it is the pressure of the social norms and
traditions that force people to obey laws and rules or traditions. If there is an absence of social
norms, people show their true nature, and it is mostly evil and vicious. However, social norms,
traditions, and customs protect the weaker group. Hence, Piggy remained safe until there were a
proper leadership and rule of conch. Yet he is instantly killed when conch becomes an obsolete
thing.

5. INDIVIDUALISM VS COMMUNITY:
One of the key concerns of Lord of the Flies is the role of the individual in society. Many of the
problems on the island-the extinguishing of the signal fire, the lack of shelters, the mass
abandonment of Ralph's camp, and the murder of Piggy-stem from the boys' implicit
commitment to a principle of self-interest over the principle of community. That is, the boys
would rather fulfill their individual desires than cooperate as a coherent society, which would
require that each one act for the good of the group.
Accordingly, the principles of individualism and community are symbolized by Jack and Ralph,
respectively. Jack wants to "have fun" on the island and satisfy his bloodlust, while Ralph wants
to secure the group's rescue, a goal they can achieve only by cooperating. Yet, while Ralph's
vision is the most reasonable, it requires work and sacrifice on the part of the other boys, so they
quickly shirk their societal duties in favor of fulfilling their individual desires. The shelters do
not get built because the boys would rather play; the signal fire is extinguished when Jack's
hunters fail to tend to it on schedule. The boys' self-interestedness culminates, of course, when
they decide to join Jack's tribe, a society without communal values whose appeal is that Jack will
offer them total freedom.
The popularity of his tribe reflects the enormous appeal of a society based on individual freedom
and self-interest, but as the reader soon learns, the freedom Jack offers his tribe is illusory. Jack
implements punitive and irrational rules and restricts his boys' behavior far more than Ralph did.
Golding thus suggests not only that some level of communal system is superior to one based on
pure self-interest, but also that pure individual freedom is an impossible value to sustain within a
group dynamic, which will always tend towards societal organization. The difficult question, of
course, is what individuals are willing to give up to gain the benefits of being in the group.

6. LOSS OF INNOCENCE:

As the boys on the island progress from well-behaved, orderly children longing for rescue to
cruel, bloodthirsty hunters who have no desire to return to civilization, they naturally lose the
sense of innocence that they possessed at the beginning of the novel. The painted savages in
Chapter 12 who have hunted, tortured, and killed animals and human beings are a far cry from
the guileless children swimming in the lagoon in Chapter 3. But Golding does not portray this
loss of innocence as something that is done to the children; rather, it results naturally from their
increasing openness to the innate evil and savagery that has always existed within them.
Golding implies that civilization can mitigate but never wipe out the innate evil that exists within
all human beings. The forest glade in which Simon sits in Chapter 3 symbolizes this loss of
innocence. At first, it is a place of natural beauty and peace, but when Simon returns later in the
novel, he discovers the bloody sow’s head impaled upon a stake in the middle of the clearing.
The bloody offering to the beast has disrupted the paradise that existed before—a powerful
symbol of innate human evil disrupting childhood innocence.

7. SPIRITUALITY AND RELIGION:

Most of the boys on the island either hide behind civilization, denying the beast's existence, or
succumb to the beast's power by embracing savagery. But in Lord of the Flies, Golding presents
an alternative to civilized suppression and beastly savagery. This is a life of religion and spiritual
truth-seeking, in which men look into their own hearts, accept that there is a beast within, and
face it squarely.
Simon occupies this role in Lord of the Flies, and in doing so he symbolizes all the great spiritual
and religious men, from Jesus to Buddha to nameless mystics and shamans, who have sought to
help other men accept and face the terrible fact that the beast they fear is themselves. Of all the
boys, only Simon fights through his own fear to discover that the "beast" at the mountaintop is
just a dead man. But when Simon returns with the news that there's no real beast, only the beast
within, the other boys kill him. Not just the savages, not just the civilized boys—all the boys kill
Simon, because all of the boys lack the courage Simon displayed in facing the beast

8. SAVEGERY:
The "beast" is a symbol Golding uses to represent the savage impulses lying deep within every
human being. Civilization exists to suppress the beast. By keeping the natural human desire for
power and violence to a minimum, civilization forces people to act responsibly and rationally, as
boys like Piggy and Ralph do in Lord in the Flies. Savagery arises when civilization stops
suppressing the beast: it's the beast unleashed. Savages not only acknowledge the beast, they
thrive on it and worship it like a god. As Jack and his tribe become savages, they begin to
believe the beast exists physically—they even leave it offerings to win its favor to ensure their
protection. Civilization forces people to hide from their darkest impulses, to suppress them.
Savages surrender to their darkest impulses, which they attribute to the demands of gods who
require their obedience.

9. HUMAN NATURE:

William Golding once said that in writing Lord of the Flies he aimed to trace society's flaws
back to their source in human nature. By leaving a group of English schoolboys to fend for
themselves on a remote jungle island, Golding creates a kind of human nature laboratory in order
to examine what happens when the constraints of civilization vanish and raw human nature takes
over. In Lord of the Flies, Golding argues that human nature, free from the constraints of society,
draws people away from reason toward savagery. The makeshift civilization the boys form in
Lord of the Flies collapses under the weight of their innate savagery: rather than follow rules and
work hard, they pursue fun, succumb to fear, and fall to violence. Golding's underlying argument
is that human beings are savage by nature, and are moved by primal urges toward selfishness,
brutality, and dominance over others. Though the boys think the beast lives in the jungle,
Golding makes it clear that it lurks only in their hearts.

10. STRUCTURALISM:
Explain the creation of binaries (polar) like Jack and Ralph, boys and girls, black and white
people, different civilizations, physical features.

BIBLICAL PARALLELS:
Many critics have characterized Lord of the Flies as a retelling of episodes from the Bible. While
that description may be an oversimplification, the novel does echo certain Christian images and
themes. Golding does not make any explicit or direct connections to Christian symbolism in
Lord of the Flies; instead, these biblical parallels function as a kind of subtle motif in the novel,
adding thematic resonance to the main ideas of the story. The island itself, particularly Simon’s
glade in the forest, recalls the Garden of Eden in its status as an originally pristine place that is
corrupted by the introduction of evil. Similarly, we may see the Lord of the Flies as a
representation of the devil, for it works to promote evil among humankind. Furthermore, many
critics have drawn strong parallels between Simon and Jesus. Among the boys, Simon is the one
who arrives at the moral truth of the novel, and the other boys kill him sacrificially as a
consequence of having discovered this truth. Simon’s conversation with the Lord of the Flies
also parallels the confrontation between Jesus and the devil during Jesus’ forty days in the
wilderness, as told in the Christian Gospels.
However, it is important to remember that the parallels between Simon and Christ are not
complete, and that there are limits to reading Lord of the Flies purely as a Christian allegory.
Save for Simon’s two uncanny predictions of the future, he lacks the supernatural connection to
God that Jesus has in Christian tradition. Although Simon is wise in many ways, his death does
not bring salvation to the island; rather, his death plunges the island deeper into savagery and
moral guilt. Moreover, Simon dies before he is able to tell the boys the truth he has discovered.
Jesus, in contrast, was killed while spreading his moral philosophy. In this way, Simon—and
Lord of the Flies as a whole—echoes Christian ideas and themes without developing explicit,
precise parallels with them. The novel’s biblical parallels enhance its moral themes but are not
necessarily the primary key to interpreting the story.

IMPORTANT QUOTES AND SOME THEMES:

1. STRUGGLE TO BUILD CIVILIZATION:

“What are we? Humans? Or animals? Or savages?”

Piggy says this to Ralph during one of their assemblies. Piggy is consistently in support of
keeping a signal fire going, and concentrating on their rescue. He sees the boys’ potential for
violence long before the others. Here, he pleads with his listeners to remember their civilization
back home, while articulating a central question of the novel.
“Jack stood up as he said this, the bloodied knife in his hand. The two boys
faced each other. There was the brilliant world of hunting, tactics, fierce
exhilaration,
skill; and there was the world of longing and baffled commonsense.” Throughout
the novel Golding suggests that the path to civilization is more difficult and less likely than the
path to tyranny. Here, Jack and Ralph fight. Jack is described in terms of his adroitness, Ralph
in terms of his shortcomings, and the ideals he represents are presented as less tangible or
attractive.

“Bollocks to the rules! We’re strong – we hunt! If there’s a beast, we’ll hunt it
down! We’ll close in and beat and beat and beat - !”
Jack shouts this to Piggy, who advocates against believing in the beast, and in maintaining the
signal fire. Again, Golding shows that Jack’s pitch is simple and compelling, while Piggy’s and
Ralph’s is mired in debate and indecision. By offering simple, brutal solutions and by playing off
of the other boys’ fears, Jack positions himself as likely chief.

“’We’ve got to have special people for looking after the fire. Any day there may
be a ship out there… and if we have a signal going they’ll come and take us off.
And another thing. We ought to have more rules. Where the conch is, that’s a
meeting. The same up here as down there.”
Ralph sets up his society with the express mission of looking to the future, and focusing on the
boys’ safety, by way of shelter, and rescue. This need for rules, and constant decision-making,
proves untenable for the boys, who gravitate toward authoritarianism throughout the novel.

2. MAN INHERENT EVIL:

The fact that the main characters in Lord of the Flies are young boys suggests the potential for
evil is inherent even in small children. Jack, for example, is initially keen for rules and civility,
but becomes obsessed with hunting, frightened and empowered by the promise of violence.
Jack’s desire to control and subjugate proves more powerful than his desire for empathy,
intellect, and civilization, and Jack becomes a brutal and leader. Even Ralph and Piggy, who
both strive to maintain their sense of humanity, ultimately join in on the mass murder of Simon,
momentarily surrendering to the thrill of violence and mass hysteria. While Piggy tries to ignore
their participation, Ralph is devastated when he realizes that he is no better than Jack or Roger,
and that he has a darkness inside as well.

But the character of Simon suggests humans can resist their inherently violent tendencies. The
only boy who never participates in the island’s savagery, Simon has the purest moral code and is
able to remain an individual throughout Lord of the Flies. While the others consider him weak
and strange, Simon stands up for Piggy and the littluns, helps Ralph build the shelters, and
provides thoughtful and insightful assessment of their predicament. Simon recognizes that the
beast is not a physical beast, but perhaps the darkness and innate brutality within the boys
themselves. After a terrifying conversation with the Lord of the Flies, Simon recognizes the
paratrooper as a symbol of fear and the boys as agents of evil, and runs to tell the others. But
Simon is never able to properly explain this to the other boys before they beat him to death in a
frenzy of excitement and fear.

“Maybe there is a beast… Maybe it’s only us.”

With the other boys are afraid of a sea monster or some winged creature, Simon meditates on the
metaphysical nature of the beast, wondering if they should fear their own natures instead of
some outside force. Simon predicts that there is a darkness lurking in the hearts of the boys on
the island, and rejects the notion of a beast.

“Fancy thinking the Beast was something you could hunt and kill!... 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?”
The Lord of the Flies says this to Simon when he is isolated, in the woods. The Lord of the Flies
confirms Simon’s theory about the beast, explaining that the darkness that is within human
beings can’t be killed. Here, Golding uses dialogue to point to his larger allegory, to answer
“why things are what they are.”

“His mind was crowded with memories; memories of the knowledge that had
come to them when they closed in on the struggling pig, knowledge that they
had outwitted a living thing, imposed their will upon it, taken away its life like a
long satisfying drink.”
Jack relishes what he feels after a particularly satisfying hunt. Here, Golding makes a connection
between Jack’s thrill of the hunt and his desire to commit violence. Even at the first assembly,
Jack is obsessed with the idea of hunting, which, Golding suggests, betrays his desire to take life.

3. THE DANGERS OF MOB MENTALITY:

Lord of the Flies explores the dangers of mob mentality in terrifying scenes of violence and
torture. Early on, the boys sing “Kill the pig. Cut her throat. Spill her blood,” after a successful
hunt, elevating their shared act of violence into a celebratory chant. By coming together as a
mob, the boys transform the upsetting experience of killing an animal into a bonding ritual.
Acting as one group, the boys are able to commit worse and worse crimes, deluding one another
into believing in the potential danger posed by the beast justifies their violence.
Similarly, the boys use war paint to hide their identities as individuals, and avoid personal
responsibility. Ralph, Piggy and Samneric both fear and envy the hunters’ “liberation into
savagery.” Their desire to be part of the group leads to voluntary participation in the ritualistic
dance and brutal killing of Simon. The mob’s shared irrational fear and proclivity toward
violence results in a devastating act of ultimate cruelty.

Kill the pig. Cut her throat. Spill her blood.”

Immediately after their first successful hunt, Jack’s hunters chant as a group, showing that they
prefer to enact violence as a mob, rather than as individuals. Their chanting shows their
cohesion, and their delight over killing becomes ritualistic.

“Simon was crying out something about a dead man on a hill… The sticks fell
and the mouth of the new circle crunched and screamed. The beast was on its
knees in the center, its arms folded over its face. It was crying out against the
abominable noise, something about a body on the hill… At once the crowd
surged after it, poured down the rock, leapt on to the beast, screamed, struck,
bit, tore.”
This quote suggests otherwise moral beings will subject themselves to immorality for the
purpose of joining a group. When Simon is murdered, the boys think that he is the beast, and
enable each other to believe this fantasy. Again, they kill as a mob, nobody stepping in to disrupt
the collective fantasy or prevent injustice.

“There had grown up tacitly among the biguns the opinion that Piggy was an
outsider, not only by accent, which did not matter, but by fat, and ass-mar, and
specs, and a certain disinclination for manual labor.”
If most of the boys are vulnerable to the attractions of being part of a group, Piggy is firmly
independent. His lack of physical prowess and his tendency toward thoughtfulness make him a
bad fit for mob mentality. His virtues–wisdom, patience, goodness–are not immediately apparent
or attractive to the rest of the boys.

“Memory of the dance that none of them had attended shook all four boys
convulsively.”
After Simon is killed, Piggy, Samneric, and Ralph, all struggle with what they saw. Only Ralph
is able to correctly remember it as murder. The other boys pretend they didn’t see it, or that they
weren’t there, or that it was an accident. This kind of willful ignorance and delusion enables
mobs to behave brutally or immorally.

“… the mask was a thing on its own, behind which Jack hid, liberated from
shame and self-consciousness.”
In order for the boys to commit violence, they need to subjugate their individual morality, and
senses of shame to the will of the group. Golding reflects the psychology of mob mentality here,
showing that Jack uses his face paint to silence the good in him, and enable him to be ruthless
and shameless.

4. WAR AND THE FUTURE OF MANKIND:

Set during a global war, Lord of the Flies offers a view of what society might look like trying to
rebuild after a large scale manmade catastrophe. In their attempt to rebuild society, the boys
cannot agree on a new order and eventually fall into savagery. Ralph comes to realize that social
order, fairness and thoughtfulness have little value in a world where basic survival a struggle,
such as after a devastating war. The paratrooper who lands on the island reminds the reader that
while the boys are struggling to survive peacefully on the island, the world at large is still at war.
Even in their isolation and youth, the boys are unable to avoid violence. In their descent into
torture and murder, they mirror the warring world around them

“So they had shifted camp then, away from the beast. As Simon thought this, he
turned to the poor broken thing that sat stinking by his side. The beast was
harmless and horrible; and the news must reach the others as soon as possible.”
Simon discovers that what they thought was the beast is only a dead paratrooper. This beast is
both “harmless and horrible,” which points to the fact that, while it is no fanged monster like the
boys thought, it’s still a threat as a reminder of the instability and violence that exists in the
world beyond the island.

“Didn’t you hear what the pilot said? About the atom bomb? They’re all dead.”
Golding places the action of his novel directly after a detonation of an atomic bomb. By doing
this, he ties his story to real geopolitical problems, making his story a prediction of what future
societies would look like after global war. The boys are unable to rebuild civilization, and fall
quickly into savagery.

“And in the middle of them, with filthy body, matted hair, and unwiped nose,
Ralph wept for the end of innocence, the darkness of man’s heart, and the fall
through the air of the true, wise friend called Piggy.”
The novel ends with Ralph’s hopes for fairness and civility destroyed, as he realizes that what he
experienced on the island betrayed something fundamental about the darkness inherit to all
mankind. He rightly realizes that people like Piggy – individuals averse to violence, and prone to
thoughtfulness – have no place in any future social order. This is why Ralph weeps: because
what he saw on the island was a microcosm of the world at large.