Brown, Bailey
O’connell
English 10
December 20, 2012
Rules And Agree Or To Hunt And Kill
In the book Lord of the Flies, Golding uses an abundance of symbolism relating objects that the characters have to events in the book. Three of the most important symbols that mold the story of the young british school boys are salvation, clarity, and power. Salvation is tied to fire, clarity is tied to Piggy’s glasses, and power resembles the Conch. Golding shows that when these symbols are taken away the boys slowly cave-in to humanities, primitive life style, and a struggle for power leaving savages in there place.
Fire in William Golding’s fable is very controversial as it resembles completely opposite ideas, salvation and temptation. In the book Ralph says to Jack “You could have had fire whenever you wanted. But you didn't. You came sneaking up like a thief and stole Piggy’s glasses.”(page 217) This quote is very important because it shows that the idea of not having fire, drove jack to impulsively steal the only object on the island that could start a fire. With the stolen fire Jack lights the island ablaze which ends up being the salvation of the boys. Fire ending up being the salvation of the boys is incredibly ironic because it’s what Ralph tried to use to signal passing ships for help. When it is used to capture Ralph, a passing naval ship stops at the island and the commanding officer said “We saw your smoke.”
Order is the key to any civilization, so, as in real life it played an important part in Lord of the Flies. Taking the form of the conch, Ralph kept order for a period of time but, tempted by Jack and the thrill of the hunt, order started to slip away. When the conch exploded on page 222 with Piggy’s death, reading between the lines, it showed that the boys lost there grip on civilized order.
Piggy’s glasses symbolized intelligence and rational thinking for the whole island. When Piggy’s glasses were stolen not just Piggy...