Pascal
Grade 10 English
December 16, 2013
Lord of The Flies - Analyical Essay
Throughout William Golding’s novel, Lord of The Flies, the boy’s clothes, a symbol of the civilization they have come from, became tattered and are gradually replaced by body paint, highlighting their descent into savagery.
At the beginning of the book, the boy’s clothes symbolize their strong connection to civilization. Right after the plane crashed, the boys find each other. At this point there is the first description of what they are wearing.Their clothes are “torn” (24) and not very clean. Piggy has one part of his “clothing” that helps to show when the boys are still civilized and these are his glasses. Although the boys could have taken off their clothes, because they are “torn” (24) they kept them on. This might be because they still have hope to get back to civilization since they don’t know that they are on an island yet. At the beginning they are still trying to figure out where they are and if there are any other people living on this island or not. Their clothes are what keep them looking civilized, because there are things civilized people wear in daily life. For now the boys are also relatively clean, which shows that they are still taking care of what they look like which also links to them still being civilized.
Not that much later in the novel, the boys are represented as being less civilized through the use of the symbol of clothes. Ralf first started to take his clothes off because he was feeling hot in his school uniform and wanted to go swim. A lot of the other boys felt the same with their clothes and went for a swim in the lagoon. That the boys are not wearing much clothes, might remind us of humans during the stone age, when they were not civilized yet. They walked around in not many clothes covering their body just like the boys that this part of the novel. They are “dirty” their “hair, much too long, knotted round a leaf and twigs” (136). The...