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Lord Of The Flies Critical Analysis

Decent Essays

William Golding, author of the novel, Lord of the Flies, writes about a group of teenage boys, ranging in ages, and ranks on a deserted island, with no immediate source of escape. With being the only people inhabiting the island, these kids haven't lived without adults, or in a non-established society. There are no rules, there is no chivalry, and there is no control. The boys try to gain control of each other, and build a system, and continue to search for a form of rescue. Golding uses a dead parachutist and a sow’s head to send a message to the boys that fear will overpower them and their hope of escape. The parachutist appears on a night after being shot down. Tangled in his wires, the man is dead. The boys see this figure up on the mountain as a terrifying beast. Simon, a boy with epilepsy climbs the mountain to confront all of the boy’s fears. On the mountain he has a seizure and wakes up in a daze to a sow’s head covered in blood and flies on a stick. Jack and his crude hunters had killed the sow and sacrificed her head as a gift. “This head is for the beast. It’s a gift” (137). Upon waking up, Simon sees this disgusting creature as “dim-eyed, grinning faintly, blood-blackening between the teeth” (137). In his daze Simon and the Lord of the Flies hold a conversation. The head, blackened by flies tells Simon, “Fancy thinking the Beast was something you could hunt and kill!” (143). The Lord of the Flies meant that Simon couldn’t defeat the beast. The beast was more

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