Lord Of The Flies Literary Analysis

In Lord of the Flies by John Steinback a group of young boys are stranded on an island. To survive the boys decided to vote who should be their leader, Ralph or Jack. Piggy is a smart, fat boy who is not respected by the boys. Ralph is the face of leadership but not the best for the job compared to Piggy. Piggy is the brains behind Ralph who gives the essential idea to further progress the island.

“When you see corruption being rewarded and honesty becoming a self-sacrifice–you may know that your society is doomed”(Rand). This was stated by Russian-American novelist Ayn Rand; the extract relates to the novel William Golding wrote called Lord of the Flies. Golding wrote about a group of schoolboys trapped on an island from a plane crash. The boys had to figure out how to survive without grownups. Trying to survive was difficult because they had to have common sense and order. They lose those traits throughout the book which resulted in selfishness and corrupt behaviors.

In the novel Lord of the Flies, by William Golding, a group of English boys in their adolescence are stranded on an island. They crash-land while being evacuated because of an atomic war, so the boys must learn to cooperate with each other in order to survive. The boys are civil at first, but the bonds of civilization unfold as the rapacity for power and immediate desires become more important than civility and rescue. The conflict between Ralph, the protagonist, and Jack, the antagonist, represents the conflict between the impulse to civilization and the impulse to savagery, respectively. In Lord of the Flies, Golding uses Ralph and Jack’s struggle for power to show that greed and lust for power can corrupt the best

What went wrong in the Lord of the Flies? Some may say Jack and some may say Roger, but what are the real reasons for the downfall of the boys? They are, the loss of hope, the loss of order, and the passing of time.

“We all have a social mask, right? We put it on, we go out, put our best foot forward, our best image. But behind that social mask is a personal truth, what we really, really believe about who we are and what we 're capable of” (Phil McGraw) one once said. In Lord of the Flies the characters wear a social mask that opposes their true feelings. Written by William Golding, the story revolves around a group of boys who become stranded on an island and must depend on themselves to survive. They elect a chief, a boy named Ralph. However, as the story progresses, the group become influenced by Jack, an arrogant choir chapter boy. Intriguingly, although they desire to be with Jack and join his tribe, the boys remain with Ralph for most of the story. The rhetorical triangle, which analyzes a speaker or writer based on three ideas- ethos, pathos, and logos-, helps many to better understand the children’s actions and mentality; ethos focuses on the credibility and ethics of the speaker while pathos concerns how the speaker appeals to the emotions of the audience and logos is about the speaker’s use of evidence to appeal to the audience’s sense of reason. The boys stay with Ralph because of Ralph’s use of ethos but prefer to be with Jack because of Jack’s use of pathos and ethos which shows Golding’s message- humans were masks.

Humans develop in societies with rules, order and government, but humans are not perfect, they have many deficiencies so do the societies they live in. When a group of schoolboys land on a tropical island, Ralph takes on the role of leader by bringing all of the boys together and organizing them. He first explains “There aren’t any grownups. We shall have to look after ourselves.”(p.33), this brings up the question if the boys will have prosperity or will they succumb to the evil on the island. At first the young boys start being successful and civilized, but chaos soon overruns them and evil starts to lurk over the island.The fictional story of the group of British schoolboys stranded on an island and the decisions they make, relates back

Although many things are stated outright in William Golding’s Lord of the Flies, the book is rich with symbolism and subtext. The story starts with British school boys being stranded on an island after escaping a threat of nuclear war. The boys elect fair-haired Ralph as their leader, but Jack, a fiery choirmaster of some of the boys, is jealous and the story quickly goes downhill from there, leading to aggression, mayhem, and murder. Throughout the novel, there is also a mysterious and imaginary beast that haunts the minds of the younger boys. Lord of the Flies has many details, many of which are symbols or have implied meaning. One of the most important examples of subtext is Simon, the strange, ethereal boy who aligns himself with

Civilization was created to contain social structure. However, in utmost circumstances, it is possible for instinct to triumph over civility. Lord of the Flies, by William Golding, is a plane evacuating a group of British schoolboys that crashes over a tropical deserted island. Once they crash on the island, they pick Ralph, the protagonist of the novel, to be their leader, and Ralph chooses Jack, the antagonist of the novel, to be the leader of the hunters, establishing somewhat of a civilization. Then when Jack comes upon a mother boar and kills it, that’s when their makeshift civilization slowly diminishes and the boys become savages. In addition, loss of social structure within a society can lead to the absolute destruction of the civilization. The author of Lord of the Flies, William Golding, uses man vs man and man vs nature conflicts to develop the theme of loss of social structure leads to savagery. Golding reveals this theme by exploring the conflicts of

Symbolism is a very important factor in many books. The use of symbolism in William Golding’s novel The Lord of the Flies is the most essential aspect to the function of the story. At first glance you may not think the symbols are very important, but with some in-depth thought you can see how it is necessary to explain the microcosm of an island.

William Golding can be clearly seen as a writer who knows what he is doing. From vivid description down to the most scrutinous detail to his plethoric of symbolism seen throughout the novel, it is clear that he is an experienced writer. From his other books like The Inheritors and The Scorpion God it can still be seen that one of his earlier books, Lord of the Flies, is truly one of his greatest masterpieces. That book would also be the topic of this essay, and from the very beginning was obviously a piece of literature that has aged well despite its year of publish. From the stranding on the island to the undertone of war seen throughout it grips the reader and never lets go.

In William Golding's Lord of the Flies, the death of Simon portrays that a civilization without compassion and reason leads to the destruction of morality and corruption of conscience. Golding shows that humans are not as civilized as people may think, rather they are wholly instinctual. After a group of refined English choir boys are deserted on an island without adults, chaos ensues as fear of the unknown takes over and turns them into selfish and animalistic savages. The kids are frightened by the thought of a beast on the island and in order to dismiss their thoughts Simon tries to persuade them that there is no beast, “What I mean is . . . maybe it’s only us” (). Simon, an introspective and reserved boy, speaks up about how he believes the boys are

The Lord of the Flies by William Golding is a novel which explores the theme of savagery versus civilization through the stranding of children on a deserted island. There are two assigned leaders of the island, Ralph and Jack, who fight with each other constantly due to differences in opinion. Some of the other important characters on the island include Roger, Piggy, and Simon. Simon is different from all the other boys as he is consistently expressing concern for Piggy and the younger boys. This is emphasized when he gives some of his pig meat to Piggy who was not given any. When things start getting chaotic and a lot of the children start to panic about the “beastie”, Simon happens to have one of the more important quotes in the novel. Simon

“Lord Nathaniel, your cousins have arrived, and seek entrance.. Shall I see them brought up to you?” a page announced as he himself was let into Nathaniel’s solar.

The boys project their irrational fears as a derivative of their immaturity, in an attempt to identify a realized external enemy. Literary critic Lawrence S. Friedman explains, “Too immature to account for the enemy within, the boys project their irrational fears onto the outside world. The first of these projections takes the shape of a snakelike “beastie,” the product of a small boy’s nightmare.” (233) The boys’ irrational fear of the unknown, one of a small boy’s nightmare, only serves to exemplify their immaturity in handling situations like this. It is a stepping stone to events to come, prophesied by Simon. In addition, the character of Simon alludes to the fact that there evil ‘beast’ can really be traced to their internalized innate evilness. Simon argues, “maybe there is a beast… What I mean is… maybe it’s only us.” (Golding 89) While all of the boys attempt to explain the phenomena of the ‘beast,’ Simon is the one who realizes that the boys themselves are the evil ‘beast’ they perceive. There is no external force, the ‘beast’ only serves to be a placeholder for the boys’ true primal nature. However, it is Simon’s death, at the hand of the boys themselves, that only serves to prove that evil truly exists in all of these boys. Friedman suggests, “The ritual murder of Simon is as ironic as it is inevitable. Ironically, he is killed as the beast before he can explain that the beast does not exist. His horrid death refutes is aborted revelation: the beast exists, all right, not where we thought to find it, but within ourselves.” (236) His death is truly the tipping point, a point of no return for the boys. After his killing, Simon’s philosophy of inner evil is realized. It is clear that his own philosophy is what ultimately leads to Simon’s death, as unfortunate as it may be. It is reflected of the group’s fear of the unknown, and their

“Isolation is a dream killer” (Barbara Sher). In the novel Lord of the Flies written by William Golding, kids stranded on an island must figure out how to survive. By hunting pigs and building shelters the kids tried to subsist on the island. Through the process of hunting, the kids became cruel, evolving to the point of being barbaric. Thus, through the barbaric actions of the boys and the outside world, Golding shows that savagery exists in all people.