If you were stranded on a deserted island, what would you do? If this question was commonly said back when William Golding wrote Lord of the Flies, I think he might have been playing off of it. He used this imagined situation as a way to show the two sides of everyone, as I talked about in an earlier post.
He uses three main aspects or the story to get his point across: Ralph, Jack, and the Beast. Ralph represents the realistic point of view at which we look at this island question. For example, we might think that the first thing to do is to find food or water of shelter or make arrangements to be rescued. Jack represents the more crazy and savage side of us, in which we would enjoys our time and think about impossible things we might do on this island, simply because we can. The beast represents this inevitable end and darkness that we would come to on this island. It could possibly be anywhere as well. Golding could be saying that when these two sides of us compete with each other and the more adventurous side wins, we reach this darkness.
There are even more complicated little symbolisms that other characters represent in the story. I am still fuzzy on what the character Simon represents, however Piggy is very obvious. He represent the intellectual side of us. This also says that the intellectual side cannot survive without the reality (since Piggy stayed with Ralph), which makes sense, for what would be the point of knowing things if you could not apply it to the world.
SPOILER ALERT: Then Piggy dies. Right after the destruction of the conch shell. It reads, “... the conch exploded into a thousand white fragments and ceased to exist. Piggy, saying nothing, with no time for even a grunt, traveled through the air sideways from the rock... the body of Piggy was gone” (Golding 255-256). I figured out the the conch probably represents civilization and order, since it is used to call meetings in the group of boys. So I guess Golding is saying that intelligence and intellectuals can only exist with order. In the wild, both order, intelligence and reality disappears.
I enjoyed the book overall, though it ended a lot faster than I thought it would, and I think the climax was only a few pages before the end. I hope you enjoyed reading this post and hopefully got something out of it. Next book: A Thousand Splendid Suns.
Very nice analysis! Yes... the boys' descent into disorder is quite a captivating one, albeit a rather grim one (thank you for omitting Piggy's death scene in your quote). I thought you were able to find some really good symbolic elements there. If there was one thing I would like to know more about (from your opinion), is what IS the Lord of the Flies, if there is one (I, personally, have read the book, and have my own opinions, but I would really like to hear another perspective)?
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