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Lord of the Flies – William Golding
Lord of the Flies is a 1954 novel by Nobel Prize-winning English author William Golding. It
is about a group of British boys stuck on anuninhabited island who try to govern themselves
with disastrous results. Its stances on the already controversial subjects of human nature and
individual welfare versus the common good earned it position 68 on the American Library
Association’s list of the 100 most frequently challenged books of 1900–1999. The novel is a
reaction to the youth novel The Coral Island by R. M. Ballantyne.
Published in 1954, Lord of the Flies was Golding’s first novel. Although it was not a great
success at the time—selling fewer than 3,000 copies in the United States during 1955 before
going out of print—it soon went on to become a best-seller. It has been adapted to film twice
in English, in 1963 by Peter Brook and 1990 by Harry Hook, and once in Filipino (1976).
In 2005 the novel was chosen by TIME magazine as one of the 100 best Englishlanguage novels from 1923 to 2005. It was awarded a place on both lists of Modern Library
100 Best Novels, reaching number 41 on the editor's list, and 25 on the reader's list. In 2003,
the novel was listed at number 70 on the BBC's survey The Big Read.
Background
The book indicates that it takes place in the midst of an unspecified nuclear war. Some of the
marooned characters are ordinary students, while others arrive as a musical choir under an
established leader. Most (with the exception of the choirboys) appear never to have
encountered one another before. The book portrays their descent into savagery; left to
themselves in a paradisiacal country, far from modern civilisation, the well-educated children
regress to a primitive state.
At
an allegorical level,
the
central
theme
is
the
conflicting
human
impulses
toward civilization and social organization—living by rules, peacefully and in harmony—and
toward thewill to power. Themes include the tension between groupthink and individuality,
between rational and emotional reactions, and between morality and immorality. How these
play out, and how different people feel the influences of these, form a major subtext of Lord
of the Flies.The name "Lord of the Flies" is a literal translation of Beelzebub.
Ralph
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When he and the others arrive on the island, Ralph quickly becomes the chief of the group,
not by any harsh, overt, or physical action, but by being elected. Ralph is described as having
"the directness of genuine leadership". Ralph's first big decision is that they have "got to
decide if this is an island". After Ralph, Jack, and Simon discover that they are truly "on an
uninhabited island", Ralph suggests that a fire be lit because "if a ship comes near the island
they may not notice us". However, towards the end of the book he forgets the initial reason
for maintaining the fire. This is representative of the debilitating effects corruption has on
even the most benevolent of men. Ralph may seem to mean well, but often his obsession with
being popular overcomes him and he resorts to bullying Piggy to regain his power. Therefore,
Ralph can be understood to symbolize mankind's optimistic ambition to self-govern despite
its historical record of failure and abuse of power. Still, in the midst of all the island's chaos,
Ralph has a tendency to be polite, selfless and logical in the tensest of moments; for example,
when the children are obliged to investigate Castle Rock, Ralph takes the lead despite being
afraid of "the beast". Ralph is sometimes perceived as partially being a literary tool to aid the
audience's realisation of inner evil throughout the duration of the novel; "Ralph wept for the
end of innocence".
Just as mankind has demonstrated its limitations in effective self-governing, Ralph embodies
good intentions in the implementation of reason, but ultimately fails to execute these plans
soundly. Ralph's refusal to resort to violence throughout the novel is counterpoised by Jack's
inherent love of violence.
Piggy
Piggy has poor eyesight and asthma and is overweight. He is the most physically vulnerable
of all the boys. He appears to be of working-class background, as evidenced by his nonstandard Cockney speech, but he is the most intellectual of the boys, frequently appealing to
reason. By frequently quoting his aunt, he provides the only female voice.
Piggy has been described as "the only adult-type figure on the island". His intellect benefits
the group only through Ralph; he acts as Ralph's adviser. He cannot be the leader himself
because he lacks leadership qualities and has no rapport with the other boys. Piggy relies on
the power of social convention. He believes that holding the conch gives him the right to be
heard. He believes that upholding social conventions produces results.
Piggy asserts that "Life ... is scientific". Ever the pragmatist, Piggy complains, "What good're
you doing talking like that?" when Ralph brings up the highly charged issue of Simon's death
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at their hands. Piggy tries to keep life scientific despite the incident, "searching for a
formula" to explain the death. He asserts that the assault on Simon was an accident, and
justifiable because Simon asked for it by inexplicably crawling out of the forest into the ring.
Piggy is so intent on preserving some remnant of civilization on the island that, after Jack's
tribe attacks Ralph's group, he assumes they "wanted the conch", when, in fact, they have
come for Piggy's glasses in order to make fire. Even up to the moment of his death, Piggy's
perspective does not shift in response to the reality of their situation. Because his eminently
intellectual approach to life is modelled on the attitudes and rules of the authoritative adult
world, he thinks everyone should share his values and attitudes as a matter of course. When
Ralph and Piggy confront Jack's tribe about the stolen spectacles, Piggy asks "Which is
better—to have rules and agree, or to hunt and kill? ... law and rescue, or hunting and
breaking things up?" as if there is no doubt that the boys would choose his preference.
The Conch
When first blown, it calls the children to an assembly, where Ralph is elected leader. They
agree that only the boy holding the conch may speak at meetings to forestall arguments and
chaos, and that it should be passed around to those who wish to voice their opinion. The
conch symbolises effective democracy and, like Ralph, civility and order within the group.
When Piggy is killed, the conch is smashed into pieces, signalling the end of order and the
onset of chaos.Originally the conch is portrayed as being very vibrant and colourful, but as
the novel progresses, its colours begin to fade, the same way society begins to fade on the
island.
Jack Merridew
Jack epitomises the worst aspects of human nature when unrepressed or un-tempered by
society. Like Ralph, Jack is a natural leader. Unlike Ralph, Jack appeals to more primal
desires in the children and relies on his status as leader of the choirboys to justify his
authority. Although his way of behaving is neither disruptive nor violent at the beginning of
the book, he does, at that time, express an unquenchable desire to hunt and kill a pig and
spends hours in solitude traversing the island.
Beginning with his self nomination as hunter, Jack eventually degenerates into the beast he is
consumed with slaying. The first time Jack has an opportunity to kill a pig, he cannot,
"because of the enormity of the knife descending and cutting into living flesh; because of the
unbearable blood". After this hesitation, for which he is most ashamed, Jack's blood lust
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grows more and more irrational, to the point where he abandons the fire (and causes the boys
to miss a potential rescue) in order to hunt. During Jack's metamorphosis, he begins to paint
his face with clay and earth, masking his humanity from the pigs and inspiring terrible awe
amongst the boys.
Jack's transition puts him on a collision course with Ralph's elected authority. As Jack leaves
and takes the majority of the boys with him, lured by the promises of meat, play, and
freedom, there has arisen a clear dividing line between the two. Jack represents the irrational
nature of the boys, while Ralph represents rationality. Under Jack's rule, the baseness of
human nature is unleashed, and he initiates a period of intertribal violence, punishing other
children, inciting the frenzy that leads to the murder of Simon, and torturing the twins until
they submit to his authority.
The tale ends with Jack leading many of the boys in a frenzied attempt to kill Ralph. At this
time, the last remaining vestiges of civilization are gone, and Ralph's demise is only
prevented by the abrupt and unexpected arrival of a naval officer, who is disappointed by the
savage nature of the British boys.
Roger
Roger, at first, is a simple "bigun" who is having fun during his stay on the island. Along
with Maurice, he destroys the sand castles made by three small children. While Maurice feels
guilt for kicking sand into a child's eye, Roger begins to emerge as a sadist as he throws
stones at one of the boys. The book states that Roger threw the stones to miss and felt the
presence of civilization and society preventing him from harming the children. Later, once he
feels that all aspects of conventional society are gone, he is left alone to his animal urges.
During a pig hunt, Roger shoves a sharpened stick up the animal's rectum while it is still
alive. He kills Piggy with a boulder that was no longer aimed to miss and becomes the
executioner and torturer of Jack's tribe. He also tortures Sam and Eric into joining Jack's
tribe. In the final hunt for Ralph at the end of the novel, Roger is armed with "a stick
sharpened at both ends," indicating his intentions of killing Ralph and offering his head as a
sacrifice to the "beast". He represents the person who enjoys hurting others and is only
restrained when the rules of society exist.
Simon
Simon is a character who represents peace and tranquillity and positivity, and perhaps mystic
or religious impulses. He is often seen wandering off by himself in a dreamy state and is
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prone to fits of fainting and hallucination, likely epileptic in nature. He is in tune with the
island and often experiences extraordinary sensations when listening to its sounds. He loves
the nature of the island. He is positive about the future. He has an extreme aversion to the
pig's head, the "Lord of the Flies", which derides and taunts Simon in a hallucination. After
this experience, Simon emerges from the forest to tell the others that the "beast" that fell from
the sky is actually a deceased parachutist caught on the mountain. He is brutally killed by the
boys, who ironically mistake him for the beast and kill him in their "dance" in which they
"ripped and tore at the beast". It is implied that Ralph, Piggy, Sam, and Eric partake in the
killing. The final words that the "Lord of the Flies" had said to Simon vaguely predicted that
his death was about to occur in this manner. Earlier in the novel Simon himself also predicts
his own death when he tells Ralph that Ralph will "get back all right", implying that, of the
two of them, only Ralph will be saved. Simon's death represents the loss of truth, innocence,
and common sense, and along with Piggy's death represents the abandonment of civilization
on the island. Simon has also been interpreted as a Christ figure because of his ability to see
through misconception, unlike the rest of the boys, and the events he experiences in the book
that parallel those of Jesus' life.
Naval officer
Arriving moments before Ralph's seemingly impending death, the Royal Navy officer is
surprised and disappointed to learn that the boys' society has collapsed into chaos. He states
that he would have expected "a better show" from British children. The sudden looming
appearance of an adult authority figure instantly reduces the savagery of the hunt to a
children's game. Upon the officer asking who is in charge, Ralph answers loudly, "I am", and
Jack, who was previously characterised as a powerful leader, is reduced to "A little boy who
wore the remains of an extraordinary black cap on his red hair and who carried the remains of
a pair of spectacles at his waist". In the last sentence, the officer, embarrassed by the distress
of the children, turns to look at the cruiser from which his party has landed—a symbol of his
own adult war.
The Beast
The Beast represents the latent savagery within all human beings. It is first mentioned by a
"littlun," and the notion is immediately dismissed by Ralph. The Beast is thought to be within
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the water and described by the littluns as such. Soon after the rumours of the Beast begin to
flourish, the corpse of a fighter pilot, ejected from his aircraft, falls to the island. His
parachute becomes entangled in the jungle foliage in such a way that sporadic gusts of wind
cause the chute to billow and the body to move as if still alive. Sam and Eric discover the
parachutist in the dark and believe that it is the beast. Ralph, Jack, and Roger search for the
Beast and encounter it on the mountain. The reality of the Beast is now firmly established in
the boys' minds. Simon discovers the parachutist and realizes that the beast is really only the
corpse of a man. Jack's tribe feeds the Beast with the sow's head on a stick. This act
symbolizes Jack's willingness to succumb to the temptation of animalism.
Simon is the first child on the island to realize that the Beast is created by the boys' fear. He
decides that "the news must reach the others as soon as possible". Meanwhile, the boys have
been feasting and begin to do their tribal pig-hunting dance. When "the beast stumble[s] in to
the horseshoe", the frenzied, terrified boys "leapt on to the beast, screamed, struck, bit,
tore". While this is going on, the pilot's dead body finally falls out of the tree and down the
mountain into the sea. It becomes clear that the boys have mistaken Simon for the beast and
murdered, with Golding describing "Simon's dead body moving out towards the open
sea", and on the morning after when Ralph tells Piggy, "That was Simon .... That was
murder".
The Lord of the Flies
The eponymous Lord of the Flies exists physically as a pig's head that has been cut off by
Jack, put on a stick sharpened at both ends, stuck in the ground, and left as an offering to the
"beast". Created out of fear, the Lord of the Flies is the remnant of a mother sow who, though
at one time loving, protective, and innocent, has now become a manically smiling, bleeding
image of horror. Endowed with the power of speech, reason, and prophecy, it represents an
intelligent, supernatural malevolence with the power to evoke "the beast", or unchecked evil,
within all. Near the end of the book, while Ralph is being hunted down, he strikes the now
skeletal pig's head in a moment of blind anger, causing it to crack and fall on the ground with
a grin "now six feet across". This act demonstrates both mankind's frustration with the
manifestation of evil as a consequence of his own course of action as well as his inability to
defeat evil. The name "Lord of the Flies" is a literal translation of Beelzebub.
Golding’s experience in World War II had a profound effect on his view of humanity and the
evils of which it was capable. After the war, Golding resumed teaching and started to write
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novels. His first and greatest success came with Lord of the Flies (1954), which ultimately
became a bestseller in both Britain and the United States after more than twenty publishers
rejected it. The novel’s sales enabled Golding to retire from teaching and devote himself fully
to writing. Golding wrote several more novels, notably Pincher Martin (1956), and a
play,The Brass Butterfly (1958). Although he never matched the popular and critical success
he enjoyed with Lord of the Flies, he remained a respected and distinguished author for the
rest of his life and was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1983. Golding died in 1993,
one of the most acclaimed writers of the second half of the twentieth century.
Lord of the Flies tells the story of a group of English schoolboys marooned on a tropical
island after their plane is shot down during a war. Though the novel is fictional, its
exploration of the idea of human evil is at least partly based on Golding’s experience with the
real-life violence and brutality of World War II. Free from the rules and structures of
civilization and society, the boys on the island in Lord of the Flies descend into savagery. As
the boys splinter into factions, some behave peacefully and work together to maintain order
and achieve common goals, while others rebel and seek only anarchy and violence. In his
portrayal of the small world of the island, Golding paints a broader portrait of the
fundamental human struggle between the civilizing instinct—the impulse to obey rules,
behave morally, and act lawfully—and the savage instinct—the impulse to seek brute power
over others, act selfishly, scorn moral rules, and indulge in violence.
Golding employs a relatively straightforward writing style in Lord of the Flies, one that
avoids highly poetic language, lengthy description, and philosophical interludes. Much of the
novel is allegorical, meaning that the characters and objects in the novel are infused with
symbolic significance that conveys the novel’s central themes and ideas. In portraying the
various ways in which the boys on the island adapt to their new surroundings and react to
their new freedom, Golding explores the broad spectrum of ways in which humans respond to
stress, change, and tension.
Readers and critics have interpreted Lord of the Flies in widely varying ways over the years
since its publication. During the 1950s and 1960s, many readings of the novel claimed
that Lord of the Fliesdramatizes the history of civilization. Some believed that the novel
explores fundamental religious issues, such as original sin and the nature of good and evil.
Others approached Lord of the Flies through the theories of the psychoanalyst Sigmund
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Freud, who taught that the human mind was the site of a constant battle among different
impulses—the id (instinctual needs and desires), the ego (the conscious, rational mind), and
the superego (the sense of conscience and morality). Still others maintained that Golding
wrote the novel as a criticism of the political and social institutions of the West. Ultimately,
there is some validity to each of these different readings and interpretations of Lord of the
Flies. Although Golding’s story is confined to the microcosm of a group of boys, it resounds
with implications far beyond the bounds of the small island and explores problems and
questions universal to the human experience.
Plot Overview
In the midst of a raging war, a plane evacuating a group of schoolboys from Britain is shot
down over a deserted tropical island of Pacific Ocean. Two of the boys, Ralph and Piggy,
discover a conch shell on the beach, and Piggy realizes it could be used as a horn to summon
the other boys. Once assembled, the boys set about electing a leader and devising a way to be
rescued. They choose Ralph as their leader, and Ralph appoints another boy, Jack, to be in
charge of the boys who will hunt food for the entire group.
Ralph, Jack, and another boy, Simon, set off on an expedition to explore the island. When
they return, Ralph declares that they must light a signal fire to attract the attention of passing
ships. The boys succeed in igniting some dead wood by focusing sunlight through the lenses
of Piggy’s eyeglasses. However, the boys pay more attention to playing than to monitoring
the fire, and the flames quickly engulf the forest. A large swath of dead wood burns out of
control, and one of the youngest boys in the group disappears, presumably having burned to
death.
At first, the boys enjoy their life without grown-ups and spend much of their time splashing
in the water and playing games. Ralph, however, complains that they should be maintaining
the signal fire and building huts for shelter. The hunters fail in their attempt to catch a wild
pig, but their leader, Jack, becomes increasingly preoccupied with the act of hunting.
When a ship passes by on the horizon one day, Ralph and Piggy notice, to their horror, that
the signal fire - which had been the hunters’ responsibility to maintain - has burned out.
Furious, Ralph accosts Jack, but the hunter has just returned with his first kill, and all the
hunters seem gripped with a strange frenzy, reenacting the chase in a kind of wild dance.
Piggy criticizes Jack, who hits Piggy across the face. Ralph blows the conch shell and
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reprimands the boys in a speech intended to restore order. At the meeting, it quickly becomes
clear that some of the boys have started to become afraid. The littlest boys, known as
―littluns,‖ have been troubled by nightmares from the beginning, and more and more boys
now believe that there is some sort of beast or monster lurking on the island. The older boys
try to convince the others at the meeting to think rationally, asking where such a monster
could possibly hide during the daytime. One of the littluns suggests that it hides in the sea—a
proposition that terrifies the entire group.
Not long after the meeting, some military planes engage in a battle high above the island. The
boys, asleep below, do not notice the flashing lights and explosions in the clouds. A
parachutist drifts to earth on the signal-fire mountain, dead. Sam and Eric, the twins
responsible for watching the fire at night, are asleep and do not see the parachutist land.
When the twins wake up, they see the enormous silhouette of his parachute and hear the
strange flapping noises it makes. Thinking the island beast is at hand, they rush back to the
camp in terror and report that the beast has attacked them.
The boys organize a hunting expedition to search for the monster. Jack and Ralph, who are
increasingly at odds, travel up the mountain. They see the silhouette of the parachute from a
distance and think that it looks like a huge, deformed ape. The group holds a meeting at
which Jack and Ralph tell the others of the sighting. Jack says that Ralph is a coward and that
he should be removed from office, but the other boys refuse to vote Ralph out of power. Jack
angrily runs away down the beach, calling all the hunters to join him. Ralph rallies the
remaining boys to build a new signal fire, this time on the beach rather than on the mountain.
They obey, but before they have finished the task, most of them have slipped away to join
Jack. Jack declares himself the leader of the new tribe of hunters and organizes a hunt and a
violent, ritual slaughter of a sow to solemnize the occasion. The hunters then decapitate the
sow and place its head on a sharpened stake in the jungle as an offering to the beast. Later,
encountering the bloody, fly-covered head, Simon has a terrible vision, during which it seems
to him that the head is speaking. The voice, which he imagines as belonging to the Lord of
the Flies, says that Simon will never escape him, for he exists within all men. Simon faints.
When he wakes up, he goes to the mountain, where he sees the dead parachutist.
Understanding then that the beast does not exist externally but rather within each individual
boy, Simon travels to the beach to tell the others what he has seen. But the others are in the
midst of a chaotic revelry—even Ralph and Piggy have joined Jack’s feast—and when they
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see Simon’s shadowy figure emerge from the jungle, they fall upon him and kill him with
their bare hands and teeth.
The following morning, Ralph and Piggy discuss what they have done. Jack’s hunters attack
them and their few followers and steal Piggy’s glasses in the process. Ralph’s group travels to
Jack’s stronghold in an attempt to make Jack see reason, but Jack orders Sam and Eric tied up
and fights with Ralph. In the ensuing battle, one boy, Roger, rolls a boulder down the
mountain, killing Piggy and shattering the conch shell. Ralph barely manages to escape a
torrent of spears.
Ralph hides for the rest of the night and the following day, while the others hunt him like an
animal. Jack has the other boys ignite the forest in order to smoke Ralph out of his hiding
place. Ralph stays in the forest, where he discovers and destroys the sow’s head, but
eventually, he is forced out onto the beach, where he knows the other boys will soon arrive to
kill him. Ralph collapses in exhaustion, but when he looks up, he sees a British naval officer
standing over him. The officer’s ship noticed the fire raging in the jungle. The other boys
reach the beach and stop in their tracks at the sight of the officer. Amazed at the spectacle of
this group of bloodthirsty, savage children, the officer asks Ralph to explain. Ralph is
overwhelmed by the knowledge that he is safe but, thinking about what has happened on the
island, he begins to weep. The other boys begin to sob as well. The officer turns his back so
that the boys may regain their composure.
- Notes circulated only for B.A. I (O) English students of MahilaMahavidyalaya, Karadby Dr. P.S. Sontakke