William Golding was a profound author in his time, he experienced the Cold War and throughout the book references to the Cold War was hinted. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature and is best known for his novel, Lord of the Flies. The Lord of the Flies is about a group of boys stranded on an island, and is forced to survive on their own, throughout the novel you see how the characteristics of the boys affect how they behave in a natural environment. The story begins with a more democratic leadership by one of the five main characters, Ralph. As the story progresses the leadership of the boys transformed to a dictatorship under the command of Jack. Throughout these changes, a character named Piggy …show more content…
These character represents two sides of society, Ralph’s group are those who work tirelessly to survive and be rescued by maintaining the fire, building huts, and establishing order. While Jack is reckless and driven by animalistic instincts. The contrast is shown when Ralph and Jack confronts each other, Ralph begins with “‘I was talking about smoke! Don’t you want to be rescued? All you …show more content…
Piggy was the force that civilized the boys with rationality and intelligence, his death marks the end to civilization and the full control of savagery. As he dies the conch also shatters in his hands, the conch and Piggy was connected symbolically, as the conch symbolizes democracy, leadership, and order; when Piggy died all of those things symbolized by the conch couldn’t exist without the existence of the symbols represented by Piggy, rationality and civility. We may assume that that William Golding is foreshadowing what he expected the world to be. He assumed that the microcosm of the island he depicts to reflect the macrocosm of the society he lived in during the Cold War. If people didn’t think with rationality, then the society as a whole would collapse. After Piggy’s death Ralph is chased by Jack’s hunter who are attempting to kill him. In order to get to Ralph, Jack sets the forest on fire to smoke Ralph out. This reflects what Golding thought as the aftermath of a collapsed society, the uncivilized would hunt the civilized and in the process we would destroy the world in which we live in, and heavily rely