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Circles In Lord Of The Flies Essay

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William Golding was a Christian, and this fact is evident throughout the course of his novel Lord of the Flies. The novel centers around the journey of a group of schoolboys that find themselves resulting to savagery after being stranded on a desert island following a plane crash. Golding touches on the Christian aspect by having the boys worship a devil instead of a God, and eventually the devil controls the boys so much that they are unable to foresee a hope for rescue or redemption. In William Golding’s Lord of the Flies, Golding describes the fall of civilization and the division of power through the explicit symbols of the Beast and the sea. Throughout the plot, two groups are formed. One group consists of the civilized and rational boys, while the other houses the tribal and barbaric boys (Hollahan 67). The rational group is led by the main character Ralph, and to symbolize this leadership everyone centers around him in a circle (Hollahan 67-68). The circle becomes an important symbol in Lord of the Flies, which, according to Golding, expresses a clear divide. Circles also relate to the two circles of humanity, which are purity and evil. Every person has both circles, but each are split from one another. Leadership circles are …show more content…
Simon finally figures out the identity of the mysterious Beast, which happens to be just a dead pilot. He continues to say that the Beast is the reality within everyone but he is shot down and murdered. Piggy makes a comment about Simon is a fool living in a dream world and that he brought death upon himself, (Boyd 203-204) but that is not the case. Simon is compared to Jesus or a Prophet, being that he wanted to save others from evil by making man realize their sins and predicting the future (Boyd 203-204). Green also adds that Simon symbolizes a Saint, for he sees what the other boys are afraid of: the Beast and the Lord of the Flies

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