Lord of the Flies Essays
Deserted people all have a degree of civility, until it comes down to a life, or death situation. In the book Lord of the Flies by William Golding, a group of British schoolboys crash down on an island. They are all alone with no parents, and no order. The boys find out the hard way, with no order and authority, chaos and savagery will take over their minds and actions. To show the savagery and uncivil actions, Golding uses symbols such as fire, a spear, and the conch.
Fire. Already known to people as pain and suffering, is a symbol for death and irony in the book Lord of the Flies. From the very beginning of the novel, Ralph is determined to keep a signal fire going, in case a ship passes near to the island. That's all …show more content…
As Piggy tells Jack, “You got your small fire all right”. (Golding, 44) The fire then becomes a symbol, paradoxically, of both hope of rescue and of destruction. Ironically, it is because of a fire that Jack lights at the end of the novel, in his attempt to hunt and kill Ralph, that the boys are rescued. And it makes sense. If the boys' world is just a symbol for the real world, then they're not being rescued at all; They’re just going on to a larger scale of violence—to grow up into soldiers getting sent off to war. Hence, rescue equals destruction even though there is more order. The signal fire burns on the mountain, and later on the beach, to attract the notice of passing ships that might be able to rescue the boys as stated before. As a result, the signal fire becomes a barometer of the boys’ connection to civilization. In the early parts of the novel, the fact that the boys maintain the fire is a sign that they want to be rescued and return to society. When the fire burns low or
Deserted people all have a degree of civility, until it comes down to a life, or death situation. In the book Lord of the Flies by William Golding, a group of British schoolboys crash down on an island. They are all alone with no parents, and no order. The boys find out the hard way, with no order and authority, chaos and savagery will take over their minds and actions. To show the savagery and uncivil actions, Golding uses symbols such as fire, a spear, and the conch.
Fire. Already known to people as pain and suffering, is a symbol for death and irony in the book Lord of the Flies. From the very beginning of the novel, Ralph is determined to keep a signal fire going, in case a ship passes near to the island. That's all …show more content…
As Piggy tells Jack, “You got your small fire all right”. (Golding, 44) The fire then becomes a symbol, paradoxically, of both hope of rescue and of destruction. Ironically, it is because of a fire that Jack lights at the end of the novel, in his attempt to hunt and kill Ralph, that the boys are rescued. And it makes sense. If the boys' world is just a symbol for the real world, then they're not being rescued at all; They’re just going on to a larger scale of violence—to grow up into soldiers getting sent off to war. Hence, rescue equals destruction even though there is more order. The signal fire burns on the mountain, and later on the beach, to attract the notice of passing ships that might be able to rescue the boys as stated before. As a result, the signal fire becomes a barometer of the boys’ connection to civilization. In the early parts of the novel, the fact that the boys maintain the fire is a sign that they want to be rescued and return to society. When the fire burns low or