The Lord Of The Flies Conch Essay

If you were stranded on an island, how would you survive with a conch, a pair of glasses, and fire? Would a conch help you? How would a pair of glasses be used besides to assist bad eyesight? How else can a fire help you survive besides creating a smoke signal? In the book Lord of the flies, the author, William Golding, writes about a dozen of young boys who are stranded on an island. They find what they can and do what is necessary to survive. The boys depend on a conch, a pair of glasses, and fire to survive on an island until they are saved. These three objects change its function as the story progresses. In the story, a conch meant more to the boys than a souvenir of the island. Golding wrote, “By the time Ralph finished blowing the conch the platform was crowded” (32). The conch meant assembly because the conch gathers the boys for meetings.Golding also wrote,“That’s what this shell’s called. I’ll give the conch to the next person to speak. He can hold it when he’s speaking”(33). The conch also resembles authority because whomever wants to speak during a meeting, they would have to have a conch in their possession. Ralph, the leader of the boys, was very strict about the boys speaking without the conch. The conch held a very symbolic power in the book …show more content…
However, the characters in this story prove to us otherwise that there are other functions other than its intended functions. Instead of keeping a conch as a decorative piece, the boys used a conch as an authority symbol to govern the boys. Normally, people would use glasses to aid themselves with their bad vision. Golding uniquely created a plot where the characters used the glasses as a survival tactic. Although fire is also a survival tool, it was more than that to the boys. It maintained the boys’ safety and their hope. How would you survive on an island with these