Essay On Symbolism In Lord Of The Flies

Submitted By Sarragin32
Words: 921
Pages: 4

Lord of the Flies In the book Lord of the Flies, there are many different symbols that represent many different things. And everyone interprets them differently. What one person thinks could mean something, someone else could take it a totally different way than that person did. So I’m going to be writing about the three symbols that stood out to me most, and what they mean to me. And the first of the most important symbols, in my opinion, in Lord of the Flies is the object which gave the book its name, the pig's head. The author’s description of the animal's head on a spear is very gory and disgusting. The pig's head is described as with dim eyes, grinning faintly, and “blood dribbling down the stick," " (William Golding, Lord of the Flies, New York, Putnam Publishing Group, 1954, p. 137, 138). When the pig is described it gives the audience a detailed and disturbing image to make the reader understand that this pig will become the source of evil or darkness. Which I think that a lot of people see the so called “beast” is the symbol of darkness, but to me it is the pigs head, or “the lord of the flies”. Even though the conversation between the pig and Simon is entirely Simon’s imagination, he learns that beast isn’t what any of the boys thought it was. In fact, the pigs head says to Simon, "Fancy thinking the beast was something you could hunt and kill!” and it went on to say to Simon, “You knew, didn't you? I'm part of you?" (p. 143). So what the pigs head is “saying” to Simon is that the so called “evil” that everyone thinks is the beast, is just inside of them. The beast is their minds.
The “evil” that’s in the boys has more effect on them as they spend more time on the island, away from the rest of the world.
The next big symbol to me is Piggy’s glasses. Throughout the book, Piggy, to me, would represent’s the civilization of the world and the rules that everyone should follow. At the beginning of the book Piggy could see clearly because he still has both of the lenses in his glasses. But as time goes on Piggy loses one of his lenses for his glasses, causing him to not be able to see clearly. This to me is representing that the longer that they are all away from the rest of civilization, the harder it is for them to see where they wanted to be going and what they are supposed to be doing. For example, at their first meeting, they decide that they "can't have everybody talking at once" and "have to have hands up like at school" (p. 33). However, after some time passes, the hunters become more worried about killing a pig than with being rescued. After the hunters get back from their first successful hunt saying "Kill the pig. Cut her throat. Spill her blood,"(p. 69). Ralph and Piggy try to tell the hunters that having meat for meals isn’t as important as keeping the signal fire burning. Then even later in the book Jack and his group of boys decide to ambush Ralphs group so they can steal Piggy’s glasses, which then causes Piggy to lose practically all of his sight. Meaning that the boys have lost all of their sight on what they had decided to do at the beginning of the book, and have started down a