Lord Of The Flies Piggy Character Analysis

Words: 650
Pages: 3

In William Golding’s Lord of The Flies, the unfortunate fragility of society is extensively examined. After a number of British school boys find themselves alone and stranded on an uninhabited island in the Pacific, their attempts to maintain the civilization they were born into degrades to tribal savagery. On the passage on pages 130-131, Golding employed a plethora of literary devices in order to characterize Ralph and Piggy through their conversation and actions; thereby, he emphasizes that civilizations hold together by the will, work, and cooperation of the majority.
After Jack revolted against Ralph and left the beach from which they previously based their group, Golding included details about Ralph’s unwavering resolve when there was work to do,
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Even Piggy, Ralph’s close friend and a believer in the essentiality of civilization on the island, only “put a fragment of wood on the fire” (130) meant to signal for rescue. The negative connotation of ‘fragment’ consequently implied a sense of weary cynicism from Piggy as the true hopelessness of their situation rapidly became apparent. There were “great changes [in the group dynamic]” (131) as more boys made the decision “’ they [would not] play either’” (130), and this was when Ralph lost the support of the majority. A ‘fragment’ truly described their society after most of the boys lost the will to work as hard as was necessary to achieve an ordered civilization.
Finally, as a result of William Golding’s varied use of literary devices in Lord of the Flies, the characterization of Ralph and Piggy through their conversation and actions on pages 130-131 identified the lack of will, work, and cooperation of the majority as the foremost factor in the fall of their society. All civilizations exist because the public wish them to; no empire can outlast the will of its people to remain