Conch Shell In Lord Of The Flies

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When they are younger, all kids have a phase where they play house or pirates. They play games with the absence of adults, their own little world where they can have some freedom. Kids play these games with the notion that when they are done, they can just go right back to their parents and be fed and taken care of. In William Golding’s Lord of the Flies, a group of boys is stuck on an island after their plane crashed and there are no adults with them on the island. At first, the boys do well for themselves, starting a fire and even getting some meat, but when they start to turn on one another, the novel turns into something much more than a story about boys stuck on an island. At first, when I was reading this novel I thought it was just…show more content…
The conch shell is so sacred to the boys because it is the first thing that Piggy, Ralph’s most devoted follower, discovers on the island. When he blows into it, a meeting is called and all the boys assemble and the "delicate thing balanced on his knees, was set apart" (Golding, 16). There is also a rule that no boy is allowed to speak during meetings unless they are holding the conch. This conch represents, to the boys, a thing that defines power. Whoever is holding the shell has the power to speak at that time and when Jack attempts to create a new tribe, Ralph reiterates that he has the shell so he is still in charge. It is not until the shell smashes “into a thousand white fragments” (141) that Jack asserts that he is now chief since there is no more symbol of power for Ralph to latch on to. When the conch smashes they say that it “ceased to exist” (141). I thought that this was very fascinating because this almost gives the shell human-like characteristics. It really just shattered and is lying there on the ground, but it is referred to like it just died. Though in retrospect it does still exist, it is just smashed, because it is now broken, it holds no more power and it does not exist anymore. It is interesting that this shell that means so much to the boys was really just picked up off of the ground. This symbol of power doesn’t really have all that much power at all, much like many of the things we let have…show more content…
There are so many aspects of this book that are so similar to this book. In both books, the characters attempt to create a society with order and structure in which everyone is equal and everyone has equal rights. Both books explore the idea of a sort of utopian, ideal society. However, this society fails due to the flaws in the characters to actually be equal. Both books rely heavily on the theme of the flaws of human beings. It is possible that both authors put out the idea that humans are inherently evil. The boys turn into almost savages once they start to break off from the original group, just as the pigs in Animal Farm turn on the rest of the animals that they are supposedly “equal”
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