Lord Of The Flies Symbolism

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Could you murder an innocent kid around the same age as you? Hopefully a majority of the people reading this essay would say no way and I’m sure that is what the group of boys would have said before they all landed on the island. Once on the island law and order fall apart and they become more savage and the evil progressively comes out of everyone, faster in some and slower in others. William Golding’s Lord of the Flies has many symbols and themes throughout the book, but a big one I personally noticed is that deep down everyone has that evil and it can come out. The three symbols that go with evil is inside all of us is the boys painted faces, the beastie, and killing the first pig. The first symbol that connects to fear and evil is the…show more content…
Golding uses this symbol to represent the savage impulses that is lying deep within every kid on the island. The civilization and order on the island are trying to suppress the beast, by keeping the need for power and violence to a low. Law, order and civilization forces people to act responsibly and rationally, as Piggy and Ralph do in Lord in the Flies. Savagery develops when civilization, law and order stops stopping the beast. The savages not only acknowledge the beast, they flourish on it and worship it like a god. As Jack and his tribe become savages, they begin to believe the beast exists physically and they even leave it offerings to win its favor to ensure their protection. Overall civilization forces people to hide from their darkest impulses. A perfect example of the boys trying to gain the beats favor is when Jack is ordering his followers to stick the pig head onto the stick for an offering. “Jack spoke loudly. This head is for the beast. It’s a gift. The silence accepted the gift and awed them. The head remained there, dim-eyed, grinning faintly, blood blackening between the teeth”(Golding P.122). This shows that the boys think that the beast is real and that they are trying to win it over for protection in return, but in reality the beast is actually imaginary and it is representing the evil inside of us…show more content…
At first this might not seem like a big symbol, but this gets the others rolling it jump starts the evil coming out of the boys, especially Jack. When the boys first landed on the island all of them were not used to having to fight to survive, by getting their own food, water, and shelters. They also didn’t really think they could kill an animal or definitely not a human before this disaster. A good example of this is early in the book when Jack is hunting with Ralph and others. “They found a piglet caught in a curtain of creepers, throwing itself at the elastic traces in all the madness of extreme terror. Its voice was thin, needle-sharp and insistent. The three boys rushed forward and Jack drew his knife again with a flourish. He raised his arm in the air. There came a pause, a hiatus, the pig continued to scream and the creepers to jerk, and the blade continued to flash at the end of a bony arm. The pause was only long enough for them to understand what an enormity the downward stroke would be. Then the piglet tore loose from the creepers and scurried into the undergrowth” (Golding P.23). This shows that even at first Jack, one of the most evil people at the end was normal when he was still civilized and the evil inside hadn’t crept up yet. Now we fast forward a little bit in time to when Jack is close to killing another pig. “ I went on said Jack I let them go. I had to
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