Symbols In Lord Of The Flies Symbolism Essay

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Does something small stand for something big in your life? When one reads Lord of the Flies, it is often read in an odd manner that makes you think deeper than just what is on the surface and given to them. One can tell that something in the book often stands for something much greater than what it is. Three major symbols in the story are: The signal fire, the conch, and Piggy’s specs. Not only are these three things used for just one thing, but many others as well, but no matter how hard Ralph tries to use them properly, Jack comes in and ruins it all. The first main symbol in the book is the signal fire the boys created. The signal fire is a fire that the boys started on the top of the mountain to hopefully get enough smoke into the air for…show more content…
The conch is a creamy white colored shell that you can blow into to make a loud noise that can be heard for miles. The conch really helps to symbolize law, and order on the island they are on. When the boys decide to elect who with be chief, the choose to elect Ralph for the simple fact that he had the conch and called everybody to the beach of the island. “Him with the shell.” and “Ralph! Ralph!” and even “Let him be chief with the trumpet-thing”. Therefore showing that no matter how rude, ignorant, selfish, and unintelligent that Ralph could have been, he was elected for all the power possible on the island even though nobody knew who he was and what he was like. When the conch is destroyed in the end along with the death of Piggy, that is when the other boys try to kill Ralph like nobody else. They hunted him down from hiding spot to hiding spot until Ralph arrived on the beach again, where a Naval officer waited for them to get back. “The officer smiled cheerfully at Ralph. We saw your smoke. What have you been doing? Having a war or something?”. The only reason there was smoke that the officer could see, was because the conch was shattered to pieces, and they had to smoke Ralp out of his first hiding

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