NOVEL:
Lord of the Flies
William Golding
Plot Overview
In the midst of a raging war, a
plane evacuating a group of schoolboys from Britain is shot down over a
deserted tropical island. Two of the boys, Ralph and Piggy, discover a conch
shell on the beach, and Piggy realizes it could be used as a horn to summon the
other boys. Once assembled, the boys set about electing a leader and devising a
way to be rescued. They choose Ralph as their leader, and Ralph appoints
another boy, Jack, to be in charge of the boys who will hunt food for the
entire group.
Ralph, Jack, and another boy,
Simon, set off on an expedition to explore the island. When they return, Ralph
declares that they must light a signal fire to attract the attention of passing
ships. The boys succeed in igniting some dead wood by focusing sunlight through
the lenses of Piggy’s eyeglasses. However, the boys pay more attention to
playing than to monitoring the fire, and the flames quickly engulf the forest.
A large swath of dead wood burns out of control, and one of the youngest boys
in the group disappears, presumably having burned to death.
At first, the boys enjoy their
life without grown-ups and spend much of their time splashing in the water and
playing games. Ralph, however, complains that they should be maintaining the
signal fire and building huts for shelter. The hunters fail in their attempt to
catch a wild pig, but their leader, Jack, becomes increasingly preoccupied with
the act of hunting
.
When a ship passes by on the
horizon one day, Ralph and Piggy notice, to their horror, that the signal
fire—which had been the hunters’ responsibility to maintain—has burned out.
Furious, Ralph accosts Jack, but the hunter has just returned with his first
kill, and all the hunters seem gripped with a strange frenzy, reenacting the
chase in a kind of wild dance. Piggy criticizes Jack, who hits Piggy across the
face. Ralph blows the conch shell and reprimands the boys in a speech intended
to restore order. At the meeting, it quickly becomes clear that some of the
boys have started to become afraid. The littlest boys, known as “littluns,”
have been troubled by nightmares from the beginning, and more and more boys now
believe that there is some sort of beast or monster lurking on the island. The
older boys try to convince the others at the meeting to think rationally,
asking where such a monster could possibly hide during the daytime. One of the
littluns suggests that it hides in the sea—a proposition that terrifies the
entire group.
Not long after the meeting, some
military planes engage in a battle high above the island. The boys, asleep
below, do not notice the flashing lights and explosions in the clouds. A
parachutist drifts to earth on the signal-fire mountain, dead. Sam and Eric,
the twins responsible for watching the fire at night, are asleep and do not see
the parachutist land. When the twins wake up, they see the enormous silhouette
of his parachute and hear the strange flapping noises it makes. Thinking the
island beast is at hand, they rush back to the camp in terror and report that
the beast has attacked them.
The boys organize a hunting
expedition to search for the monster. Jack and Ralph, who are increasingly at
odds, travel up the mountain. They see the silhouette of the parachute from a
distance and think that it looks like a huge, deformed ape. The group holds a
meeting at which Jack and Ralph tell the others of the sighting. Jack says that
Ralph is a coward and that he should be removed from office, but the other boys
refuse to vote Ralph out of power. Jack angrily runs away down the beach,
calling all the hunters to join him. Ralph rallies the remaining boys to build
a new signal fire, this time on the beach rather than on the mountain. They
obey, but before they have finished the task, most of them have slipped away to
join Jack.
Jack declares himself the leader
of the new tribe of hunters and organizes a hunt and a violent, ritual
slaughter of a sow to solemnize the occasion. The hunters then decapitate the
sow and place its head on a sharpened stake in the jungle as an offering to the
beast. Later, encountering the bloody, fly-covered head, Simon has a terrible
vision, during which it seems to him that the head is speaking. The voice,
which he imagines as belonging to the Lord of the Flies, says that Simon will
never escape him, for he exists within all men. Simon faints. When he wakes up,
he goes to the mountain, where he sees the dead parachutist. Understanding then
that the beast does not exist externally but rather within each individual boy,
Simon travels to the beach to tell the others what he has seen. But the others
are in the midst of a chaotic revelry—even Ralph and Piggy have joined Jack’s
feast—and when they see Simon’s shadowy figure emerge from the jungle, they
fall upon him and kill him with their bare hands and teeth.
The following morning, Ralph and
Piggy discuss what they have done. Jack’s hunters attack them and their few
followers and steal Piggy’s glasses in the process. Ralph’s group travels to
Jack’s stronghold in an attempt to make Jack see reason, but Jack orders Sam
and Eric tied up and fights with Ralph. In the ensuing battle, one boy, Roger,
rolls a boulder down the mountain, killing Piggy and shattering the conch
shell. Ralph barely manages to escape a torrent of spears.
Ralph hides for the rest of the
night and the following day, while the others hunt him like an animal. Jack has
the other boys ignite the forest in order to smoke Ralph out of his hiding
place. Ralph stays in the forest, where he discovers and destroys the sow’s
head, but eventually, he is forced out onto the beach, where he knows the other
boys will soon arrive to kill him. Ralph collapses in exhaustion, but when he
looks up, he sees a British naval officer standing over him. The officer’s ship
noticed the fire raging in the jungle. The other boys reach the beach and stop
in their tracks at the sight of the officer. Amazed at the spectacle of this
group of bloodthirsty, savage children, the officer asks Ralph to explain.
Ralph is overwhelmed by the knowledge that he is safe but, thinking about what
has happened on the island, he begins to weep. The other boys begin to sob as
well. The officer turns his back so that the boys may regain their composure
CRITICSM:
CRITICSM:
Lord of the
Flies is one of the most disturbing books I've ever read.
Through the
entire story Golding does a great job of showing us all the similarities
between each and every individual in society. Golding shows us that all mankind
is, is a group of sniveling, fearful, kids playing at savages or playing at
civilized men. Golding also shows that we will not be rescued until we are
inches from rock bottom, after we've set our island on fire (perhaps in the
manner of global warming) and have killed off reason.Lord of the
Flies was driven by Golding's consideration of human evil, a complex topic that
involves an examination not only of human nature but also the causes, effects,
and manifestations of evil. It demands also a close observation of the methods
or ideologies humankind uses to combat evil and whether those methods are
effective. Golding addresses these topics through the intricate allegory of his
novel.
For me, the most
interesting thing was to see how human beings can change in extraordinary
situations because I’ve never thought of this before. It was and is a
completely new world and now I think that it is really important to think about
such things, because something like that could really happen. Not exactly in
the same way as in the novel, but I think something similar would be possible.It is also very
interesting to follow the growing conflict between Jack and Ralph. Ralph, the
protagonist, who stands for order and civilization, who does everything to keep
their chances of being rescued intact, against Jack, his antagonist, who
represents savagery, violence and the desire for power. In fact this sentence
should be written the other way round it’s more Jack against Ralph because Jack
doesn’t agree with the fact that Ralph is chief. Another important character,
who makes the story more interesting, is Simon who seems to be goodness in
person. Simon is the only one who never shows an evil side, because dark sides
just don’t exist in Simon. His murder at the hand of the other boys makes us
think more and more about the dark sides which seem to exist in every human
being except Simon. As I read the part where he was murdered, I couldn’t
believe what I was reading; it was really shocking – and still absolutely
believable. That’s another reason why I really like this book.Lord of the
Flies is an allegorical novel, which means that Golding conveys many of his
main ideas and themes through symbolic characters and objects. What Ralph, Jack
and Simon stand for, I’ve already described a little bit, but now I want to
speak about some objects. One of them is the conch shell. At the beginning, the
conch becomes a really powerful symbol for law, order and civilization. As the
boys are slowly descending into savagery, the conch loses its influence among
them. With Piggy’s death the conch gets also crushed, signifying that
civilization has been abolished, because almost all the boys have turned
savage. Another symbolic object are Piggy’s specs, which represent the power of
science and intelligence.
There are many
other symbols to explain, but I just wanted to show that there are many things
which give a certain meaning to the story. Also the very fast, surprising
ending gives the story a special touch.
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