Lord of the Flies

By William Golding

William Golding was born in Cornwall in 1911. Destined to be a scientist, he changed his course after two years and studied English literature instead at Oxford University. The he earned his living as a schoolmaster until he joined the Royal Navy in 1939. The Outbreak of World War 2 was the turning point in his career. The vision of evil inherent in the human heart that Golding found in the war was the basis of his first published novel, Lord of the Flies (1954). Man savage at heart, turning to an evil and primitive creature is a running theme throughout his books. In 1983, he won the Nobel Prize for literature. His most important works are: Lord of the Flies, The Inheritors, Pincher Martin, Free Fall, Spire and Darkness Visible.

A group of 6 to 12 year old English school boys lands on an island after having been evacuated from their hometown and a plane crash. The pilot died and so they have to care for themselves. First they elect Ralph chief although a boy called Jack wants to be the leader. It is the first hidden conflict between them though they are first the same opinion about their situation and its solution. So they light a fire, put up shelters and begin to care for food. Jack, subordinated to Ralph is soon tired of the fruit diet and of the unglamorous labour of building shelter and keeping the fire-signal for eventual passing ships lit. He is the head of a group of choir boys and so he organizes them as hunters for the wild pigs he noticed on the island. Because his hunters neglected the fire, Ralph confronts Jack. Jack tries to wrest the leadership from him, but the other boys are too apathetic and cowed to change. Frustrated and furious leaves Jack the meeting with his loyal band of hunters. They reside on one end of the island where they build a fortress. One of the smaller boys informs the others that he has seen a snake – like thing coming out of the wood. Jacks’ hunter put the head of a killed pig on a pole as an offering for the ”beastie”. Simon, terrified by the proceedings on the island climbs up a hill to investigate whether there is such a beast or not. He finds the rotting body of a dead parachutist hanging in the trees which is waving back and forth in the wind. When he returns to the other boys, they kill him thinking that he is the beast. Later, in a quarrel about his glasses used to lit fire, Piggy is also killed by a huge rock set free by Roger. After his death, Ralph is desperate and helpless. He conceals himself from Jack and the hunters, but they want to smoke him out in order to kill him. The fire lit by the hunters ironically attracts a passing vessel which rescues the boys finally.

Interpretation:

Golding wants to show in his novels that all society defects can be traced back to the defects of the human nature. The shape of society must depend on the ethical nature of the individual and not on any political system, however apparently logical. The boys first try to create their own utopian society but gradually relapse into complete savagery and brutality. The adult world, symbolized by the horrible decaying corpse of the parachutist is no less savage. Man’s former hope of salvation has changed to fear of damnation and knowledge of original sin. ”Lord of the Flies” is the translation of the Hebrew word Beelzebub, meaning the devil who is the central figure in the book.

Characters:

Ralph is the main person and many of the events, reactions and descriptions are seen through his eyes. Ralph is handsome and good-natured, he stands for democracy and the human common sense, so he is elected chief. His early reactions are those of a boy determined to make the most of his unexpected freedom from adult supervision. He does not see people much as things and his first  reception of Piggy is one of ridicule, though this is not unkindly meant, it takes many experiences and conversations to make Ralph see Piggy as a person. Ralph is natural chief, owing to his stillness, his and the possession of the couch. He also tells Piggy that his father is a commander in the navy and he seems to have inherited a sense of authority. He is responsible and can organise and is very balanced; his passionate sense of responsibility those who live for the moment and when he becomes chief he realizes at once the need for adult behaviour. In my opinion the boy tries to act like an adult. He has compassion, courage and authority and a strong awareness of the values of the civilization the boys have left. He battles for what is good and right against what is wrong and evil.

Jack is the natural antithesis to Ralph. Jack stands for military power and dictatorship so he uses fear to control the boys and later turns back to savagery – stands for Hitler in WW2. He makes it clear that he has no time or sympathy for Simon and he has a personal antipathy to Piggy. He is used to power and he is very aggressive. He has an urge to bad. He is selfconfident and inconsiderate of others; also he is irresponsible (e.g. letting the fire go out). Frequently you find him on the edge of hysteria. ('He is the centre of a bewildered circle of boys.') He is always ridiculing Piggy and the first sign of a killer in him. In my view we see in Jack the abuse of power and this is showed when Jack instils into the little boys fear of the unknown. His philosophy of life can be summed in his own words 'who’ll join my tribe and have fun?'. Jack is a primitive chief. He loses everything he had in civilisation (even his conscious). Jack replaces his leadership of the choir by the leadership of a tribe, based on power and craving for blood which is to be satisfied by hunting and killing.

Piggy is intellectual and has another language and does not fit in, so he stands for outsiders (or Jews). He is the amusement for the other boys, he is easy to ridicule, and he is fat and talks too much. The boys regard him as an outsider, one who finds it difficult to be accepted by the other boys. Piggy is very unhappy by Ralph, who tells the others that his name is Piggy. He always stays with Ralph not only because Ralph accepts him more than the others do and because he recognizes the quality of Ralph’s leadership. Piggy is very dependent on his glasses and he often gets an asthmatic attack. It is Piggy who tells them that they are behaving 'like a pack of kids' and he tells them that there is no beast and suggests that the real fear in them is their fear of people. Piggy is blind and helpless without his glasses and he is struck down senselessly.

Simon is a thinker and philosopher who is shy but most innocent of all. He is the opposite of Jack, and he has epilepsy (this was regarded in ancient time as sign for being able to communicate with the gods).

Roger is very brutal and aggressive and so he is the executioner in the group.