Lord of the Flies

The Lord of the Flies is meant to symbolize evil, in the boys and all humanity, and the devil. The author does a very good job of showing how the Lord of the Flies represents this. The Lord of the Flies is what causes the evil in the boys, or so it seems from what is said during the Lord of the Flies one actual appearance in the book (pages 143 and 144). During this appearance the Lord of the Flies is given shape and voice by Simon’s mind. This hallucination is caused by Simon’s epilepsy, because he is about to slip into a seizure while the conversation between the Lord of the Flies and Simon is going on. The Lord of the Flies said that if he told the other boys the truth “we shall do you” (pg. 144). To me the Lord of the flies saying we means that he and the other boys will be the ones to kill Simon, but the Lord

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By disguising the Lord of the flies as so many other objects on the island he creates a sense of everything being tied together by some evil force, and since the island is a microcosm of our world, that the boys struggle against that evil is humanities struggle against that evil. It becomes a book about the break down of society and order, a book showing the evil that can lie unseen in the human heart and mind. This makes a lot of sense because all the beast was was the evil in the boys and their fear of the evil in each other, and possibly themselves too. So the boys, in leaving the pigs head on the stick, are unknowingly making sacrifices to themselves. By naming the book after the Lord of the Flies the author came right out and stated that the book is not about the boys at all, they are just narraraters that move the story along, and help to show what the Lord of the Flies is. Since the book is named after the Lord of the Flies that suggests to me that the book is about the Lord of the Flies and how it can gain control of people so easily. Because it controls the island’s only inhabitant’s it must control the island, because the inhabitant’s of the island are the only one’s that can make changes on the island.

I feel that the author did a superb job of showing his purpose of explaining the importance of the Lord of the Flies, but not completely giving away the purpose. The Lord of the Flies is the beast, which is really just the evil in the boys. The Lord of the Flies comes right out and states that he is the Beast. At one point in the book he wishes he could do away with Jack. So the Lord of the Flies is so symbolic not to create a story but to show the author’s ideas of what people are like.

If you look deep enough into the story, and think of how the Lord of the Flies represents different things, you can begin to see that the Lord of the Flies represents everything on the island, except the Conch. As the book progress’s the Lord of the Flies pretty much gains control of all the boys. It was the evil in the boys that left the pigs head on the stick as a sacrifice to appease the beast, which is just the evil in themselves.

Common topics in this essay:
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Approximate Word count = 1005
Approximate Pages = 4 (250 words per page double spaced)

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