Lord Of The Flies Literary Analysis

In Lord of the Flies by John Steinback a group of young boys are stranded on an island. To survive the boys decided to vote who should be their leader, Ralph or Jack. Piggy is a smart, fat boy who is not respected by the boys. Ralph is the face of leadership but not the best for the job compared to Piggy. Piggy is the brains behind Ralph who gives the essential idea to further progress the island.

“In a 2005 survey about gay bullying statistics, teens reported that the number two reason they are bullied is because of their actual or perceived sexual orientation or gender expression”, according to bullyingstatistics.org. It has also been shown that those who are bullied themselves often go on to bully others because it is all they know, or that bullying covers up their own shames. The character Jack Merridew in Lord of the Flies is not evil like many would argue, but rather is ashamed of the fact that he is gay and closeted. This is supported by the hunter’s casting off of religion and government, Jack’s inability to hunt unless in front of other boys, and the beast as a symbol.

“When you see corruption being rewarded and honesty becoming a self-sacrifice–you may know that your society is doomed”(Rand). This was stated by Russian-American novelist Ayn Rand; the extract relates to the novel William Golding wrote called Lord of the Flies. Golding wrote about a group of schoolboys trapped on an island from a plane crash. The boys had to figure out how to survive without grownups. Trying to survive was difficult because they had to have common sense and order. They lose those traits throughout the book which resulted in selfishness and corrupt behaviors.

In the novel Lord of the Flies, by William Golding, a group of English boys in their adolescence are stranded on an island. They crash-land while being evacuated because of an atomic war, so the boys must learn to cooperate with each other in order to survive. The boys are civil at first, but the bonds of civilization unfold as the rapacity for power and immediate desires become more important than civility and rescue. The conflict between Ralph, the protagonist, and Jack, the antagonist, represents the conflict between the impulse to civilization and the impulse to savagery, respectively. In Lord of the Flies, Golding uses Ralph and Jack’s struggle for power to show that greed and lust for power can corrupt the best

What went wrong in the Lord of the Flies? Some may say Jack and some may say Roger, but what are the real reasons for the downfall of the boys? They are, the loss of hope, the loss of order, and the passing of time.

“We all have a social mask, right? We put it on, we go out, put our best foot forward, our best image. But behind that social mask is a personal truth, what we really, really believe about who we are and what we 're capable of” (Phil McGraw) one once said. In Lord of the Flies the characters wear a social mask that opposes their true feelings. Written by William Golding, the story revolves around a group of boys who become stranded on an island and must depend on themselves to survive. They elect a chief, a boy named Ralph. However, as the story progresses, the group become influenced by Jack, an arrogant choir chapter boy. Intriguingly, although they desire to be with Jack and join his tribe, the boys remain with Ralph for most of the story. The rhetorical triangle, which analyzes a speaker or writer based on three ideas- ethos, pathos, and logos-, helps many to better understand the children’s actions and mentality; ethos focuses on the credibility and ethics of the speaker while pathos concerns how the speaker appeals to the emotions of the audience and logos is about the speaker’s use of evidence to appeal to the audience’s sense of reason. The boys stay with Ralph because of Ralph’s use of ethos but prefer to be with Jack because of Jack’s use of pathos and ethos which shows Golding’s message- humans were masks.

Children all fear the dark because of what it may contain as darkness the the manifestation of the unknown. Many people fear the unknown rather than embrace it because fearing the unknown provides them with a sense of control regardless of whether or not it is an illusion. This is shown in William Golding’s Lord of the Flies, with Jack who uses the concept of the Beast to gain support from the littluns and eventually rises to power within the group of boys.

In William Golding’s Lord of the Flies, Ralph and Jack’s power struggle is observed throughout the book. Ralph’s democratic leadership sharply contrasts Jack’s tyrannical and uncivilized rule. Ralph is stripped of everything and the line between him and Jack is blurred near the end because he gives in to savagery. Though all men will ultimately revert back to animalistic instinct and savagery in the absence of civilization, Ralph only succumbs to this when he loses his friends and when he is hunted; Jack succumbs all on his own.

Humans develop in societies with rules, order and government, but humans are not perfect, they have many deficiencies so do the societies they live in. When a group of schoolboys land on a tropical island, Ralph takes on the role of leader by bringing all of the boys together and organizing them. He first explains “There aren’t any grownups. We shall have to look after ourselves.”(p.33), this brings up the question if the boys will have prosperity or will they succumb to the evil on the island. At first the young boys start being successful and civilized, but chaos soon overruns them and evil starts to lurk over the island.The fictional story of the group of British schoolboys stranded on an island and the decisions they make, relates back

Although many things are stated outright in William Golding’s Lord of the Flies, the book is rich with symbolism and subtext. The story starts with British school boys being stranded on an island after escaping a threat of nuclear war. The boys elect fair-haired Ralph as their leader, but Jack, a fiery choirmaster of some of the boys, is jealous and the story quickly goes downhill from there, leading to aggression, mayhem, and murder. Throughout the novel, there is also a mysterious and imaginary beast that haunts the minds of the younger boys. Lord of the Flies has many details, many of which are symbols or have implied meaning. One of the most important examples of subtext is Simon, the strange, ethereal boy who aligns himself with

Stranded on an island, a group of boys have the choice to be civil or savage. In Lord of the Flies, by William Golding, British schoolboys are marooned on an island. They voted Ralph to be the leader in an effort to remake the culture that they had left behind, accompanied by the intelligent Piggy as counselor. But Jack wants to be the leader too, and he individually lures all of the boys away from civility to the brutal survivalism of hunters. The conch symbolizes power, respect, and social order. Within the Lord of the Flies, Golding provides a brief look at the savagery that controls even the most civilized human beings. William Golding mirrors our modern day society by

Through Ralph it shows that he is the most powerful boy on the island, despite his size. Ralph doesn't want to be in control of all the people, he just wants to find a way of the island. He is determined to create rules and follow them, and prioritizes the groups needs above his own selfish desires. For example, he builds the huts even though it isn't fun, compared to the boys who go off to play whenever instead of doing important tasks that aren't fun. Ralph symbolizes law, government and a civil society.

Symbolism is a very important factor in many books. The use of symbolism in William Golding’s novel The Lord of the Flies is the most essential aspect to the function of the story. At first glance you may not think the symbols are very important, but with some in-depth thought you can see how it is necessary to explain the microcosm of an island.

Golding uses Jack in his novel to represent the evil in our human nature. During the brutal killing of the sow in chapter 8, Jack laughed and wiped the blood off his hands with no shame. Golding used this to emphasize how messed up we, as people can be. Jack was once a civilized manner choir boy, but was put in the wrong situation, and lost it. Also, Golding was showing how fast our human nature can change. This is show in the novel, because after a few days on the island, and few boys started to lose their civilization. After some time had passed, they used clay to paint their faces and their hair had grown out. This made them look like savages, and at this point all they had to do was act like one, which is exactly what they did.

“Isolation is a dream killer” (Barbara Sher). In the novel Lord of the Flies written by William Golding, kids stranded on an island must figure out how to survive. By hunting pigs and building shelters the kids tried to subsist on the island. Through the process of hunting, the kids became cruel, evolving to the point of being barbaric. Thus, through the barbaric actions of the boys and the outside world, Golding shows that savagery exists in all people.