Conch Shell Lord Of The Flies Symbolism Essay

A world of order turns into corruption when weakness triggers the defects of human nature. In The Lord of the Flies, William Golding illustrates the effect weakness has on the actions of humankind. He gives readers two symbols, the conch shell and The Lord of the Flies, in order to communicate how authority and order can be broken when the evil in all of humanity is stirred. The boys on the island do not see a correlation between the conch shell and the The Lord of the Flies, rather they only see a loss of order by a desire to stay alive. Golding wants readers to see much more, creating an image of how the world changes because of the evil inside each person.

William Golding’s novel Lord of the Flies is symbolized throughout the whole story. The symbols are always changing throughout the novel. This gives a perspective of the society. All the symbols together have a historic event and lesson Golding is telling. Everyone and every object have a symbolic meaning behind them.

In Lord Of The Flies, William Golding uses many different symbols to show the boy’s development on the island as time goes on. Two of the most important symbols in this book are, the conch shell, and the pig’s head on a stick. The conch shell is used to show civilization and power. The pig’s head on a stick symbolizes loss of innocence, evil and the “beast” in all of the boys. Throughout the novel, the reader’s perception of these symbols tends to be different than the boy’s perception.

Quotes Analysis Further reflection “By the time Ralph finished blowing the conch the platform was crowded… before him small children squatted in the Grass. Silence now. Ralph lifted the cream and pink shell to his knees and a sudden breeze scattered light over the platform.” “‘we can't have everybody talking at once… He held the conch before his face and glanced round the mouth. '

The Lord of the Flies is a book filled with symbols, and the sow’s head and the conch shell are the main ones. These items are powerful symbols, but they each represent different kinds of power that are used in entirely different ways. Jack, who uses the sow’s head to instill fear and suppression over the younger boys, wields the head for a controlling type of power. Ralph, who employs the conch shell to bring all of the boys together as a united group, uses it in an orderly, leadership type of power. The two items’ symbolic meaning all depends on the users.

The concept of the Lord of the Flies begins from the root of the world-- corruption. William Golding, the author of this famous, as well as infamous book, conveys a story about young boys set on an abandoned island to survive alone. These boys resemble the disappearance of order when civility situates itself in the wrong hands. This book supports Thomas Hobbes’ ideology of mankind being naturally "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short" without appropriate order. Taken into the account of this ideology, Jahmal Lightfoot, a prison inmate jailed for robbery, quoted by the New York Times article, “testified that he had been singled out for a beating by officers who believed that he thought himself ‘tough’”.

In Golding’s Lord of the Flies, are stranded on an island without any adults. They have to create a new civilization, but will it fail? Piggy’s specs are the symbol of deterioration of civilization. The glasses are at first used to start a fire, then become slightly broken, and finally completely broken. Starting a fire is essential for a civilization.

Evil is profoundly immoral actions, evil is being malevolent. Everyone does evil things like hit someone, or call them names, it’s something people do before they understand it's wrong. Even after people learn that it’s wrong they still use it throughout their lives, but why? Evil and fear is created by people who strive for power and the need to feel wanted. In William Golding’s “The Lord of the Flies” the creation of evil and fear is demonstrated through different symbols.

Arnold Joseph Taynbee, a British historian, explains, "Civilizations die from suicide, not by murder." Therefore, in William Golding 's Lord of the Flies, the civilization on a tropical unknown island filled with young British boys start to break away from their reality, making it a civilization suicide. They are deserted by a plane crash, which murders all the adults leaving all the boys to manage themselves. Without reality, some of the boys lose their morals, and start to turn into savages. During the course of the novel, symbols are changing, as well, showing how the civilization on the island is decaying.

George R.R. Martin once said, “There is a savage beast in every man, and when you hand that man a sword or spear and send him forth to war, the beast stirs.” This is significant because it fully depicts the conflict that occurs in the novel between the boys. A symbol is used to represent something as it has relevance to context. Symbols give deeper meaning or extend feeling to an actual word beyond what is being said. The use of symbols can be very helpful in bringing more change of conveyance in a piece of literature.