Figurative Language In Lord Of The Flies, By William Golding

In Lord of the Flies, William Golding uses figurative language at the beginning and the end of chapter three in Lord of the Flies to illustrate that both of these characters have different views and opinions in the way they look at their jungle and also in reality. One day in the jungle, it was silent and you could hear the echoes with any movement made. Jack wakes up a sleeping bird which causes it to screech and cry. This shows that he is disrupting the wild life in the jungle that he doesn’t even care about in the first place. When he first wakes up the bird, “Jack himself [shrinks] at this cry with a hiss of indrawn breath, and for a minute became less of a hunter than a furtive thing, ape-like among the tangle of trees” (Golding 48-49).

The jungle that Jack sees is a negative aspect. It’s not lush and beautiful. In his eyes, the jungle grows “pale flowers” on the tree trunks with “grey bark” (56-57). Jack feels that there is nothing pleasant on the stranded island they are on. If there is no animals to be hunted, he is dissatisfied. He also views the jungle as seductive and also maddening. The way Jack views the jungle is the total opposite of how Simon views it, just how they are very opposite people. Simon has a much different view about the jungle than Jack does. As he goes to the forest, he makes sure no one else is there with them. When he is there, he discovers that “[the] evening was advancing toward the island; the sounds of the bright fantastic birds, the bee-sounds, even the crying of the gulls that were returning to their roosts among the square rocks, were fainter” (2). Simon pays very close attention to the beauty of the jungle. As the night approaches, he listens to the sounds of the wonderful birds and the faint sounds of bees buzzing. He even notices the birds returning to rest for the night. Simon is in a very attentive and calm state of mind as he’s in this jungle, compared to Jack who is much more focused on his hunting and also a