It's not what you look at that matters, it's what you see
“Its is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent but the one most responsive to change.” -Charles Darwin. The character Piggy in William Golding's novel Lord of the Flies serves as the intellectual balance to the emotional leaders of a group of shipwrecked British boys, but he himself is not able to cope with the idea of change and fear is what holds him back. Their new society does not care about Piggy’s intellectual talents instead they value physical strength more, as they believe it is their key to survival. Lord of the Flies is a novel which has many hidden symbols to what each character represents. Piggy is a character which can be connected with
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Without Piggy this would have never been possible as his glasses help create the fire. As Ralph is in control the fire stays on and there is a hope that he boys will act civilized and stick together, but once the fire is turned of the only one that still has a desire to get rescued is Piggy as all the other boys attempt to change their life style and accept their fate. The signal fire thus functions as a kind of measurement of the strength of the civilized instinct remaining on the island. Ironically, at the end of the novel, a fire finally summons a ship to the island, but not the signal fire. Instead, it is the fire of savagery the forest fire Jack’s gang starts as part of his quest to hunt and kill Ralph.
To conclude in the story Lord of the Flies written by William Golding Piggy represents the intellectual part of society, control and laws and order of the adult world and civilization.
Piggy uses his glasses to look through, and looking is a metaphor for knowledge, sadly the boys value physical attributes more than intellectual attributes and take his glasses or “sight” away from him which is all he has, this scene foreshadows his death. therefor unfortunately Piggy is not able to survive on the island as he is not capable of changing and adapting to it.
Philipp
The Lord of the Flies by William Golding has many symbols within it, but the strongest and biggest symbol is Piggy’s glasses because them being stolen from him marked a significant change in their behaviors from civil to savage and they were the reason the fire was made that led to their rescue. Towards the end of the book, Jack and a few others stole Piggy’s glasses from him with brute force. Not only did this action make Piggy useless, but it gave the most powerful thing on the island to the most corrupt and savage boy. When Jack attacked the shelter, “Ralph and Piggy’s corner became a complication of snarls and crashes and flying limbs,” (Golding 167) proving that Jack was far from civil in his way of obtaining the glasses. This moment
Imagine you are a twelve-year-old and you are on an abandoned island with a bunch of kids your age, you have an abundance of great ideas but, because you are not built and muscular no one heeds your advice, that is exactly how the character Piggy felt. First, Piggy has no qualities that kids stranded on a deserted island view as useful. Secondly, all of the character, with the exception of Piggy, adhere the principle of survival of the fittest in order to survive. Finally, Piggy is used to demonstrate the idea that humanity is reliant on power to escalate their country instead of trying to advance their country through science and mathematics. The character, Piggy, is part of a broader spectrum that one might not pick up on the first interpretation of the novel.
This book represents evil in many ways, for the pig’s head of the first pig they had killed was put on a stick and put in the center of their home area and is the actual Lord of the Flies. As there was another voice in the crowd that said “Which is better –to be a pack of painted Indians like you are, or to be sensible like Ralph is?”, who is the everyman in ‘Lord of the Flies’ and thinks of the signal fire, which could be told as the hope of rescue. If you were wondering who I am talking about, it is Piggy. Who is Piggy? He is the the voice of reason and the one who everyone should’ve listen to, instead of bullying and/or hurting him.
A wise author named William Golding once tried to prove that man is essentially evil by plopping fifty plus british kids on an island due to a plane crash and writing out their turn to insanity. He used a certain literary element called symbolism, where an object is taken and put into much deeper meaning or value to the story. In the novel The Lord of the Flies by William Golding, the symbols of Piggy’s glasses, fire, and a pig head on a stick are used to prove that man is evil through a lack of society. The first symbol used is a pair of glasses owned by a boy named Piggy, a smart yet fat child.
At first, ralph makes a fire, hoping to stop a passing ship. Soon, after, all the boys group together, one of the boys, Jack tries to challenge ralph for his leadership, Jack tribe release a boulder on piggy, killing him. Jack then takes the other two boys hostage, leaving Ralph alone. During the process of jacks tribe trying to kill him. In the midst of trying to kill him, jack starts a forest fire.
J.I. Packer, a Christian theologian, once stated, “Wisdom is the power to see and the inclination to choose the best and highest goal, together with the surest means of attaining it.” In the novel, Lord of the Flies, written by William Golding, a group of English boys are stranded on a tropical island during the time of war. They discover that the island is inhabited and attempt to create their own civilization while waiting for rescue. However, as time passes by, things begin to get out of control and the boy’s own inner savagery quickly consumes them.
Piggy and his glasses play very vital roles in the book. For example, without Piggy Ralph wouldn't have known how to blow the conch. Another way Piggy is vital is that his glasses are used to start the fires. The glasses can symbolize law and order which is what Piggy represents as well. Piggy is more of an intellectual person that is outcasted by the other boys because he can not do much of any physical work.
The last significant symbol from the book was Piggy’s glasses. Used throughout the book to both help Piggy see and to light the fire, Piggy’s glasses played a very important role. During the course of Lord of the Flies, it was evident that Piggy was the most rational boy on the island, even though he was often ridiculed by his peers. Piggy saw clearly when others lost sight of themselves. The real downfall of the story began when Piggy’s glasses were stolen from him, when Jack Merridew and his tribe of savages attacked him.
Realizing Ralph's reliance on the fire and in otherways Piggy, Piggy begins to trust Ralph to protect him from Jack. His insecurities cause him to obsess over the idea of the fire to show that he does have some importance, while the savages are focused on power and hunting. Golding uses the struggle of power to demonstrate how destructive it can be. The desire for power causes the boys' civilization the crumble, discord and rivalries, and ends up destroying their island.
In the novel, Lord of the Flies, Piggy, a “fat” character in the book, is known to be one of the few children to still have a tie with civilization and intelligence. However, because his glasses represent the intelligence he has since they are now beginning to break, so is the intelligence all of the boys have on the island. This loss of intelligence, or lack of humanity, foreshadows some major character deaths in the novel, including Piggy and Simon’s deaths, who is also an exceptionally kind and gentle kid on the island. By knowing what foreshadowing is and grabbing clues from similar novels, like Romeo and Juliet, the reader deciphers this from the text. First, the reader has to fully understand what foreshadowing is in a sense.
Piggy is very intelligent, he comes up with ideas on how to help the boys survive on the island from the moment they crashed on it. Ralph starts begins to admire him for this clear focus on their rescue off the island. “ we can use this to call the others. Have a meeting. They'll come when they hear us” (Pg 16)
William Golding’s fictional, British novel, Lord of the Flies, presents a character that serves a two-part function as a “scapegoat” and a certain commentary on life. During WWII, a group of British boys are being evacuated via plane when they crash and are stranded on an island without adults. As time progresses, the innate evilness of human nature begins to overcome the savage society of young boys while Piggy, an individual representation of brains without brawn, becomes an outlier as he tries to resist this gradual descent of civilness and ends up shouldering the blame for the wrongdoings of the savage tribe. Up until his untimely death, Piggy is portrayed as the most intellectual and most civil character in the group of stranded boys. Right from the beginning, Piggy realized that “[they] got to do something,” (8) and he recognized the shell Ralph had picked up as a conch.
In the first two chapters of Lord of The Flies, we can see a growing tension between Ralph and Jack's group as the boys are taken by a spirit of savagery and engage in controversy regarding their fear and inclinations towards their state of remoteness. Golding also represents conflict and hostility through the harassment of Piggy, who is constantly interrupted by Jack and underestimated by the boys, as we can see in in a quote by Jack" 'You're talking too much', said Jack Merridew, 'shut up, Fatty' " and " 'I got the conch-' Jack turned fiercely. ' You shut up!' " Golding represents the conch in the book as a democratic symbol, which allowed every boy to contribute to decisions.
It allows the group of boys to be more civilized, rather than absolute chaotic. The signal fire stands for warmth and hope for the boys on the island. The signal fire was started to catch the attention of an passing airplane, or an passing boat.
Lord of the Flies remains Golding’s most accredited piece of work. It is an apparently simple but densely layered novel that has been categorized as fiction, fable, a myth, and a tale. Generous use of symbolism in Golding’s work is what distinguishes him with other authors of the same genre. For example, the conch shell, that represents a vulnerable hold of authority which was finally shattered to pieces with Piggy’s death. Secondly, for the other boys, Piggy’s eyeglasses represented the lack of intelligence which was later defeated by superstition and savagery.