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What Does The Fire Symbolize In Lord Of The Flies

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William Golding uses many symbols in his novel The Lord of the Flies to create interaction between his characters. Golding’s characters are stranded on an island and one of their first decisions is to build a fire that will be used for creating a smoke signal for passing ships. Golding uses fire to symbolize three things in The Lord of The Flies: hope, struggle, and destruction. To begin with, Golding’s representation of fire as a necessity of hope to being rescued is an aspect that is easily conceivable to the reader, and this is purely demonstrated in the dialogue between several of his characters. During the first meeting the boys decide that they must have a fire in order to signal to passing ships that someone is on the island. Ralph, one of the newly elected leaders on the island states “There’s another thing. We can help them to find us. If a ship comes near the island they may not notice us. So we must make smoke on top of the mountain. We must make a fire” (Golding 38). Once this statement was made by Ralph the other boys were so …show more content…

There are several instances in the narrative of this novel that details the destructive force of the fire. One in particular happens as the boys are building their first fire. The wind gets up and ambers rush down a hillside igniting the undergrowth and spreads quickly to the canopy of the trees. During this time the boys begin to question each other about the location of one of the other small boys. “”That little ‘un that had a mark on his face-where is-he now? I tell you I don’t se him.” The boys looked at each other fearfully, unbelieving “-where is he now?” Ralph muttered the reply as if in shame. “Perhaps he went back to the, the-“” (46-47). Perhaps? The boys really knew what happened to the boy with the mark on his face, but are denying the reality of their corporate complicity to his

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