Symbols


Conch


The conch symbolizes democracy, because the person who holds the conch got to speak and call the meetings.    Ralph finds a conch on the ferny wood and Piggy in retrospect tells him that someone  ” ‘used to blow it and then his mum would come.’ ”. (Golding 11) Piggy has an idea of using the conch to call other boys and have a meeting. When the boys hear the conch, they come along the beach and meet together. The conch makes Ralph so powerful among these boys, so they vote for him to be the leader.

 

Spectacles


The spectacles symbolized knowledge, intelligence, and progress. Piggy is the one who wears the spectacles and that means he is intelligent and has knowledge.  Piggy is the one who knows what the conch is and how it can be used. He also takes care of it, so when he dies the conch breaks. This is a metaphor that there is no democracy if the society loses knowledge, intelligence, and progress.  The boys use the spectacles to light the fire in the book.  In Chapter 4,after Jack lets the fire go out, Piggy’s glasses are broken. This means that dictatorships can damage and break the knowledge and make citizens get hurt.

 

Fire


The fire represents how close the boys are to civilization.  When the fire went out because Jack call the boys to hunt, is when the boys are most savage because they’re no longer worried about being rescued. Ralph wants a signal fire in order to be seem by other people and get rescued. However, Jack only wants a fire to cook or to honor the beast. In Chapter 10, Jack steals Piggy’s spectacles to light the fire, because he can use the fire to fight for who can be the leader.

 

Beast



The beast is the fear in the boys of becoming savages, as the story goes on the boys becoming more fearful of the beast. This means that, as they are more scared of the beast the farther they move from being civilized and more towards savages.  The boys think the beast comes for a cave on the top of the mountain because they saw the dead parachutist and thought him to be the beast. Before that they didn’t know where the beast exactly came from. In the end of the story Jack uses the Lord of the Flies, which is the pig’s head on the stick, to give the beast.

 

 

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