Lord of the Flies

1. The Lord of the Flies is about a group of British schoolboys whose plane gets shot down stranding the kids on an island with no adults surviving the crash; they are forced to take care of them selves. Ralph is elected to be the leader of the group and he appoints Jack to be leader of the hunting group. Ralph is adamant about keeping the signal fire lit and maintained, and it is the hunting group’s job to control it. Jack and the hunter boys focus is on hunting and playing rather then the importance of getting rescued. One day a ship sails by and Ralph is infuriated when he sees that the hunters have let the fire go out. He calls together a meeting that doesn’t go as planned. The younger boys have been having nightmares and many of the boys believe that there is a beast living on the island. When the kids are asleep there is an air battle and a man falls out of his plane and his parachute lands in the trees of the forest. Sam and Eric wake and see it and tell everyone that it is the beast. Jack and Ralph make a journey to see what is going on and believe it to be an animal of some sorts. At the meeting Jack calls Ralph out and appoints himself the leader and encourages people to join him. They violently slaughter an animal in the new tribe and put its head on a spear as an offering to the beast in hopes that it will not attack the boys. Simon sees it and has a delusion where the head, the Lord of the Flies, tells him that he lives inside him and he will never escape. He passes out and when he awakes he goes and discovers the parachute. After his discovery he realizes that the beast is not an animal but an evil inside. When he goes to inform the boys he is attacked and killed by them. The following morning everything goes chaotic. Jack and Ralph fight and Ralph is forced to run and hide in the forest. The boys go to smoke him out and he is forced to go back to the beach. Knowing he will be killed soon he faints. When he wakes up he looks up to see a British naval officer. When the other boys arrive they are taken aback and they all cry and become like little kids again.
2. The theme of the book is that good and evil live with in side of everyone. The boys go crazy with out the adults and structure of their normal lives. The “beast” is not a physical thing like they believe it to be but rather something inside them that has made them act as savage as they do on the island. When the naval officer arrives he is presented as a sign of good. The effect of the presence of an adult is immediate on the boys and they stop fighting at once.
3. The tone of the book is chaotic because the author, William Golding, is graphic and blunt about how savage the boys become with no order.
• “He began to laugh and his laughter became a blood thirsting snarling.”
• “Kill the pig! Cut his throat! Kill the pig! Bash him in!”
• “The desire to squeeze and hurt was over-mastering.”
4. Literary Techniques:
• Symbolism: The beast is a symbol of evil, and you find out that the evil is inside all of them.
• Allegory: The entire story is an allegory. The island represents the world and the tribes, Jack’s versus Ralph’s, are like to countries at war.
• Setting: The setting is on a deserted island and with no adults. They have no technology so they must fend for themselves off the island. This story would not have worked if it were in any other place.
• Irony: The fire for Ralph is very important because it’s the only way he knows they will be rescued. For Jack it hasn’t been of importance, hunting has. But in the end it is the fire Jack lights to smoke out Ralph and kill him that gets them rescued.
• Style: The style Golding uses is perfect for this book and helps the reader capture each character. The fact that it’s not told from the perspective of one of the boys is key in this story because it gives a bias view of all the characters.