Lord of the flies grade 9

• After witnessing, first hand, the horrors of war, Golding's view of humanity changed
• Golding realised everyone had inherent evil and the capacity for savagery
• Golding came to the pessimistic conclusion that 'man produces evil as a bee produces honey' and 'everyone of us could be Nazis'
• At the time of writing the novel (1954) there were widespread fears of a nuclear war breaking out between the East and West
• Golding's books taps into this panic by imagining how humans might behave if there was a nuclear war
• The violence on the island is a microcosm of the adult world
• The novel is a parody of R.M. Ballantyne's 1858 novel, The Coral Island
• Golding felt the original novel was naïve in the way the marooned boys maintain their British honour and dignity on a desert island
• Golding thought if you leave boys on an island without an adults supervision there would soon be chaos
• Golding shows British boys have just as much capacity for evil as any other nation
• Golding's experience as an English teacher in an all boys' school gave him an inside knowledge of how young people behave
• Golding experimented with deliberately stirring up conflict in his students to see how far they would take their conflict
• Ralph


  Stands for civilization and democracy
• Piggy


  Represents intellect and rationalism
• Jack


  Signifies savagery and corrupt dictatorship who uses violence, fear, and intimidation as a means to gain and keep power
• Roger


  Represents the sadist, the individual who enjoys hurting others
• Simon


  Is the incarnation of goodness and saintliness
• Big Ideas in Lord of the Flies

  • All humans have innate evil - savagery is an inescapable fact of human existence - no one is immune
  • Humans are not inherently civilised - this is conditioned by society and parents
  • Civilisation and rules are vital in mitigating the effects of this savagery
  • Democracy is difficult to achieve the path to civilization is more difficult than the path to savagery
  • When society breaks down humans retreat into a selfish, survival of the fittest mentality where the weak and vulnerable are exploited
  • A mob mentality can influence normally moral beings to commit immoral acts
• Masks


  • Counter symbol to the conch; makes Jack confident and gives him power
  • He wears the mask to appear more menacing and intimidating to the other boys
  • The mask changes his behaviour as he starts to act more like a primitive animal
  • The mask allows Jack to feel no shame and no guilt for anything which the 'painted savage' did
  • The mask was initially for camouflage to help him be undetected by the pigs during hunts
  • The mask allows him to take on a new anonymous persona which is freed from the shackles of the superego and civilisation thus allowing his id to rule his ego
• The Island


  • Seems to present island as an Eden like paradise
  • The forest hinders with danger
  • Heat associated with blood shed later in the novel
  • Foreshadows Simon's death but also his enlightenment and Christ-like stature
  • Suggests forces of nature are stronger than the boys
  • Water becomes a sinister threatening force
• The Beast


  • Simon realises the beast is actually the evil within all humans
  • Jack offers a sacrifice to the beast for protection-links to satan
  • The more savage the boys become, the more real the beast seems
  • Jack treats the beast as a totemic god to reveal his primitive degeneration
  • The first mention of the beast arouses great fears within the boys
  • The boys PROJECT their insecurities onto an external monster
• Piggy's Glasses


  • They represent values of knowledge and order that civilisation is built on
  • Symbolises how the boys are losing their ability to be rational
  • The theft symbolises the abandonment of civilisation on the island
  • Ironically earlier in the novel the glasses symbolises hope for rescue
• Conch


  • Symbolise rules and order
  • Fragility of the civilisation
  • Piggy respects the conch the most as it
  • The boys appear to be acting in a mature democratic way
  • Symbolises the triumph of savagery over rationality
• Hair


  • Ralph's long hair mirrors his descent into savagery
  • Piggy's hair remains unchanged, symbolising how he sticks to his morals and stays civilised
  • Simon's hair is revitalised by the water, like Christ his death restores peace to the island
• Lord of the Flies Example Topic Sentences

  • Golding uses the violent deaths in the island as a microcosm to reflect his pessimistic vision of the violence and chaos in the adult world in the aftermath of WWII
  • Golding uses Ralph's descent into evil as a microcosm to communicate his belief that all humans possess inherent evil
  • Golding uses fire as a paradoxical motif in order to express his ideas about the conflict between a desire for survival and a desire for destruction
  • Golding uses the battle for leadership between Jack and Ralph as a microcosm to dramatise his belief that the instinct of savagery is far more primal and fundamental to the human psyche than the instinct of civilization
  • Golding uses Piggy's broken glasses as a symbol to encapsulate his message that humans lose their ability to see things clearly when there are no order or rules
  • Golding presents Jack/Roger as the manifestation of absolute evil to convey the uncomfortable truth that young children have the capacity to find violence exhilarating and liberating
• Big Ideas in Lord of the Flies

  • All humans have innate evil-savagery is an inescapable fact of human existence - no one is immune
  • Humans are not inherently civilised - this is conditioned by society and parents
  • Civilisation and rules are vital in mitigating the effects of this savagery
  • Democracy is difficult to achieve - the path to civilization is more difficult than the path to savagery
  • When society breaks down humans retreat into a selfish, survival of the fittest mentality where the weak and vulnerable are exploited
  • A mob mentality can influence normally moral beings to commit immoral acts