civilisation

• Lord of the Flies


  • Boys crash land onto an island and attempt to establish a civilisation inspired by the one they left behind, in the hopes of finding rescue
  • Importance of maintaining civilisation is strongly appreciated in the beginning
  • Boys begin to forget the importance of working to keep civilisation running, distracted by superstitious fears and the prospect of instant fun
  • Gradual loss of civilisation is shown through several characters, such as Jack, Roger and Ralph, and their increasing brutality
  • Ultimately affects every boy on the island
  • By the end, Ralph has gained moral, scientific and spiritual insight far beyond his age, due to his realisation of how difficult and how important civilisation is
• Conch


  Vessel of democracy
• Voting for a chief

  Shows belief in democratic principles
• Boys wearing school uniforms

  • Highlighting connection to civilisation
• Jack's golden badge


  Highlighting order and parallel columns of choir boys
• Ralph's leadership


  Seen as a link to the adult world of authority
• Jack cannot contain the enormity of murdering a pig


  Boys still see hunting as a source of food
• Jack succeeds in hunting

  Ralph's anger at him letting the bloody fire out
• Fire


  Symbol of hope and rescue
• Jack is finding increasing contentedness on the island
• Roger is sadistically throwing stones at Henry


  His arm has still been conditioned by a civilisation that knew nothing of him and was in ruins
• Jack's mud face paint

  Liberated him from his own sense of shame
• Jack and Roger bring out the worst in each other

  The shadows they meet in representing the darkness or evil of these two characters
• Jack still feels discomfort in acting ape-like, though he chooses to ignore it
• Ralph laments the loss of civilisation


  Feels nostalgic for the ponies at his home in England, now replaced by a beast
• The abundance of food is now a dream


  Boys must hunt for their own food
• Ralph's long hair symbolises his descent
• Ralph feels hopeless, understanding the wearisomeness of this life where every step was an improvisation
• Boys begin to reject Ralph's tribe, secretly moving away from the shelters in favour of fun
• Boys doing a dance having eaten meat


  Acting out a mock hunt of the sow that they have killed
• Monosyllabic chant with imperatives ("kill the beast, cut his throat, spill his blood")


  Highlights the breakdown of language, a symbol of the loss of civilisation
• Changing the pronoun in the chant from "her" to "his" reflects how easily their ability to murder will gather pace
• This is the scene where the boys deliberately murder one of their own for the first time
• Lack of remorse Jack's tribe feels demonstrates their total loss of empathy and morality
• Piggy's response, to distance himself from "them" and euphemise "it", suggests his unwillingness to bear the consequences of his actions
• Golding's belief in original sin

  Evil is in the heart of humankind and only requires a single force (Jack) for its release
• The language used to reflect Piggy's death two chapters later has an unempathetic, matter-of-fact tone, showing how even nature has stopped caring
• Conch


  Represents the complete destruction of democracy
• Piggy's glasses (a symbol of intellectualism) are used to create a fire


  The fire becomes a "jaguar", going out of control and killing a boy, symbolising the dangers that can arise from unchecked leadership
• Golding's use of a rhetorical question "what would they eat tomorrow?", with reference to the fire in the last chapter demonstrates that his idea of savagery involves only caring about the present
• The shelters "burst into flames"
• Golding ironically ends the story with a deus-ex-machina to highlight the unlikelihood of a descended civilisation returning
• Ralph's weeping for "the end of innocence, the darkness of man's heart and the falling through the air of a true, wise friend"


  Shows that he has perhaps learnt the wisdom needed for true leadership
• Golding may be reflecting the importance of voting for good, responsible leaders, rather than those like Jack who stand back
• The "badges" on Ralph's uniform are a thin veneer of civilisation and the "ships" that the officer looks out to shows that he is just as guilty for the loss of civilisation in the real world as the boys are in a microcosm of it
• Jack wears a 'mask' of 'mud' to 'liberate' himself from shame when he kills and goes hunting
• As the novel progresses jack feels 'discomfort' as his actions are 'ape like' but he refuses to accept this and ignores it
• Roger and Jack hide in the ' shadows ' showing that they bring out the worst in each other in terms of evil
• monosyllabic chant with imperatives (“kill the beast, cut his throat, spill his blood”) highlights the breakdown of language, a symbol of the loss of civilisation.
• The conch, which “shattered into a thousand pieces and ceased to exist”, represents the complete destruction of democracy.