3rd MP Independent Reading: Sections 2 and 3

                To finish up the third marking period, I decided to finish the remaining two sections of my IR Lord of the Flies by William Golding for my Article of the Week. In a dramatic and harrowing conclusion to the boys’ steady fall into anarchy, Golding displays the powerful theme of that inherent in every human being is an evil and primal urge for violence: that within each individual is the Lord of the Flies.

                The use of character and the sense of character development are integral in Golding’s interpretation of this theme. Standing as antitheses of one another are Ralph and Jack. Throughout the story, Ralph stands as the natural leader who adheres to civilization and community, as well as the remaining source of “reality” many of the boys on the island have. On the opposite spectrum of rationality and civilization stands Jack, whose desire for power and authority drive him to savagery, whose willingness to torture and use of manipulation to control the other boys makes him a model of innate evil within each person. Where Golding’s theme of evil manifests into the story is when Ralph, Piggy, and other supposedly more rational children also similarly engage in violent rituals of primal actions and even kill another individual, Simon. That all of the boys, even Ralph himself, become more and more violent as time carries on implies that eventually the evil within each individual cannot be avoided and always comes out.

                The most important symbol that plays the largest role in Lord of the Flies are the “Beast” and the actual “Lord of the Flies”. Golding, though portraying Jack as the primary antagonist against Ralph, writes the story to note that the unnamed “Beast” is the center of all the problems that sprout between the boys on the island. First interpreted as a large snake, this concept of the beast (as it does remain a concept for a long time) feeds the paranoia and fear of the island boys. The turning point of the story is when, at night, Ralph, Jack, and Roger (who is similar to Jack) see a shadowy silhouette and hears flapping. Running away in terror, they are convinced that the beast actually exists, when it is simply the body of a dead parachutist who fell upon the island when his plane was attacked. Simon, who is often considered to be even a Jesus-like figure in this novel, realizes this fact but is then killed when he attempts to tell the other children, who are engaged in their frightening rituals. This means that the “beast” that all the boys have been fearing for so long is actually nothing but their own instincts and fear, that they manipulate the world around them to fit their frights and perceptions. The beast is the manifestation of their innate evils.