William Goldind's Lord of the Flies

WILLIAM GOLDING’S LORD OF THE FLIES

PLOT
Initial situation
A group of young boys without any adults survives a plane crash on an uninhabitet island. They try to organise themselves, they vote for a leader – a boy named Ralph, they make plans for getting rescued, so they choose the most important thing – to make a smoking fire, so the ships and planes could see them and rescue them. The first problem occures when the boys, who are responsible for keeping the fire burning, go hunting for a pig instead of keeping the fire, the fire goes out and the ship passing the island cannot rescue them.
Reversal /Change
The group of hunters, lead by a boy named Jack, refuses the order with Ralph being a leader, they go on the other side ot the island, form their own tribe and start behaving as a primitive hunters and warriors. They paint their faces and bodies with warpaint, they do primitive dances and rituals and they give a sacrifice – a pig’s head - to a „beast“ . One of the boys saw something scary, so they think that some kind of a beast lives on the island . A boy named Simon finds out, that the beast is actually a dead pilot, but when he returnes to tell it to the other boys, they kill him in a war frenzy.They also steal Piggy’s glasses to make a fire and when Piggy and Ralph go to také them back, they throw a stone upon Piggy and kill him. Ralph escapes to the jungle, so they make a hunt on him and set the jungle on fire.
Resolution
The fire that is burning in the jungle is making a huge cloud of smoke, sailors on the ship passing the island see it and send a boat to explore the island. They find Jack‘ s tribe hunting for Ralph. The boys are rescued.

THEME
The novel shows how fragile is the humanity of people, how easy we can fall back to primitives and we can see the struggle between rationality and order (represented by Piggy and Ralph) and the will to power and dominance (Jack making his own tribe with himself being a leader).
The book contains romantic scenes ot beautiful nature on the island, but except for that, the story has a serious, tragical mood.

NARRATOR, NARRATIVE TECHNIQUE
The novel is narrated in the third person.

MAIN CHARACTERS
Ralph
Ralph is chosen to be a leader by boy’s votes. He has got the main idea of making and keeping the fire to be rescued. He is trying to maintain the order and the civilised way of living on the island . At the end he becomes hunted by Jack’s tribe and after being rescued he is crying for the death of Piggy and Simon and the lost of innocence.
Piggy
Piggy is a very intelligent boy, he is a friend with Ralph and he helps him to keep order on the island. He, as the only one, wears glasses, the only thing they can start a fire with. He gets killed when he wants to get back the glasses, stolen by Jack‘s tribe.
Jack
Jack is the leader of the boy’s choir that turns into a group of hunters. He has got a strong will to rule the island, he makes his own tribe and wants all the boys to join his tribe. His tribe kills Simon, Piggy and they intend to kill Ralph as well. They prepare „a stick sharpened at both ends“ for Jack, which means, that they want to give Jack’s head as a sacrifice to the beast, as well as they did with the head of the pig .

MAIN SYMBOLS
Conch
At the beginning of the novel, Piggy finds the conch, Ralph blows it and it gathers all the boys together. The conch becomes a symbol, the one who holds it has the right to speak and the others have to listen to him. The conch is destroyed when Roger from Jack’s tribe kills Piggy.
Glasses
Glasses symbolise Piggy’s weakness, he cannot see without them and he is practically blind after Jack’s tribe takes them from him. They also symbolise the power to make a fire – for both the rescuing signals and grilling the meat.
Beast
The beast is something that scares the boys. The twins Sam and Eric see the parachute ot the dead pilot blowing in the wind and they think it is a beast. Simon finds out that it is not a beast, but when he goes back to tell it to the boys, they think he is a beast and kill him.
Lord of the flies
Lord ot the flies is the pig’s head given by Jack as a sacrifice to the beast. In Simon’s phantasies the pig’s head is talking to him.
STRUCTURE
The story is narrated chronologically.
SETTING
The novel takes place on an unspecified island at an uspecified time during an unspecified war. All the characters except from the naval officer, that rescues them at the end ot the novel, are young British boys.