The Conch
Piggy and Ralph spot a conch and decide to use it to call a meeting. All right! Island society is off to a good start. The boys impose a "rule of the conch" on themselves, deciding that no one can...
The Fire
From the very beginning of the novel, Ralph is determined to keep a signal fire going, in case a ship passes near to the island. That's all well and good, until the first signal fire the boys light...
The Glasses
While the boys on the island are busy stripping naked to hunt pigs with sharpened sticks, there's still one symbol of advancement, innovation, and discovery: Piggy's glasses. On the one hand, the g...
The Pighunts
We'll let Golding start us off:Here, struck down by the heat, the sow fell and the hunters hurled themselves at her. This dreadful eruption from an unknown world made her frantic; she squealed and...
Ralph's Hair
We know the hair has to be a big deal, because the very first words of the novel are, "The boy with fair hair lowered himself down" (1.1). And it just keeps growing. Here's a small sampling of what...
Clothing
Clothing is another relic of the old world that falls by the wayside in this new one. Clothes can be ominous, as when Jack and his choir boys appear to be one long, dark creature as they travel in...
Allegory
The Lord of the Flies could be read as one big allegorical story. An allegory is a story with a symbolic level of meaning, where the characters and setting represent, well, other things, like polit...
The Beast
The beast is easy enough: it represents evil and darkness. But does it represent internal darkness, the evil in all of our hearts, even golden boys like Ralph? Or does it represent an external sava...
Body Paint
There's a reason (some) women put on more makeup when they're going on a job interview or a first date—and those neat-looking black stripes under football players' eyes are more effective at look...
Wounds
From the moment the boys land on the island, we begin to see signs of destruction. Over and over we are told of the "scar" that the plane leaves in the greenery (1.3). The water they bathe in is "w...