Lord of the Flies Themes

(Click the themes infographic to download.) If well-brought-up British boys become violent savages when left without supervision, maybe people really are just violent savages, covered up in clothe...

(Click the themes infographic to download.) If some adult has ever snapped at you to be "civilized," then you probably know that "civilized" ends up referring to all kinds of arbitrary things: get...

(Click the themes infographic to download.) The boys of Lord of the Flies are stranded on the island at just the right age (between six and twelve, roughly) to drop the idealism of youth and face...

(Click the themes infographic to download.) Be honest. If you woke up tomorrow and every adult on the planet had vanished, what would you do? (For the adults out there: what if you woke up and eve...

(Click the themes infographic to download.) In 1933, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, new president of the United States, said that the "only thing we have to fear is fear itself." Okay, it's a little m...

(Click the themes infographic to download.) Congratulations! You've just been elected student body president. What's your first move—getting the mystery meat out of the school lunches, or stakin...

(Click the themes infographic to download.) Halloween is a lot tamer than it was when people dressed up to scare away ghosts, but the idea is the same: disguising yourself lets you get away with t...

(Click the themes infographic to download.) Lord of the Flies can be read, at least in part, as a religious allegory. It features the character Simon as a Christ-figure who is killed by the other...

(Click the themes infographic to download.) Knowledge in Lord of the Flies is more about awareness and wisdom than anything else. There are certain important truths that some characters are privy...

(Click the themes infographic to download.) The island is strictly pre-teen, with no messy hormones to make things even worse. Maybe some of the boys have peach fuzz—we bet Jack does—but in ge...