Examining books

Lord Of The Flies

Summary: Lord of the flies is a book about a large group of boys who get stuck on an island in the middle of nowhere after their plane crashes. They are stranded on an island with no adult supervision, things slowly begin to turn south. 2 boys died in the time spent on the island. The story mainly focuses on Ralph, Piggy, Jack and Simon

My analysis:I love lord of the flies and the most prominent reason being the symbolism, there is so much to unpack I honestly don't know where to begin, I'll start with some important moments from the book because the attention to detail gives me a will to live.

Some moments that stand out to me are pretty minor but I still think they are valid, for example, when the boys are lighting a fire to cook the pig, Jack being the little shit he is giving everyone their bit of meat and makes Piggy wait for his (it's quite clear from the beginning that Jack does not like Piggy) Then Simon gives Piggy his bit of meat. Jack lashes out on Simon for doing so. Simon is meant to represent Jesus and he is the most redeemable of them all.

The scene that always sticks in my head is the bit where Jack and pretty much the entire island are running wild and Piggy keeps telling Ralph to blow the conch and Ralph says something along the lines of "No if I blow it now and they don't come, they'll never come back again." This shows the dynamic of Ralph and Piggy, Ralph is a natural-born leader, he is blessed with every physical feature that is considered handsome, and yet he is extremely reluctant to be a leader. Piggy, on the other hand, is described as being overweight with glasses, and despite being young having a receding hairline. Piggy represents the government and order, one of the most tragic things about Piggy is that he simply can't imagine people not following the rules, whereas Ralph (whom I have always thought that he was probably popular in his previous school.) Has a much better understanding of people. Piggy, unlike Rodger who is Jack's second in command, comes up with a lot of bright ideas but never realises that he does, in more cases that one Piggy has said something, Ralph has brooded over the idea for a while, then resurfaced it and then what do you know, Piggy praises Ralph for thinking of his idea.The deaths are also very important, one of the reasons this book is a classic is because of how human everyone is, usually, in literature, it's quite black and white, our heroes are heroes and our villains are villains. Not to say that our heroes don't have faults, but the author is sometimes scared to make our hero to irredeemable. I'll admit, I'm guilty of that too but Lord of the flies isn't afraid to do that. Ralph and Piggy participate in the murder of Simon, as do pretty much all of the boys they understandably feel awful about doing it, Simons death isn't graphic like Piggys, (but there is a reason why Piggys death is so gory and I'll get to that in a moment,) but it does go into the detail of the savagery the boys feel at that moment. At first, it is just a game but it gets so intense that they beat Simon to death. Piggys death is very gory and it isn't just there for the shock value, it's purposefully gory because since Piggy represents the government, his death is gruesome because throughout history all the riots against any kind of government endly in violence and gore.

After the death of Simon and Piggy (or the government and religion) since there is no order the island erupts into chaos, and I'm almost certain that's to symbolize how if humans don't have a structure in their lives, chaos is inventable.

Overall, lord of the flies is to show how dark humans truly are, at the end of the book when the sailor comes to rescue the boys he feels uncomfortable because he sees them for what they are: little boys crying. He is completely oblivious to what happened on the island, but Ralph has seen what humans can do to one another, hell, he even partook in some of it.

It's fun to theorize what happens to all the boys, did Ralph get over what happened on the island? To me, I don't think so, I can say undoubtedly that it haunted him for the rest of his life.Lord of the flies will always be one of my favourite books and I hope you enjoyed my thoughts on it!