English Study Notes: Lord of the Flies
1. Understand the following literary elements in the context of the novel: symbolism, characterization including antagonist, protagonist and character foil, allegory, foreshadowing, setting, internal/external conflict, simile, metaphor, personification, irony. For example:
a. Symbolism: What are the major symbols? What does the Lord of the Flies symbolize?
b. Characterization:
- -How does Golding bring each character to life?
- How can the characters be judged by what they say and do?
- How are the characters themselves symbols?
- Who is Ralph’s foil? What aspects of their respective characters are enhanced by this contrast?
c. Consider the impact of irony in the novel.
-Irony of their quest: It is ironic that the boys try to track and kill the beast, thinking it evil, when the evil they seek to destroy is within each of them.
- Irony of their rescue: Ironically, they are rescued from absolute savagery by a civilization that is deeply embroiled in savage warfare itself.
- Dramatic Irony: Their rescuer says, “’What have you been doing? Having a war or something?’” (223). Why is this ironic?
d. Consider the allegory in the novel. (see #3, too)
-how is the novel a political allegory?
- how is the island and the events that occur an allegory of society?
e. Consider the impact of foreshadowing in the novel.
- What event is foreshadowed by how they hurt Robert in their mock pig-killing game?
- What event is foreshadowed by the first fire that sounds like a “drum roll.”
- What event is foreshadowed when Roger and a few of the other kids start rolling boulders down the sides of Castle Rock while hunting for the beast?
-What is foreshadowed when there is talk about killing pigs?
- What is foreshadowed by the death of the boy with the mulberry mark?
f. What is the significance of the island, itself? What does it symbolize? Why is the novel set during some future World War?
- What does the lagoon symbolize?
- Why does the island have two sides, one ‘good’ side and one ‘bad’ side? How is each side characterized? Who has explored the bad side? Which character is associated with the ‘good’ side?
- Why is it important that they have shelters? Why is it significant that Jack’s tribe moves into caves?
- What \does Simon’s secret retreat symbolize?
g. Review the format for analyzing a metaphor, simile or personification.
- The flames, as though they were a kind of wild life, crept as a jaguar creeps on its belly towards a line of birch-like saplings
- Which two things are being compared? The flames are compared to a jaguar hunting its prey. How would you describe one of the things in the comparison? Jaguar: It goes slowly, purposefully, quietly when hunting, but when it strikes, it is deadly, fast, ruthless, persistent and accurate. How would you apply those traits to what it is being compared to? In the same way that the jaguar creeps quietly, with purpose, persistence and deadly accuracy, the flames are overpowering and killing everything in their path. The fire too is dangerous and wild, and like a wildcat hunting weaker prey, it overpowers whatever it encounters.
2. THEMES
a. The central theme, according to Golding, is that one can trace society’s defects back to the defects of human nature: they are the same. In other words, humankind is inherently evil and will revert to savagery unless kept in order by society.
Other Themes:
- Society and just civilizations are held together by systems that can fall apart, easily.
- The strong tend to overpower the weak.
- Rationality is often overcome by evil and chaos.
- Civilizations that cannot uphold their rules can be destroyed.
- In society, people have the tendency to devalue (vilify) the innocent, and to value (exalt) the villains; thus, evil ends up on top.
- No matter how civilized humankind becomes, there is always the potential for civilization to revert to savagery.
- The core of human nature is dark, and people need society and structure to control that impulse-driven part of human nature.
- Evil is not something supernatural that lurks in the shadows; it is a creation of the human mind.
3. ALLEGORY
- reread the definition of allegory and the handout.
a. Re-read Simon’s conversation with the pig’s head on the stick as a symbolic incident/event. As revealed through this conversation, Golding believed that the evil in society results from human nature.
b. Understand how this novel may be considered an allegory, a story in which characters, setting, objects, and plot events stand for a meaning outside of the story itself.
The character______contributes to the allegory by symbolizing______.
The object______contributes to the allegory by symbolizing______. Etc.
4. Review important quotations. Know who said it, in which circumstances, and its connection to the significant ideas of the text:
a. “What I mean is….maybe it’s only us.”
b. Here, invisible but strong was the taboo of an old life. Round the squatting children was the protection of parents and school and policemen and the law.
c. His mind was crowded with memories… of the knowledge that had come to them when they closed in on the struggling pig, knowledge that they had outwitted a living thing, imposed their will upon it, taken away its life like a long satisfying drink.
d. However Simon thought of the beast, there rose before his inward sight the picture of a human, at once heroic and sick.
e. ’Fancy thinking the Beast was something you could hunt and kill. You knew, didn’t you? I’m part of you? … I’m the reason why it’s no go?’
f. Before the party had started a great log had been dragged into the centre of the lawn and Jack, painted and garlanded, sat there like an idol.
g. The rock struck Piggy a glancing blow from chin to knee: the conch exploded into a thousand white fragments and ceased to exist.
h. Ralph wept for the end of innocence, the darkness of man's heart, and the fall through the air of the true, wise friend called Piggy.
i. ”He says things like Piggy. He isn’t a proper chief.”
j. ”Which is better – to have laws and agree or to hunt and kill?”
k. ”You knew, didn’t you?” “silly boy.”
l. "There's nothing in it of course. Just a feeling. But you can feel as if you're not hunting, but--being hunted; as if something's behind you all the time in the jungle."
m. "I'm scared of him…and that's why I know him. If you're scared of someone you hate him but you can't stop thinking about him. You kid yourself he's all right really, and then you see him again."
n. …was fighting to get near, to get a handful of that brown, vulnerable flesh. The desire to squeeze and hurt was over-mastering.
o. The great wave of the tide moved further along the island and the water lifted. Softly, surrounded by a fringe of inquisitive creatures, itself a silver shape beneath the steadfast constellations, Simon's dead body moved out toward the open sea.
p. But then the fatal unreasoning knowledge came to him again. The breaking of the conch and the deaths of Simon and Piggy lay over the island like a vapour. These painted savages would go further and further.
q. The candle-buds opened their wide white flowers glimmering under the light that pricked down from the first stars. Their scent spilled out into the air and took possession of the island.
r. Piggy could think. He could go step by step inside that fat head of his, only Piggy was no chief. But Piggy, for all his ludicrous body, had brains.