Back to Categories
Politics19 min read
Lord of the Flies
by William Golding
A Dystopian Classic on the Dark Side of Human Nature and Survival
Published: March 31, 2023
4.6 (242 ratings)
Book Summary
This is a comprehensive summary of “Lord of the Flies” by William Golding. The book explores a dystopian classic on the dark side of human nature and survival.
what’s in it for me? dig into an allegorical classic and reflect on the true fragility of our society.#
Introduction
william golding, lord of the flies, a novel there are some things that we often take for granted.
we wake up, go to work and live our lives as well as we can.
but take a step back and think about what makes all this possible.
what keeps the cogs of society clicking along?
it all comes down to an implicit agreement that everyone, for the most part, will follow the fundamental rules of society.
but what happens when these rules break down?
what are the innate aspects of our human nature that these laws are protecting, or protecting us from?
these are some of the questions that william golding explores in his famous allegorical novel lord of the flies.
written in the early 50s, in the wake of the horrors of world war ii and under the growing fears of the cold war and nuclear annihilation, thoughts of the fragility of civilization and the nature of man were at the forefront of golding's mind.
by presenting the story through the eyes of young boys stranded on a deserted island, golding was able to create an allegory for our society, exploring just how ingrained are the darkest sides of humanity.
this chapter will look at some of the most powerful themes presented in lord of the flies, themes that are as relevant today as they were in 1954.
the struggle between civilization and savagery, the loss of innocence and moral decay, the dangers of mob mentality, and how this all relates to the very nature of humanity.
by the way, if you would like to listen to a very short summary right away, you can also skip to the very last section.
ralph and jack – civilization vs savagery shortly after emerging from the wreckage of the plane, ralph runs into the innocent and reasonable piggy.
ralph and jack: civilization vs. savagery.#
while exploring the island, they discover a conch shell.
ralph blows into it, creating a deep and loud sound which alerts the other kids to their location.
with everyone gathered around, it's time for the stranded boys to take stock of their situation and plan out their next move.
things start out well enough.
after a democratic vote, ralph is chosen as the leader of the group, winning out against the ambitious jack.
to keep order, they agree on a rule that someone can only speak while holding the conch shell.
with leadership and order established, ralph starts allocating jobs, sending a group to check out the island, starting a fire, building shelter.
however, it isn't long until tensions emerge, particularly between ralph and jack.
firstly, jack and his team of hunters fail in their duty to keep the fire lit.
secondly, there is a disagreement over an alleged beast hiding somewhere on the island.
ralph is skeptical about its existence, while jack insists that it is there, and he shall kill it.
as jack grows more savage and obsessed with killing the beast, more of the boys start following him.
some out of the promise of meat, others out of fear of the supposed beast.
those who don't join him are tortured or killed by jack and his crew.
piggy is crushed by a giant rock, which also destroys the conch shell.
in the final dramatic moments of the book, ralph remains the only boy not under the influence of jack.
he runs through the island, dodging spears pursued by jack and his crew.
he would surely be killed like piggy, but at the last minute he runs into a naval patrol officer who had been attracted by the fire.
this marks the end of ralph's struggles, and the end of the book.
the main element we see here is the power struggle and influence of ralph and jack, which serves to highlight one of the main themes of lord of the flies – civilisation versus savagery.
to understand what's going on through this part of the story, you need to look at the role of the simple conch shell.
from the beginning, ralph uses this to maintain order.
it calls the group together in the first place, and they use it to stop everyone talking over each other.
it is the perfect symbol of structure in society, and the idea that if everyone agrees to do their part and follow the rules, then the system will work.
at one point, as the group begins to argue from fear and paranoia, ralph considers blowing the conch, but stops, saying, if i blow the conch and they don't come back, we'll be like animals.
piggy, the voice of reason, replies, but if you don't blow, we'll soon be animals anyway.
if we don't at least try to maintain order, then savagery will win out.
which is what we see in the character of jack.
from the start, he tries to undemocratically appoint himself leader, and is continuously obsessed with power and violence.
as the group stops following ralph and the rule of the conch, the boys descend further into depravity.
this reaches its logical conclusion when jack and his crew kill piggy, the voice of reason, and destroy the conch, the symbol of order.
so what's the message here?
just below the safety of our social order lies a primal savagery that will break out if those rules aren't protected.
simon and the loss of innocence.#
meet simon.
a bright-eyed boy with a scraggly mop of black hair, simon seems different from the others.
he is shy and secretive, and likes to spend time alone.
one day, after some time on the island, simon finds himself wandering through the forest, helping the younger kids with the fruit they can't catch.
he leaves them to follow an overgrown path deeper into the jungle, finally emerging into a beautiful sunlit glade.
in this secluded clearing, with its hanging vines and low, dark ferns, simon simply sits, listening to the sounds of the island.
the birds and the insects, the distant crash of the sea.
much later in the book, simon finds himself back in this glade.
this time, however, the scene is far from beautiful, and his experience is far from meditative.
jack and his now bloodthirsty crew have slaughtered a pig, and stuck its severed head on a stick erected in the middle of simon's special clearing.
in an epileptic and dehydrated hallucination, simon has a conversation with the horrible pig's head, referred to as the lord of the flies for the black swarm that surrounds it.
during the gruesome conversation, the lord of the flies declares itself as the beast that is inside all of us, and tells simon that he is not welcome on the island.
in his delusion, the pig's mouth grows to consume him, and simon loses consciousness.
though upon waking up, the pig's head is silent.
lucid, once again, he returns to the group.
here he finds the other boys caught up in their fear of the beast.
a dead soldier, parachuting from a crashing plane, has become caught in some rocks.
the billowing parachute and gruesome corpse make a convincing beast.
simon, in an act of innocent bravery, climbs up to the soldier, to prove that it isn't the beast which everyone fears.
however, when he returns to tell the boys of the news, in their fear and paranoia, they think simon is the beast, and fall upon him, killing him with their bare hands.
and that is the unfortunate fate of simon.
to understand some of the key themes in lord of the flies, it's important to understand the character of simon and what he represents.
as you learned in the previous section, ralph stands for civilization, and jack stands for savagery.
so, where does simon fit in?
when we see simon, his behaviour is always simple and honest.
he is in touch with nature, he helps the younger children get fruit, and he is happy to go off by himself.
simon represents a pure, spiritual goodness.
and that is why he has to die.
his character arc represents loss of innocence, one of the most powerful themes in the story.
this is shown in the simple contrast between his special glade, beautiful and serene at the beginning, menacing and defiled by a severed pig's head by the end.
in a sense, simon is too good for the world of lord of the flies.
as the other boys go from playful youths to savage murderers, the good and pure simon has no place.
when he is brutally murdered by the savages, for simply being brave enough to inspect the alleged monster, it suggests that the corruption and loss of innocence is inevitable.
and what of the pig's head, the titular lord of the flies, that simon sees?
this is the representation of evil.
call it the devil if you like.
while the interaction is a trick of simon's fevered imagination, the declaration that the beast is part of all of us is a very real statement about the innateness of evil in our lives.
so, when we lose our innocence, is this us being exposed to the evil of the world, or the evil inside us that was always there?
just ask simon.
the violent dangers of mob mentality.#
the violent dangers of mob mentality kill the pig, cut her throat, spill her blood.
this is what jack and his fellow hunters chant after their first kill.
they march and shout as one, carrying the carcass up to the firesite, talking over each other, caught up in the thrill of the hunt.
we hit the pig, says one.
i fell on top, says another.
i cut the pig's throat, says jack with pride.
they don't care that their obsession with the hunt caused the signal fire to go out.
they're just happy with how they worked together and won their prize.
kill the pig, cut his throat, kill the pig, bash him in, they chant again later in the book.
this time it follows another hunt, but in their frenzy they turn on robert, one of their own members.
they form a circle around him and jab him with spears as he screams and struggles.
one of the boys, ralph, is particularly unsettled by his own behaviour.
they eventually stop, laughing it off as a game, though robert doesn't seem to think so.
kill the beast, cut his throat, spill his blood.
this time poor simon is the target of the ritualistic chant.
the fear of seeing a figure emerge from where the beast supposedly is drives the crowd to a terrified frenzy.
before simon is able to explain who he is and what he has seen, he is brutally murdered by the teeth and nails of the mob.
kill the beast!
the final time we hear this chant, the tribe of hunters are dancing around a fire, some time after killing piggy.
their faces painted, they are united in their fear of the beast and the horrible actions they have taken.
finally, they turn on ralph, the one boy on the island who is still alive and hasn't joined their mob.
his salvation is pure luck.
the naval officer arrives, saving him from near certain death at the hands of jack and the bloodthirsty crowd.
what we are seeing in these hunters is a typical example of mob mentality and the horrible things that people are capable of when they lose themselves in the power of the larger group and the impulses of their fear.
it starts out innocently enough, hunting the pig in order to provide food for the group, but already the individuals in the group are starting to lose their identity, talking over each other and finishing each other's thoughts as they describe the hunt in graphic.
soon, fear becomes the justification for violence.
it is not the pig that they are killing, but the terrifying beast.
it is through violence and fear that the mob becomes more unified and it is through this unification that the violence increases.
soon, they are caught up in frenzied attacks of their own members and murders of those who won't conform.
by the end, they are dancing as one with their faces and identities masked by paint.
the individual is gone, consumed by the larger mob.
and don't forget to look at who becomes the victims of this mob.
simon with his spiritual goodness, piggy with his voice of reason and finally ralph with his embodiment of civilization.
these ideals are not only resistant to mob mentality, they are attacked or killed by it.
war and the adult world the story is about boys on the island and their own personal struggles.
war and the adult world.#
but there is a much bigger struggle in the background, of which we are only shown glimpses.
at the very start, the boys crash land on the island after being evacuated.
piggy talks about a man with a megaphone who is a bit of a nuisance.
piggy talks about a man with a megaphone and soldiers who may or may not save them.
didn't you hear what the pilot said?
about the atom bomb?
they're all dead.
without providing the details, it's clear that they are fleeing a nuclear war of a grand scale.
later, they discover a corpse of a parachutist who unsuccessfully ejected from a plane that had been shot down.
while the boys mistake this for the fabled beast, the reality isn't that much less frightening.
a bloody and broken body caught amongst some rocks, animated by the wind.
finally, as ralph runs desperately from jack and his murderous followers, he is ultimately saved by the naval officer.
the officer is initially shocked by the boys' appearance and barbarous behavior, eventually dismissing them as just children.
fun and games, he says, before mentioning that a group of british boys should have put up a better show.
overall, every glimpse or reference of the adult world concerns war, violence or dismissive arrogance.
so why would golding choose the backdrop of an unnamed war to tell his story?
surely the events would have played out the same no matter how the boys ended up on the island.
this relates largely to the context in which golding was writing, and the themes he was trying to explore.
the early 50s were an interesting time.
the world had just survived the horrors of world war ii, and everyone was well aware of the evils humans are capable of.
at the same time, the cold war was a constant and real threat, with the possibility of nuclear destruction at the forefront of everyone's mind.
it's no stretch to see why golding was inspired to write a story about the fragility of civilization and the inevitable moral decay of man.
you see, this story is not just about boys on an island trying to survive.
the adults out in the world are the same as those kids, prone to the same inner evils and savagery.
these boys will grow up to be the next adults, if the world still exists for them.
as their society collapses, piggy and ralph speculate on how the grown-ups would be able to handle things.
grown-ups know things.
they wouldn't quarrel or talk about a beast.
if only that were true.
when the final naval officer dismisses the behaviour of the children as unbecoming of british boys, it is both ironic and sad.
the implication is that the savagery and violence that the boys demonstrated is the same as the soldiers fighting and dropping bombs over other countries.
as golding himself once said of his book, in the end the adults save the children, but who will save the adults?
so what can you do with this bleak conclusion?
savagery wins out over civilization, we are destined to lose our innocence, and the evil in man will always triumph?
just like ralph, who resisted until the end, this isn't a reason to give up.
it's a reason to keep trying.
here's a brief recap of the plot of lord of the flies by william golding.
final summary#
Conclusion
the story takes place on an unnamed island in the pacific ocean, where a group of young british boys crash land after being evacuated from nuclear war.
as he stumbles from the wreckage, 12-year-old ralph meets a fat, asthmatic boy called piggy.
together they find a conch shell, which ralph blows to summon the other survivors.
the ambitious jack and his friends, the epileptic simon, and a group of younger children.
using the conch to decide who can speak, they initially create a democratic society with ralph as the leader.
the children become afraid, believing that there is a beast on the island.
ralph tries to explain that there is no beast, while jack declares that he will hunt it down and kill it.
this disagreement eventually splits the boys into two competing factions, led by ralph and jack respectively.
as jack's group becomes more violent and barbaric, they end up killing simon and piggy and setting fire to the island.
ralph runs from jack and his crew, only to be saved by a passing naval officer who saw the fire.
the book ends with the officer saying how disappointed he is by the behaviour of the boys.
You Might Also Like
Discover more book summaries in the same category or by the same author.