Symbolism in Lord of the Flies :: William Golding

Symbolism in Lord Of The Flies In Lord Of The Flies, by William Golding, there is an immense amount of symbolism. A major symbol mentioned multiple times was the pig's head and the beast. There were some other symbols including Piggy's Specs, human brutality, and death. Golding shows that when people are taken away from society they become more like animals and much less civilized. The first symbol, the pig's head, is depicted as "dim-eyed, grinning faintly, blood blackening between the teeth," and the "obscene thing" is covered with a "black blob of flies" that "tickled under his nostrils." As the image is further depicted the reader gains a sense of brutality shown through this one human action. Simon begins talking to the head and even though the conversation may have been a hallucination, Simon learns that the beast isn't an "external force" and the pig's head tells him, "Fancy thinking the beast was something you could hunt and kill! O You knew, didn't you? I'm part of you?" The gruesomeness of this symbol is once again shown at the end of the conversation when Simon faints after he sees the "blackness within, a blackness that spread." Another of the most important symbols used to present the theme of the novel is the beast. In the imaginations of the boys, the beast is a source of evil on the island. However, in reality, it represents the evil naturally present within everyone, which is causing life on the island to deteriorate. Simon begins to realize this even before his encounter with the Lord of the Flies, and during one argument over the existence of a beast, he attempts to share his insight with the others. Simon tells them, ?Maybe, O maybe there is a beast O What I mean is O maybe it's only us.? In response to Simon's statement, the other boys, who had once conducted their meetings with some sense of order, immediately begin to argue more fiercely. The crowd gives a ?wild whoop? when Jack rebukes Ralph, saying ?Bollocks to the rules! We're strong o we hunt! If there's a beast, we'll hunt it down! We'll close in and beat and beat and beat!? The boys fear of the beast and their desire to kill it shows that s ociety's rules once had power over them and has been loosened during the time they have spent without supervision on the island. The evil within the boys has more effect on their existence as they spend more time on the island, isolated from the rest of society, and this decline is portrayed by Piggy's Specs.