Lord of the Flies

1. Lord of the Flies Prepared by: Ahmed Elqattawi Supervised by: Dr. Sami El Breem

2. Outline • Author’s biography. • Summary. • Characters. • Setting. • Point of view. • Chapter’s analysis. • Symbolism. • Themes. • Quotations (3).

3. Author’sbiography • William Golding was born September 19, 1911, in Saint Columb Minor, Cornwall, England. • He started teaching English and philosophy in Salisbury in 1935. • He temporarily left teaching in 1940 to join the Royal Navy. • In 1954 he published his first novel, Lord of the Flies. • In 1983, he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. • On June 19, 1993, he died in England.

4. Summary

5. Summary • A plane carrying group of British boys ages 6 to 12 has crashed on a deserted island in the Pacific Ocean. Obviously, the plane is shot by an atom bomb because at the time the nuclear war was on. The pilot and adults are killed, but the only persons whosurvive are group of school boys. They manage to swim toward the beach of the island. Afterward, Ralf finds a conch alongside the shore of the island and blows a series of blasting sounds through it. He apparently does and catches the group attention, so they gather together and started writing down their names to call each other with piggy’s help . The conch basically is a symbol of power. Once you hold it, you ought to speak and the rest probably should listen.

7. Summary • The boys decide to elect a leader. The choir boys, who sing in a church, vote for Jack, but all the other boys vote for Ralph. Ralph wins the vote although Jack clearly wants the position. To satisfy Jack, Ralph asks the choir to serve as the hunters for the band of boys, and asks Jackto be in charge of them. Mindful of the need to explore their new environment, Ralph chooses Jack and a choir member named Simon to explore the island. Eventually, they reach the end of the jungle, where high, sharp rocks jut toward steep mountains. The boys climb up the side of one of the steep hills.

8. Summary • From the peak, they can see that they are on an island with no signs of civilization. The view is stunning, and Ralph feels as though they have discovered their own land. As they travel back toward the beach, they find a wild pig caught in a tangle of vines. Jack, the newly appointed hunter, draws his knife and steps in to kill it, but hesitates, unable to bring himself to act. The pig frees itself and runs away, and Jack vows that next time he will not flinch from the act of killing. The three boys make a long hike through dense jungle and eventually emerge near the group of boys waiting for them on the beach.

9. Ralf Jack Simon Choir boys Piggy

10. Characters • Ralph : • The novel’s protagonist, a twelve-year-old English boy who is elected leader of the group of boys marooned on the island. Ralph attempts to coordinate the boys’ efforts to build a miniature civilization on the island until they can be rescued. • Jack: • The antagonist, one of the older boys stranded on the island. Jack becomes the leader of the hunters but longs for total power and becomes increasingly wild, barbaric, and cruel as the novel progresses.

11. Characters • Piggy: Ralf’s companion whom Ralf meet with. He is fat and inflicted with asthma. He obviously recalls his auntie’s words that he is neither allowed to swim nor even allowed to run due to his illness. He used to wear glasses because he can’t see well without them. He always keep talking about his dead parents. He apparently used to lives with his aunt who owns a candy store. • Simon:A shy, sensitive boy in the group. He usually gets fainted many times. He is skinny, vivid little boy with a glance coming up from under a hut of straight hair that hung down, black and coarse. He is in some ways the only naturally “good” character on the island.

12. Characters • Sam and Eric - A pair of twins closely allied with Ralph. Sam and Eric are always together, and the other boys often treat them as a single entity, calling them “Samneric”. • Roger: A slight, furtive boy whom no one knew, who kept to himself with an inner intensity of avoidance and secrecy.

13. Characters • Johnny: • A child appears among the palms, about a hundred yards along the beach. He is a boy of perhaps six years, sturdy, and fair. His clothes are torn, his face is covered with a sticky mess of fruit. His trousers are lowered for an obvious purpose. He jumps off the palm terrace into the sand and his trousers falls about his ankles. • Bill. • Robert. • Harold. • Henry.

15. Setting • Place: • A deserted tropical island somewhere in the pacific ocean. It is filled with palm, coconuts, and bananas trees. There are some birds’ cries echo in the sky. There is a lagoon where the main character Ralf headed toward, which is an area of sea water separated from the sea by a reef, a line of rocks and sands. • Social environment: • There are no adults, no parents, no schools, no girls, no money, no home-made food, no new clothes, but themselves as individuals alone.

16. Point of view • Narrator : • The story is told by an anonymous third-person narrator who conveys the events of the novel without commenting on the action or intruding into the story. • point of view : • The narrator speaks in the third person, primarily focusing on Ralph’s point of view but following Jack and Simon in certain episodes. The narrator is omniscient and gives us access to the characters’ inner thoughts. Ahmed Elqattawi

17. Analysis • Lord of the Flies dramatizes the conflict between the civilizing instinct and the barbaric instinct that exist in all human beings. • The artistic choices Golding makes in the novel are designed to emphasize the struggle between the ordering elements of society, which include morality, law, and culture, and the chaotic elements of humanity’s savage animal instincts, which include anarchy, the desire for power, selfishness, and violence. • Over the course of the novel, Golding portrays the rise and swift fall of an isolated, makeshift civilization, which is torn to pieces by the savage instincts of those who compose it. Ahmed Elqattawi

18. Analysis • The fact that the characters are only boys is significant: the young boys are only half formed, balanced between civilization and savagery and thus embodying the novel’s central conflict. • Throughout the novel, Golding’s foundation is the idea that moral and societal constraints are learned rather than innate that the human tendency to obey rules, behave peacefully, and follow orders is imposed by a system that is not in itself a fundamental part of human nature.

19. Symbolism • Ralph: • represents human beings’ civilizing instinct, order, leadership, and civilization. • Ralph's growing hair: • is a symbol for the gradual breakdown of law and order. It's a reminder of just how far he is from civilization. • Jack Merridew: • represents unbridledsavagery and the desire for power.

20. Symbolism • Piggyas a representative of the scientific and intellectual aspects of civilization. Piggy thinks critically about the conch shell and determines a productive use for it—summoning the other boys to the beach. • The conch :is one of the most important symbols in the novel. The conch shell represents law, order, and political legitimacy, as it summons the boys from their scattered positions on the island and grants its holder the right to speak in front of the group.

21. Symbolism • Simon: • represents a kind of natural goodness, as opposed to the unbridled evil of Jack and the imposed morality of civilization represented by Ralph and Piggy.

22. Themes • Rules and orders. • Leadership. • Power and authority. • Let's make this really basic: if Ralph represents a democratic society ruled by power for the sake of law and order, then Jack represents an autocratic society governed by power for the sake of power. • In Lord of the Flies, we learn that absolute power corrupts absolutely—but limited power might end up making leaders better. This is the difference between Ralph, who gets more mature in his role as chief, and Jack, who gets—savage. • Fear. • Jealousy.

23. Quotations • Rules and orders: • “Where’s the man with the megaphone?” • The fair boy shook his head. • “This is an island. At least I think it’s an island. That’s a reef out in the sea. Perhaps there aren’t any grownups anywhere.” • The boys understand that the ruling order of society that they are used to has disappeared.

24. Quotations • Power: • “You're no good on a job like this.” • “All the same –” • “We don’t want you,” said Jack, flatly. “Three’s enough.” • While Ralph and Jack both assert authority over Piggy, Ralph at least tries to explain his reasoning (the mark of a good leader), whereas Jack brings personal insult to the matter (the mark of a bad leader).

25. Quotations • Fear: • “We may stay here till we die.” • With that word the heat began to increase till it became a threatening weight and the lagoon attacked them with a blinding effulgence. • When Piggy says the word "die," he seems to bring fear into the island. He and Ralph don't even know that anyone else is on the island yet—but it probably would have been better for them if they'd been alone.