Lord of the Flies

1. Lord of the Flies Group 12: STYLE

2. CONTENTS • Point of View • Imagery • Diction • Setting • Irony • Allegory

3. POINT OF VIEW • Golding uses the omniscient third person point of view in LOTF, allowing the reader to enter the thoughts of characters such as Ralph and Simon, although most of the time, it is Ralph’s thoughts we hear. • The 3rd person point of view allows the action to be described from an objective narrator, and so allows the reader to make a judgment on the unfolding of events, e.g. whether the arrival of the navy officer is a salvation for the boys, and whether the naval officer himself, being an adult, could understand what had taken place on the island. • Also, the 3rd person point of view puts the reader ahead of the characters, since we are allowed to know things in advance of the characters, e.g. we know that the dead airman is not a beast but a product of war.

4. IMAGERY Symbols: • Imagery is the basis of any novel, and LOTF is no exception. • The use of symbols is particularly important in this novel. • It helps convey certain ideas, e.g. conch = democracy and order, without having the author to blatantly express them. The mot obvious is the island itself, which symbolises the outside world. Each boy represents a different group of people in society. • Some symbols are more subtle, e.g. the guns on the naval officer’s ship. • The guns on the ship symbolise the ‘violence’ civilisation uses in order to maintain order. This is very much the same as Jack’s use of violence to assert control, but the violence used in civilisation is justified and necessary. An example of such ‘violence’ in society is the police.

5. IMAGERY (continued) Animal Imagery: • The use of animal imagery is particularly effective in this novel, since the boys eventually become animals themselves. • The first is of the “snake-thing”, which is seen as a “beastie” by the littluns. • Then comes the “squirrel” and the “jaguar” seen in the flames on the mountain. This foreshadows the change that will occur to the boys. • Jack is described also as “ape-like” during his hunt, showing that his primitive instincts are surfacing. • Perhaps Piggy also has some form of connection with his namesake. This could be seen from Piggy’s violent death, albeit described clinically –“His head opened, and stuff came out”, compared with the hunting of the sow –“she [the sow] squealed and bucked and the air was full of sweat and noise and blood and terror”.

6. DICTION • In the boys’ dialogue, it is clear that many of them talk in the slang of their generation, e.g. “waxy” (angry), “Wacco!” and “Whee-aa-oo!” • Golding had taught at an English boys grammar school before and after WWII, so he would be very familiar with schoolboy slang. • The two words which show the reader that the boys are still immature despite their savagery are “tribe” and “chief”. • The boys probably learnt these words from school during their lessons, and try to copy what their own childish ideas of a “tribe” and “chief” should be like. • Golding’s diction in his descriptions are complex, and is appropriate since the ideas in the novel require such complexity to be brought across: “Then the sleeping leviathan breathed out – the waters rose, the weed streamed, and the water boiled over the table rock with a roar.”– here the brute force of the ocean on the Castle Rock side is described.

7. DICTION (continued) • Sections of dialogue are terse and almost monosyllabic. The boys rarely speak more than a few sentences at a time; often their speech is just a few words and their vocabulary, for boys who are quite well educated, is unusually limited. • Pg. 173: ‘“Piggy, what’s wrong?” Piggy looked at him in astonishment. “Do you mean the - ?” “No, not it…I mean…what makes things break up like they do?” Piggy rubbed his glasses slowly and thought. When he understood how far Ralph had gone towards accepting him he flushed pinkly with pride”. ‘ • This suggests that once the boys are removed from society, the need for complicated communication gradually decreases. Of course, the boys who have descended further into savagery show more change, e.g. the choirboys originally sang holy hymns in chapels, but now they are reduced to monosyllabic chants –“Kill the beast! Cut his throat! Spill his blood!”– andululations.

8. SETTING • Setting is as important to the novel as the imagery. • The island has three major locations: the lagoon, the mountain and Castle Rock. • These different locations allow Golding to move the boys around in order to suit his purposes for the novel. • A contrast between the secure lagoon and the rough Castle Rock is shown in their shorelines: the lagoon is “still as a mountain lake”, with shades of blue and “shadowy green and purple”. On the other hand, CR’s side is exposed to the open sea, and Ralph could see and feel “the brute obtuseness of the ocean” there. • The mountain has religious connotations. It is an allusion to Moses obtaining the Ten Commandments from God. Here, Simon goes up the mountain to find the truth about the beast “with a sort of glum determination like as old man”.

9. SETTING (continued) • The island provides the perfect laboratory for Golding to experiment with the boys and how they would act under such an environment. • Several factors come about conveniently for Golding: • There are no dangerous animals on the island. • The boys are not struck by any disease, except for the mild case of diarrhea. • There is an abundance of food: pigs and fruit. • The boys do not talk about building a boat and leaving the island, as in ‘The Coral Island’. • The island therefore seems to represent the garden of Eden, and so proves the point for Golding that should any disorder and savagery arise, it would be totally due to the boys themselves. • At the beginning, the island is a paradise for the boys, but eventually, it becomes literally hell for Ralph as he runs away from the hysterical hunters, with the island burning behind them.

10. IRONY • Golding's use of irony is both interesting and highly relevant to the tone and message of the novel. In terms of style, irony provides a powerful vehicle for some (often quite macabre) statements about life and fate. Irony is somewhat easier to illustrate than define; the following points may help you understand it: • Piggy is angry about the forest fire and the disappearance of the boy with the birthmark - but Piggy's glasses were used to start the fire, so he is indirectly responsible. • Simon returns to the camp with the truth about the beast, which could dispel the boys' fears. He is killed before he can tell his news., and this plunges the boys into greater savagery. • After the raid, Ralph and Eric feel proud of how well they fought. They were, in fact, fighting with each other in the darkness: ‘A knee jerked up between his [Ralph’s] legs and he fell sideways…”When I woke up one was kicking me in the face…I got my knee up”, said Eric with simple pride, “and I hit him with it in the pills.”’ • The rock which kills Piggy clears a space in the thicket - enabling Ralph to escape the hunters and so survive.

11. IRONY (continued) • Jack's hunters set fire to the bushes to smoke out and kill Ralph. It is this fire which draws attention to the island and effects the boys' rescue • The boys are taken away from the 'war' on the island by a naval officer who is involved in, and returning them to, another war. • The naval officer has “a revolver”, and his ship holds a “sub-machine gun”. The reader thinks that the boys are saved by civilisation, but civilisation itself is forcing its control over the boys with violence, just like Jack does. • It can be seen then that irony is a type of reversal of ideas, and shows how seemingly good events can often lead to bad - and vice versa.

12. ALLEGORY • Golding uses many indirect references to classical literature, mythology, and Christian symbolism. • He deals mainly with evil and emerges with what has been characterized as a kind of dark optimism. Golding uses characters to describe conflicts and traits inherent in society and its members. • He feels that man is inherently evil, and this evil must be confronted and controlled and that society is both a victim and controller of this evil. • Though the literal story in itself is interesting, his novels represent universal truths about human nature. His novels are also, in some respects, close to actuality. • There is realism in his use of physical detail and like many writers he uses his personal experiences in writing his novels, for instance, Lord of the Flies depends on his accurate observation and recording, as well as his knowledge of the old English Epic and experience of the terrors and tensions of war. • As a young man, he believed that man would be able to perfect himself by improving society and eventually doing away with all social evil. Golding angrily disapproves against those who think that it is the political or other systems that create evil. To him, evil springs from the depths of man himself. It is the wickedness in human beings that creates the evil systems, or, what was good from the beginning, into something unjust and destructive.

13. Remember boys, you can’t escape from the darkness inside you. So don’t try it on, or I’ll do you. See? END