Biblical Parallels and Symbolism in Lord of the Flies

1. Lecture 21NOVELII

2. SYNOPSIS SYMBO9LS AND MOTIFS: Allegory Characters… Climax…

3. SYMBOLS &N MOTIFS

5. MotifsBiblical Parallels • Many critics have characterized Lord of the Flies as a retelling of episodes from the Bible. While that description may be an oversimplification, the novel does echo certain Christian images and themes. • Golding does not make any explicit or direct connections to Christian symbolism in Lord of the Flies; instead, these biblical parallels function as a kind of subtle motif in the novel, adding thematic resonance to the main ideas of the story.

6. The island itself, particularly Simon’s glade in the forest, recalls the Garden of Eden in its status as an originally pristine place that is corrupted by the introduction of evil. • Similarly, we may see the Lord of the Flies as a representation of the devil, for it works to promote evil among humankind.

7. Furthermore, many critics have drawn strong parallels between Simon and Jesus. Among the boys, Simon is the one who arrives at the moral truth of the novel, and the other boys kill him sacrificially as a consequence of having discovered this truth. • Simon’s conversation with the Lord of the Flies also parallels the confrontation between Jesus and the devil during Jesus’ forty days in the wilderness, as told in the Christian Gospels.

8. However, it is important to remember that the parallels between Simon and Christ are not complete, and that there are limits to reading Lord of the Flies purely as a Christian allegory. • Save for Simon’s two uncanny predictions of the future, he lacks the supernatural connection to God that Jesus has in Christian tradition.

9. Although Simon is wise in many ways, his death does not bring salvation to the island; rather, his death plunges the island deeper into savagery and moral guilt. Moreover, Simon dies before he is able to tell the boys the truth he has discovered. • Jesus, in contrast, was killed while spreading his moral philosophy. In this way, Simon—and Lord of the Flies as a whole—echoes Christian ideas and themes without developing explicit, precise parallels with them. The novel’s biblical parallels enhance its moral themes but are not necessarily the primary key to interpreting the story.

10. Symbols: The Conch Shell • Ralph and Piggy discover the conch shell on the beach at the start of the novel and use it to summon the boys together after the crash separates them. • Used in this capacity, the conch shell becomes a powerful symbol of civilization and order in the novel. The shell effectively governs the boys’ meetings, for the boy who holds the shell holds the right to speak.

11. In this regard, the shell is more than a symbol—it is an actual vessel of political legitimacy and democratic power. As the island civilization erodes and the boys descend into savagery, the conch shell loses its power and influence among them. Ralph clutches the shell desperately when he talks about his role in murdering Simon. • Later, the other boys ignore Ralph and throw stones at him when he attempts to blow the conch in Jack’s camp. The boulder that Roger rolls onto Piggy also crushes the conch shell, signifying the demise of the civilized instinct among almost all the boys on the island.

12. Discussion in detail… • Piggy and Ralph spot a conch and decide to use it to call a meeting. All right! Island society is off to a good start. The boys impose a "rule of the conch" on themselves, deciding that no one can speak unless he's holding the conch. • As a representative of law and order, the conch helps Ralph get elected: "The being that had blown that, had sat waiting for them on the platform with the delicate thing balanced on his knees, was set apart" (1.240).

13. Even Jack respects the conch. After he fails to stage a coup, he "laid the conch with great care in the grass at his feet" (8.74). • He doesn't throw it or smash it; he sets it down carefully. He may not want to play by the rules, but he still respects the rules.

14. Piggy’s Glasses • Piggy is the most intelligent, rational boy in the group, and his glasses represent the power of science and intellectual endeavor in society. • This symbolic significance is clear from the start of the novel, when the boys use the lenses from Piggy’s glasses to focus the sunlight and start a fire. When Jack’s hunters raid Ralph’s camp and steal the glasses, the savages effectively take the power to make fire, leaving Ralph’s group helpless.

15. The Signal Fire • The signal fire burns on the mountain, and later on the beach, to attract the notice of passing ships that might be able to rescue the boys. As a result, the signal fire becomes a barometer of the boys’ connection to civilization. • In the early parts of the novel, the fact that the boys maintain the fire is a sign that they want to be rescued and return to society.

16. Ironically, it is because of a fire that Jack lights at the end of the novel—in his attempt to hunt and kill Ralph—that the boys are rescued. And it makes sense. • If the boys' world is just a symbol for the real world, then they're not being rescued at all; they're just going on to a larger scale of violence—to grow up into soldiers getting sent off to war. Hence, rescue equals destruction.

17. When the fire burns low or goes out, we realize that the boys have lost sight of their desire to be rescued and have accepted their savage lives on the island. The signal fire thus functions as a kind of measurement of the strength of the civilized instinct remaining on the island. • Ironically, at the end of the novel, a fire finally summons a ship to the island, but not the signal fire. Instead, it is the fire of savagery—the forest fire Jack’s gang starts as part of his quest to hunt and kill Ralph.

18. Discussion in detail… • From the very beginning of the novel, Ralph is determined to keep a signal fire going, in case a ship passes near to the island. That's all well and good, until the first signal fire the boys light begins burning out of control, and at least one boy is missing (read: burned up). • As Piggy tells Jack, "You got your small fire all right" (2.210). The fire thus becomes a symbol, paradoxically, of both hope of rescue and of destruction.

19. The Beast • The imaginary beast that frightens all the boys stands for the primal instinct of savagery that exists within all human beings. The boys are afraid of the beast, but only Simon reaches the realization that they fear the beast because it exists within each of them. • As the boys grow more savage, their belief in the beast grows stronger. By the end of the novel, the boys are leaving it sacrifices and treating it as a totemic god. The boys’ behavior is what brings the beast into existence, so the more savagely the boys act, the more real the beast seems to become.

20. Discussion in detail… • The beast is easy enough: it represents evil and darkness. But does it represent internal darkness, the evil in all of our hearts, even golden boys like Ralph? Or does it represent an external savagery that civilization can save us from?

21. Visible… • At first, the beast is nothing more than a product of the boys' imaginations. The smaller boys are afraid of things they see at night; rather than be blindly afraid of The Great Unknown, they give their fear a name and a shape in their minds. • You can't defeat a "nothing," but you can hunt and kill a "something." (It's kind of like how Voldemort was a lot scarier before we saw him as Ralph Fiennes.)

22. And then an actual "something" does show up: the dead parachuting man, who seems to come in response to Ralph's request for a "sign" from the adult world. • It's ironic that the best the adults can come up with is a man dead of their own violence: maybe the beast isn't just confined to the island.

23. Invisible… • And now we start getting some real insight into the beast. Piggy basically says the beast is just fear of the unknown: "I know there isn't no beast—not with claws and all that, I mean—but I know there isn't no fear, either" (5.99). • Simon, on the other hand, insists that the beast is "only us" (5.195). Well, it is: it's a person that fell from the sky. When the twins list off the horrible attributes of the creature they saw, they reveal that it has both "teeth" and "eyes"; Ralph and Jack see it as a giant ape. So the "beast" is a man-who-isn't, the animal side in all of us.

24. But even that isn't quite what Simon means. He's talking about the beast being the darkness that is inside each and every one of us. • If this is true, then, as the Lord of the Flies later suggests, it is absurd to think that the beast is something "you could hunt or kill" (8.337). If it's inside all of us, not only can't we hunt it, but we can never see it, never give it form, and never defeat it.

25. The Lord of the Flies • The Lord of the Flies is the bloody, severed sow’s head that Jack impales on a stake in the forest glade as an offering to the beast. • This complicated symbol becomes the most important image in the novel when Simon confronts the sow’s head in the glade and it seems to speak to him, telling him that evil lies within every human heart and promising to have some “fun” with him.

26. (This “fun” foreshadows Simon’s death in the following chapter.) In this way, the Lord of the Flies becomes both a physical manifestation of the beast, a symbol of the power of evil, and a kind of Satan figure who evokes the beast within each human being. Looking at the novel in the context of biblical parallels, the Lord of the Flies recalls the devil, just as Simon recalls Jesus. • In fact, the name “Lord of the Flies” is a literal translation of the name of the biblical name Beelzebub, a powerful demon in hell sometimes thought to be the devil himself.

27. Lord of the Fliesan allegorical novel

29. Ralph, Piggy, Jack, Simon, and Roger • Lord of the Flies is an allegorical novel, and many of its characters signify important ideas or themes. Ralph represents order, leadership, and civilization. Piggy represents the scientific and intellectual aspects of civilization. • Jack represents unbridled savagery and the desire for power. Simon represents natural human goodness. Roger represents brutality and bloodlust at their most extreme.

30. To the extent that the boys’ society resembles a political state, the littluns might be seen as the common people, while the older boys represent the ruling classes and political leaders. • The relationships that develop between the older boys and the younger ones emphasize the older boys’ connection to either the civilized or the savage instinct: civilized boys like Ralph and Simon use their power to protect the younger boys and advance the good of the group; savage boys like Jack and Roger use their power to gratify their own desires, treating the littler boys as objects for their own amusement.

31. The Pighunts We'll let Golding start us off: • Here, struck down by the heat, the sow fell and the hunters hurled themselves at her. This dreadful eruption from an unknown world made her frantic; she squealed and bucked and the air was full of sweat and noise and blood and terror […]. The spear moved forward inch by inch and the terrified squealing became a high-pitched scream. Then Jack found the throat and the hot blood spouted over his hands. The sow collapsed under them […].

32. At last the immediacy of the kill subsided. They boys drew back, and Jack stood up, holding out his hands. • "Look." • He giggled and flicked them while the boys laughed at his reeking palms. Then Jack grabbed Maurice and rubbed the stuff over his cheeks . . . (8.191-196)

33. We talk about this scene in the "Primitivity" quotes, but it's definitely worth look at twice. This pighunt—and the other ones—symbolize man's capacity for destruction and violence. In their bloodlust, these nice British boys become vicious monsters. It's not about having meat to eat—it's about exerting power over the helpless animal.

34. Many critics describe this as a rape scene, with the excitement coming partly from the blood and partly from their newly emerging feelings of sexuality. (Also, the pig is a nursing female—so it's almost as if the boys are killing their own mothers. Pretty grim.)

35. Later, the boys act out this pighunt over and over, in a sort of play-acting ritual that takes a horrifying turn when Simon is beaten to death by a mob of excited boys. These hunts seem be a little too real to be just a symbol.

36. Ralph's Hair • We know the hair has to be a big deal, because the very first words of the novel are, "The boy with fair hair lowered himself down" (1.1). And it just keeps growing. Here's a small sampling of what that "idiot hair" (8) gets up to: Ralph's eyes "yearned beneath the fringe of hair" (6); • "He would like to have a pair of scissors and cut this hair—he flung the mass back—cut this filthy hair right back to half an inch (7.2); "His hair was full of dirt and tapped like the tendrils of a creeper" (12.1). Trust us, there's more.

37. In particular, Ralph is constantly playing with that hair. He "pushes" his hair off of his face twelve times in the novel. Doesn't sound like that many? It is. If Golding takes the trouble to describe a character does something twelve times—in twelve chapters—believe it, it's meaningful. And what it means is savagery. 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. • Golding isn't exactly saying, "Cut your hair, you dirty hippy," but he's close.

38. Clothing • Clothing is another relic of the old world that falls by the wayside in this new one. Clothes can be ominous, as when Jack and his choir boys appear to be one long, dark creature as they travel in a pack wearing their black choir robes at the beginning. • At first, the boys need to wear their clothing to avoid getting sunburned (meaning they’re not yet ready for the full island lifestyle), but they’re soon running around in loin-cloths or less, their skin and their minds having adapted to the surroundings. We even see Ralph go from “the fair boy” to being downright “swarthy.” Change is in the wind, as is a dead parachuting man from the skies above.

39. Characters

40. Piggy • Character Analysis • Piggy starts off as the group's outcast and ends up smashed to an untimely death by a large rock. But what happens along the way of this tragic character arc?

41. Piggy is one of the first characters we meet (as "the fat boy"), so we're predisposed to like him, even if nobody else does. Ralph may find the conch, but Piggy is the one who identifies it and tells Ralph how to use it—but doesn't use it himself. He may know what to do (blow into the shell), but he's too weak physically (because of his asthma) to do it. And that's Piggy: intellectual superiority, physical inferiority.

42. He's also the closest thing we have to an adult on the island, defending the conch and insisting on rules and order. He makes a big deal about learning names, "frowning to remember them" (1.179): he sees each boy as a fellow human being, and wants to give him the right and privilege of being called by his proper name. Having names matters to Piggy, because, just like the conch, it represents a system of rules and order.

43. It's not that Piggy benefits from his interest in names. No one calls Piggy by his rightful name (we never even learn it). But the conch does benefit him. Without rules and order, people like Piggy get squashed—literally. With the conch, everyone gets a fair chance. If he's holding the conch, it doesn't matter if he's fat and unathletic. His voice matters just as much as anyone else's. That's probably why he defends it even when he and Ralph are being attacked by Jack's gang, holding it up and demanding, "Which is better—to have rules and agree, or to hunt and kill?" (1).

44. Four Eyes • It's too bad for the boys that they don't listen, since Piggy has some pretty good ideas—like that the beast isn't real. He believes in science, saying "Life […] is scientific, that's what it is. In a year or two when the world is over they'll be traveling to Mars and back" (5.99).

45. So, naturally he wears glasses. We see more than once that "Piggy's glasses flashed" (1, 4) as if they're an essential part of him—which they are. And this integral part of a character whose focus is science and technology, is used for the purposes of…science and technology. While the boys revert to their primitive and animal ways, the glasses become a symbol of the opposite sort of transformation: advancement, discovery, innovation. After all, without his glasses, the boys never would have been able to start a fire. (Check out "Symbols" for more thoughts on Piggy's glasses.)

46. Thanks to Piggy, we get the sense that, while Golding doesn't think civilization is quite all it's cracked up to be, it's probably still better than running around with painted faces slaughtering pigs.

47. This Little Piggy Went to Market • Speaking of slaughtering pigs: toward the end of the novel, when things are getting real for our intrepid band of pre-teens, Roger sees Piggy as a "bag of fat" (11.198). Sound familiar? Only a few chapters earlier, the pigs are referred to as "bloated bags of fat" (8). Does this make you think? It sure made us think—about how Piggy's name is, well, "Piggy," and about how the boys went gradually from killing PIGS to killing PIGGY. (Then we abused the use of capital letters to get our point across.)

48. Piggy's death shows us just how bad things have gotten—that it's a slippery, slidey, downward slope of atrocity from taking off your choir robe to mercilessly killing two of your peers. And note that, when Piggy dies, the conch dies with him, "[exploding] into a thousand white fragments" (11.209).

49. Roger • Character Analysis • Roger is totally that kid on the playground who used to torture ants with a magnifying glass. He's bad news going all the way back to when we first meet him, a "slight" and "furtive" boy with "an inner intensity of avoidance and secrecy" who "mutters" (1). Let's just say, you do not want to be stuck on a deserted island with Roger, because this guy is sadistic, plain and simple.

50. While Jack wants power because he likes the thought of being in charge, Roger wants power because he likes the idea of hurting others. Even before things have started to go too wrong, we can tell. He and his buddy Maurice destroy the littluns' sandcastles for no reason at all, "kicking them over, burying the flowers, scattering the chosen stones. Maurice followed, laughing, and added to the destruction" (4.7-8). This goes way beyond not helping the kids pick fruit to straight up psycho behavior.