Characters as symbols in Lord of the Flies
In his novel Lord of the Flies, William Golding employs simple children as the characters of
the novel. Yet, those children soon adopt the same destructive actions of the adult world and destroy
the island that acts as their shelter. The novel is a frightening story about how ordinary children
return to savagery when they find themselves on a deserted island.
Ralph
Ralph with Piggy and a few other children represents human common sense. Ralph is a tall,
good-looking boy with blond hair. He comes from a good English family. His father is a naval officer
and he remembers a good home life that he used to enjoy. Ralph stands for the rational leader who
aims to build an ideal society on the island. Ralph is elected to be governor of the island to organize
building shelters and possible rescue. Yet, under his rationality and common sense, he reveals
something of the same natural evil within every human being; he willingly shares the spoils of the
“hunters” and joins, though unknowingly, in the killing of Simon. Finally hunted by the others after
trying to deal with Jack in a civilized manner to convince him to return Piggy’s glasses, Ralph turns
from being a leader into a victim. In the end, he weeps since his confidence has been destroyed; he
has fully found out the failure of the kind of human civilization that he represented. He also weeps for
the evil that controls man’s heart and the darkness that controls any attempt to enlighten man's soul.
Jack
Jack is the chief of the hunters and he represents the hidden human passion and cruelty. Jack is
tall and thin, a little smaller than Ralph. He is red-haired and ugly. Nothing is known of his
background, although he is the only one to mention his surname: Jack Merridew. Jack stands for the
powerful rebel outside the community since in the first place he has his own community, the group of
“hunters.” Jack is the aggressive force of evil that imposes a sense of discipline on the others that
Ralph can never do. The conflict between them stresses the never-ending battle between good and
evil; between rationality and power, between civilization and savagery. Golding’s pessimistic views
show evil to be the winner in the end because all men share a part of this evil in their hearts and thus
can never avoid it. Jack is going to build a society in which he will be a dictator careless of
democracy and human freedom. Some critics liken Jack to an image of Satan with his red hair. They
argue that he represents evil that cannot be resisted or controlled.
Piggy
Piggy, Ralph’s most loyal supporter, refers to the power of scientific thinking and rationality.
He comes from the working class and used to live with his aunt, who had a sweet shop. His father is
dead and nothing is mentioned or known about his mother. He is physically imperfect, as he is fat and
asthmatic; besides, he has thin hair that never seems to grow as if he were an old man. Besides, he
1
has poor eyesight; so, he wears glasses. However, Piggy is a clear thinker who acts as the voice of
rationalism in the novel. He believes that the children may be saved by the adult society, the values of
civilization, and the organization of human constructive effort. Piggy believes in Ralph as a symbol
of civilization and order. He tries to convince the others to follow his example; he wants the boys to
be sensible like Ralph; to have rules and agree; and to follow law and rescue, rather than follow Jack
to hunt and kill. He has the courage to stand in the face of evil, but the power of evil sends him to his
death; Piggy is killed by Roger, Jack’s loyal “hunter.” Piggy is thus the victim of the savages.
Besides, Piggy’s asthma has given him a chance to read and think a lot; this taught him a sort of
philosophy that enables him to understand the real meaning of fear and evil. He is not afraid of the
beast that the “littluns” fear because he believes in scientific observation. He is frightened of the
“beast” within the human being, of people themselves. Ralph weeps at the end of the novel for the
end of innocence, the darkness of man’s heart and fall through the air of the true wise, friend called
Piggy. This points out that Piggy’s wisdom was his knowing what to fear and where exactly the
human evil hides. Yet, in spite of his knowledge, he could not fight this evil.
Simon
Simon’s character stands for spirituality as he has a sensitive isolated character with knowledge
about the unchanging nature of human beings and societies. Simon is a small, thin boy with a pointed
chin and very bright eyes. He has long, coarse black hair and always goes barefoot. He is a mystic
who is unable to express what he always knows about man's essential moral illness. This is why the
boys regard him as a “batty” boy. He lacks the bravery to speak in front of a group of boys. Simon is
Golding’s example of “original virtue” in the novel and some critics say that Golding intends him as
a Christ figure. Simon is co-operative; that is, he is the only one who helps Ralph to build the
shelters. Unlike Piggy whose wisdom is based on science and rational thinking, Simon has intuitive
wisdom and knowledge. He is the only boy to come close enough to understand what they fear; he
actually sees the “beast” and finds out that it is only a dead man from the war outside and above the
island. Simon’s meeting with “the Lord of the Flies” is an indication of man’s knowledge that the
“beast” is actually humanity. When Simon rushes to tell the boys the truth that he has found out, they
mistake him for the beast, and they all, even Ralph and Piggy, join in killing him. Simon thus
represents the role of Christ in some degree, Christian martyrdom, sacrifice of self for the truth that is
generally unknown.
Samneric (Sam & Eric)
Samneric are a pair of light blond, identical twins. They have no identity as separate
individuals. They do everything together and even seem to share the same thoughts. When they talk,
they divide their conversation, finishing each other’s sentences and words. They serve whoever
2
becomes the leader of the boys. They first work for Ralph, gathering wood for fire, but when Jack
paints his face and orders them to follow him to hunt, they go with him although they are supposed to
be taking care of the signal fire. Thus, they represent the unthinking masses of society who are goodnatured and who follow their leader obediently. However, they lack understanding of the meaning of
events. When Ralph is chased in the end, Samneric could not help him because they say that they are
now in the service of the new leader. Thus, they show no mercy towards Ralph and even reveal his
hiding place to Jack and the hunters.
The Darkness of Man's Heart
Lord of the Flies is one of the greatest novels of the twentieth century since it deals with the
evil deeply rooted within man’s soul. The novel stresses the fact that human nature is originally
corrupt and tends to support evil in its worst form. About this, Golding himself has written that “The
theme is an attempt to trace the defects of society back to the defects of human nature.” In this way,
Golding seems to be a firm believer in the idea of the "Original Sin" that implies that all human
beings are domed to sin since their great grandfather Adam had disobeyed God.
Thus, Golding’s pessimism drives him to reverse the belief that man is the naturally good,
innocent and helpless victim of social forces over which he has no control. To confirm this idea,
Golding places a group of young boys on an uninhabited island to start a new life after their plane has
been downed. Those boys may be considered the representatives of a new mankind since the whole
outside world is engaged in a nuclear war that will lead all humanity to absolute destruction. Yet, the
boys imitate the adult world with its savagery, brute force, evil and moral corruption; and thus the
novel ends with their new world, the island, set on fire and doomed to be destroyed due to the evil
hidden in man’s soul.
Referring to this theme, Golding’s shaping of events and experiences on the island indicates
that the novel is dominated by “grief, sheer grief.” This grief may be the theme of the novel as
Golding calls it because it presents sin in its original meaning deeply rooted within the souls of those
boys. Golding first hints at the happy life that the children may have led on the island enjoying
themselves. Yet, the tension is present and Golding hints at the evil that is temporarily inactive within
the children, and waiting for a chance to explode. The image of the island, though beautiful, does not
make it a kind of paradise since storms blow over it and its coconuts look like skulls. The idea of
darkness does not only refer to the physical dark of night, but to the darkness of man’s heart for
which Ralph weeps in the end. The boys lose their own civilization gradually and turn into
barbarians, into cannibals who are thirsty for blood. No one of the boys is excluded of this darkness
and of the evil that lies at its heart. They all, including Piggy and Ralph, participate in the killing of
their Christ, Simon, mistaking him for the beast.
3
The roots of evil appear in the conflict between Ralph, the legal ruler, and Jack the rebel, who
takes his “hunters” and leaves. Later on, the hunters’ savage murder of the sow stresses the fact that
murder and the sight of blood will be witnessed throughout the novel and will extend to their fellows
as well. Jack’s desire to be chief tempts him to leave Ralph and resort to the world of the jungle; he
rejects civilization for the sake of barbarism. Jack and his hunters' rebellion marks the end of the
world of play and having fun, and moves us to the real world of experience and power. Simon’s
death, or rather his murder, by the boys, though by mistake, shows that the boys’ evil has extended to
destroy themselves and their fellows. This feeling is gradually stressed when Jack’s gang attacks the
camp inhabited by Ralph, Piggy and the little children; the savages attack the civilized to steal their
technology for starting a fire; they seize Piggy’s glasses unmindful of the fact that he is blind without
them. The attackers, however, do not take the conch, the symbol of civilization, power and authority
as for them it is useless since their savage society is based on dictatorship, not democracy.
The climax of evil is shown when Piggy is murdered by Roger, and Ralph is being hunted by
all the boys seeking to finish off the last symbol of civilization on the island. The boys’ thirst for
blood cannot be satisfied; so, they seek to kill Ralph as well since he is the only one representing the
values that they lost who is left alive. The symbol of civilization is now being hunted as a pig, and
when the hunters fail to seize him, they set the whole island on fire to get him. Thus, their world has
come to resemble that of the adult; both worlds have been destroyed by the evil that is latent in man’s
soul. The irony arises when Ralph is saved by a naval officer who comes to rescue the children after
seeing the burning island. This officer is himself part of the evil since he fights in the war intended to
kill others and destroy civilization.
Golding’s depiction of the “Lord of the Flies” in his talk with Simon asserts that evil is a part
of man that cannot be completely suppressed; it is not an outside force. Nor is the beast a real one; it
is only a dead parachutist. Thus, the real beast is deep within man’s soul; so, at the end of the novel
Ralph weeps “for the end of innocence, the darkness of man s heart” that cannot be enlightened. The
evil that resides deep within human souls is so sweeping that it is impossible to control its tyrannical
power. Golding seems to be referring to the idea that Adam's original sin needed thousands of years
to be redeemed in the figure of Jesus Christ. This means that mankind is badly in need for another
saviour that can restore the innocence of humanity and thus can enlighten the darkness of man's heart.
4