Symbolic Significance of Characters (Lord of the Flies by William Golding)

The characters in Lord of the flies possess recognizable traits that make them individuals as the sort of
people that everyone has known in school, work and society, and become convincingly embodiments of
particular aspects of human nature.

Ralph—Civilization and Democracy

Ralph, fair-haired, athletically built, good-looking and from a prosperous, middle-class family, is the
charismatic protagonist of Lord of the Flies. He leads and accommodates to others in terms of the fondly
cherished, moderate English tradition. Ralph, the representative of civilization and democracy, lives by
rules, acts peacefully, and follows moral commands and values the good of the group, who dramatically
reveals the condition of civilization and democracy in Golding’s time.

Driven by his instinct of civilization and democracy, Ralph wants to set up a civilized utopia for all the
boys on the island. He blows the conch and summons the deserted children together. He suggests the
boys making a chief by voting, which shows his thought of law, order and democracy. After he is elected
as the chief, he makes rules of speaking; Ralph tries to have the boys preserve the civilized living
principles.

Although he is the only one who worries over the welfare of the other boys and his instinct of civilization
survives longer than any other character, he is not resolute and decisive when facing the problems.
Since he becomes a leader, Ralph is determined to seek way for rescue by keeping a signal fire for
attracting a passing ship. But with the appearance of beast from water, Ralph is confused in despair to
ask a sign from that ruined world. In “Beast from Air”, after their exploration, his intelligence is crippled
by fear, so they keep a signal on the rock instead on the top of the mountain. When Jack challenges his
authority, Ralph does not give a firm counterattack, even wants to give up the position of chief, and
takes part in the feast of Jack and killing of Simon. To a great degree, Ralph helps the expanding of
savagery.

If we set the story against the social background during World War II, it is easy for us to find the boys in
the novel from the politicians at that time. “If Ralph is Chamberlain and Jack Hitler, Roger is the
Gestapo.”(Kirstin Olsen: 14) This kind of comparison is seemingly surprising to us, but as a matter of fact
there’s something reasonable in it. Chamberlain was British Prime Minister before the war, who took a
policy of appeasement towards Hitler’s aggression. It’s his diplomatic policy that should be partly
responsible for Hitler’s expansion, which finally caused the greatest tragedy in the history of the world.
There is something similar between Ralph and Chamberlain. Ralph is the chief among the boys, but
when Jack challenges his authority, he in most cases is reluctant to fight against Jack. He has such a
capability but he fails to make use of it. He could challenge Jack physically and defeat him once and for
all; he could lend Piggy more assistance in forming a coalition. Yet he does nothing and even thinks to
“give up being chief”. His attitude towards Jack to some degree makes all the things go wrong and gets
Jack’s group becomes more ferocious and violent.

But, to our relief, Ralph is aware of the reason of the savagery at the end of the novel. When he is
hunted by the “hunters”, Ralph has found the lord of the flies—the Beelzebub, He smashes the
Beelzebub, and he grows mature and begins to be aware of the reason So, at the end, when the officer
rescues him, Ralph weeps, “for the end of innocence, the darkness of man’s heart, and the fall through
the air of the true, wise friend called Piggy”(William Golding:223).Though he fails in striving for the
returning of the values of civilization, it’s not only his fault. It is the failure of mankind to deal with the
forces of evil. Some critics say that Golding is a sheer pessimist. No, one of his hopes lies on Ralph’s self-
awareness.

Piggy—Intellect and Rationalism

Piggy is the embodiment of intellect and rationalism. He firstly senses the seriousness of their life on the
island and he reminds Ralph of their serious situation by using three words of death in succession when
Ralph takes it for granted that they will be rescued soon. In addition, he firstly suggests that they should
do something such as collecting the scattered boys. And he gives the information of conch and teaches
Ralph the ways of blowing. Piggy, too, is the first to recognize that life entails making certain choices and
establishing certain priorities. And Piggy firstly suggests lighting a small smoke and avoiding the danger
of setting fire on the forest and the necessary wood for the signal fire when they firstly light the signal
fire, but the enthusiastic action overwhelms his advice. Piggy even thinks about creating a sundial by
which they can know time. Piggy takes a scientific and rational attitude towards life. When the fear of
beast confuses them, Piggy speaks that life is scientific (William Golding: 92).

Piggy suggests the real fear is the fear of people. His forward-looking imagination sees things very clearly
as they will be. He senses the evil people, but he can do nothing. When the “hunters” worship their God
—the lord of the flies, the science and rationalism keep him from participating in the superstition of the
other boys and keep him standing with Ralph. What is important is that Piggy shares the out-of-date
confidence of Ballantyne that common sense can master any problem, and he believes that most
people, given the chance, are as sensible as him. In the period of overwhelming war, Piggy’s confidence
is as resolute as that of an old man, so he is like an old father compared to the boys on the island. He
always stands with Ralph and he believes the confidence of Ballantyne.

Piggy’s near-sight implies that his intelligence is limited. Simon is aware that man is heroic and sick, but
for Piggy man is not ill, man just has a foolish but corrigible habit of following Jack (fascist) if Jack should
be taking Piggy’s sensible advice. He does not realize that fascism overwhelms and will kill anything they
want to.

Piggy, representative of intellect and rationalism, is like a sacrificial pig impaled on the sharpen stick
since anarchy and animalism is in dominion. There is no rescue.

Jack—Savagery and Dictatorship

Jack, Ralph’s antagonist, represents the brilliant world of hunting, tactics, fierce exhilaration, skill and
dictator, the authoritarian man-of-power who enters the scene like a sergeant. Jack is the strong-willed,
egomaniacal boy, who is the novel’s prime representative of the instinct of savagery and violence. From
his appearance, Jack is always associated with shadows and obscurity, and his frustrated angry eyes
reveal his mind. From the start of the story, he claims to hunt for meat. Actually his argument is a filmy
pretext for the fact that he needs blood. He wants to share the pleasure of conquest and killing more
than eating meat as he recalls, “He has outwitted a living thing, imposed their will upon it, and taken
away its life like a satisfying drink”.( William Golding, 76.)

When the restraints of civilization no longer take effect, the evil reveals its true face. Jack devises the
painted mask of the hunter, with which the recall of civilization covers. Then he is liberated from shame
and self-consciousness and becomes the leader of the anonymous mob of murderous savages. With the
expanding of the bloodlust, Jack becomes more and more savage and violent. Under the enforcement of
savagery, he has already forgotten the distinction between animals and men, as do primitives. He leads
the hunters not only to kill pigs but also to kill his companions such as Simon, Piggy and nearly Ralph. As
Alastair Niven puts it, “Jack represents more completely than anyone else in the novel the theme of
‘reversion to savagery’ and he finds that behind the disguise of paint and mask he can assume a more
self-confident personality” (Alastair Niven, 48).

On the other hand, Jack is a totalitarian, an authoritarian man-of-power who despises assemblies and
conch, and becomes an absolute ruler of his tribe in the end. When he appears at the assembly, he
shows the desire of power and authority as he claims with simple arrogance “I ought to be chief,
because I’m chapter chorister and head boy. I can sing C sharp” (William Golding 23). His privileged
choir-school background has undoubtedly taught him much about the necessity of hierarchies; including
the notion that head boy from such a school ought to be a top man anywhere. Although he fails in the
vote, it does not defeat him. He continuously rages and breaks the democratic procedures of the
assembly. The way to get things done, he believes, is to compel, not ask, to terrorize, not persuade. At
last, Jack becomes the real dictator who enjoys the worship of his “hunters” and rules them by terror.
After he successfully controls the island, he is the undisputed lord of the feast, “where he sits upon his
log-throne, painted and garlanded, sat there like an idol. There were piles of meat on green leaves near
him, and fruit, and coco-nut shells full of drink.” And “power lay in the brown swell of his forearms:
authority sat on his shoulder and chattered in his ear like an ape.”(William Golding, 164-65)

The sense of power has given him a newly sinister quality behind his paint. He abuses his power by his
arbitrary beating of Wilfred, violent stealing of fire, cruel robbing of spec from Piggy, forceful enlisting of
Sam and Eric and delirious killing of Piggy. What’s more, to satisfy his need of dictatorship, Jack has
sacrificed the island, which means sacrificing themselves, to kill Ralph. Their behavior reaches the climax
of terrorism and frenzy.

The character of Jack not only shows us how the primitive desire and actions are released where there
are no restrictions of civilization but also what an dictator would have done or would do when driven by
his evil power and lust for blood.

Simon—Goodness and Saintliness

If Ralph stands at one end of a line, representing civilization, and Jack stands at other end of the line,
representing savagery, where does Simon stand? The answer is that, unlike all the other boys, Simon
stands on a different plane from every other character in the novel. Why? During World War II, William
Golding witnessed the expenditure of human ingenuity in the old ritual of war. As the illusions of his
earlier rationalism and humanism fell away, he concluded, “the shape of society must depend on the
ethical nature of the individual and not on any political system however apparently logical or
respectable”(James R. Baker: 23) and he illustrated it in Lord of the Flies. In a way, Simon represents the
future ideal personality of Golding. Therefore, Simon stands higher than any other characters.

Simon represents saintliness and a kind of innate, spiritual human goodness that is deeply connected
with nature and, in its own way, as primal as Jack’s evil instinct. The other characters in the novel
abandon moral behavior as soon as civilization no longer imposes upon them; they are not innately
moral but have simply been conditioned to act morally in the adult world with the threat of punishment
for misdeed. Of all the other children on the island, only Simon acts morally not out of some guilt or
shame but out of his inherent value. His affection for the other boys never wanes like a saint.

In the eyes of William Golding, Simon is a saint as he has described, “Simon is a Christ-figure…a lover of
mankind, a visionary” (Alastair Niven: 49). When the other boys are busy satisfying releasing their nature
restrained by civilization, such as playing in the water, eating the rich ripe fruit, going on hunting, Simon
explores the forest, marveling at the beauty and harmony of the natural world and discovering a secret
place of his own as his sanctum, where he acknowledges the truth by intuition.

Simon is endowed with insight into the unchanging nature of human beings and communities, which is
also why he is so affirmative a figure on Beelzebub’s island among sadists and savages. When the
children on the island have got themselves into a hell of mess, Simon “thought of the beast, there rose
before his inward sight the picture of human at once heroic and sick”.(William Golding:113) This
embodies his double vision of human being. To Simon, when the goodness of human nature directs the
behavior of human, man is heroic, as we have once created so many marvels by our nature; when the
evil of human nature overwhelms us, man is sick. Simon has sensed not only the history and reality of
human being, but also the philosophy of human nature, while other boys haven’t.

With the knowledge of human evil, Simon seems to have consigned himself to the fate as Christ has
done. When the boys are confused about the beast of air, Simon is the real skeptic and he suggests “I
think we ought to climb the mountain”. (William Golding: 142) What’s more important is that Simon
alone with his inner vision climbs the mountain to explore the evil without any awareness of losing his
life or anything. It is his belief in spiritual reality that diminishes his fear of death, and he enters the dark
forest without any fear of strange “beast”. Through the dialogue with the lord of the flies, Simon has
been aware what is the beast, and has discovered the dead parachutist. Simon has found the truth that
the imaginary beast is “harmless and horrible”.( William Golding:162) On a deep level, if we recognize
the truth of man’s evil and purges ourselves from it, the beast is harmless; otherwise it is horrible. Simon
ignores the threat of the lord of the flies and goes down to give the good news to the boys on the beach,
who are having a beast-slaying dance. Before he preaches his truth, Beelzebub’s promise is fulfilled; he
is killed with tearing of teeth and claws of his companions.

In his martyrdom, Simon meets the fate of all saints. Simon’s obsequies are those of hero, saint, martyr,
an essentially religious affair. His death occurs while the island world cowers under the lash of a gigantic
storm. As we pass from the horror of Simon’s murder, from the storm’s rage, and the ritual’s frenzy, to
the absolution of cleansing, healing nature, we pass from the atmosphere of tragedy to the glorification
of saint. The typographical device of the dropped line, visibly marking the shift from bloodlust to
benediction, signals the diminuendo. It is almost as though, in the atmosphere of uncontaminated
serenity that follows, nature were striving to atone for the previous wickedness. Finally, with wonderful
impact, presently even the sound of the water was still. Simon’s lovingly adorned, meticulously tended
corps is reverently received by ocean.

Along the shoreward edge of the shallows, the advancing clearness was full of strange, moonbeam-
bodied creatures with fiery eyes. Here and there a larger pebble clung to its own air and was covered
with a coat of pearls. The tide swelled in over the rain-pitted sand and smoothed everything with a layer
of silver (William Golding: 169).
Never is a god more appropriate than to this scene. Simon’s coarse hair is dressed with brightness, the
line of his cheek is silvered, and the turn of his shoulder becomes sculpted marble. In death Simon
becomes a new creation, a work of art, and then “softly, surrounded by a fringe of bright, inquisitive
creatures, itself a silver shape beneath the steadfast constellation, Simon’s bright body moved out
towards the open sea”(William Golding:170).

The beauty of the sea and the power of the cosmos convert the human horror of Simon’s murder into a
scene of tranquility and dignity. It is difficult not to recognize the hint of a resurrection motif here, for
the hero is carried through the water to his apotheosis. Simon does not successfully tell the boys truth,
but Golding does give reader enlightenment and a warning through Simon. The enlightenment is that
the innate goodness is the fundamental way of saving the world and the warning is that people are sick.
Only if people had been aware of these, the world would avoid killing and destruction in the atomic and
nuclear war nowadays and in future.

Apart from the above main characters, Roger is the representative of brutality and terrorism at their
extreme; the little ones embody the mass; the naval office stands for the adult people who are
participating in the war. All these people with symbolic significance attribute to the greatness and
success of the novel.
References

Alastair Niven. (1989). William Golding: Lord and the Flies, York Notes Series.Beijing: World Publishing Corporation,
p 48.

James R. Baker. (1988). Critical Essays on William Golding. Bosten: G.K. Hall & Co. p 23.

Kirstin Olsen. (2000). Understanding Lord of the Flies: a student casebook to issues, sources and historical
documents. Westport: Greenwood Press, p 14.

William Golding. (1958). Lord of the Flies. London: Faber and Faber Ltd.