Lord of the Flies

1. Lord of the Flies Motifs

2. Loss of Innocence • “Kill the pig, slit her throat, spill her blood” (Golding 69). • Jack said, “Come on! I’ll creep up and stab…” (64). • Robert as the pig –violent play (114-115). • Ralph reflecting on how enthusiastic they all were when they first arrived (76).

3. Civilization vs. the Wild • “Now, though there was no parent to let fall a heavy hand, Maurice still felt the unease of wrongdoing” (Golding 60). • “Yet there was a space round Henry, perhaps six yards in diameter, into which he dare not throw. Here, invisible yet strong, was the taboo of the old life” (Golding 62). • “Jack planned his new face. He made one eye white and rubbed red over the other half of his face…” (Golding 63-64). • “He began to dance and his laughter became a bloodthirsty snarling” (Golding 64). • Ralph confronts Jack about the fire. At first, Jack couldn’t care less about the fire going out! (Golding 69-71). • Ralph didn’t want meat … but he did! (Golding 73-75). • “Roger led the way straight through the castles, kicking them over” (60). • “Robert snarled at him. Ralph entered into the play and everybody laughed” (114).

4. Power • “By the time the pile was built [for the fire], they were on different sides of a high barrier … Not even Ralph knew how a link between him and Jack had been snapped and fastened elsewhere” (Golding 73). • “Ceremonially, Ralph laid the conch on the trunk beside him as a sign that his speech was over” (Golding 82). • Bullying: “Piggy was a bore; his fat, his ass-mar and his matter-of-fact ideas were dull, but there was always a little pleasure to be got out of pulling his leg, even if one did it by accident” (Golding 65). • “Jack, Jack, you haven’t got the conch. Let him speak” (91). • “You want a real pig … because you’ve got to kill him … ‘Use a littlun,’ said Jack” (115).

5. Leadership • “Ralph … was big enough to be a link with the adult world of authority” (Golding 59). • He stopped …” (Golding 76). • Ralph’s assembly and new rules (78-82). • Ralph questions his own authority as leader (93-94). • “’Conch! Conch!’ shouted Jack. ‘We don’t need the conch any more’” (101-102). • Jack leads the hunters while searching for pigs. • Jack doesn’t want Ralph to be the leader anymore (127).

6. Responsibility & Maturity • Ralph has to be the adult because no one else will be (Golding 72). • “We ought to tell Piggy –in case-” (119). • “He stopped …” (Golding 76). • “Ralph and Simon picked him up unhandily and carried him to a shelter” (95). • “We need an assembly. Not for fun. Not for laughing and falling off the log…” (79).

7. Additional Motifs • Biblical parallels (book criticized for re-telling episodes in the Bible) • Pristine places corrupted by evil • Beel’zebub- Hebrew translation for Lord of the flies