Summary, Characters and Analysis of Lord of the Flies
Summary, Characters and Analysis of Lord of the Flies
Summary
The Story ´Lord of the Flies´, written by William Golding deals with a group of boys (no girls) that got evacuated by airplane from nuclear war. The plane crashed on a tropic island and now the boys are on their one – no adults, no civilisation. The main plot of the story is the forming of an society in order to create organised living conditions. In the beginning the boys build a responsible democratic society, formed by elections and a `head of state´. In the end it degenerates into anarchy, terror, murder and violence.
This process is based on the evil that lies within each persons nature, it is the potential evil that lies within any society.
The main character(s)
The importance of each character in this book is hard to define and probably quiet disputable, because the elements that finally led to destruction can be found in each boy. What Golding constructs is a microcosm of the world, and each boy represents a certain group of people. “Which group of people in this world is the `main´?”, is the same question like the one for the main charakter. The deciding characters of the book could be Piggy (the intellectual outsider) the same as Simon (the symbolic of the Christian ideals), as the characters of all the other boys, because their decisions and action take a huge influence on the story as well. But the personalities that embody the most and are the most obvious embodiments are Jack and Ralph. Ralph is the democratic idea of a society, whilst Jack exemplifies fascism. Ralph is a fair, about eleven years old boy. His mind is marked by the idea of justice for everyone, he is fair, calm and intelligent. He thinks, waits and takes as much aspects as he can into his consideration before he decides what to do. A marking action of his, is his first plan about what to do, right at the beginning. He wants to gather the many boys there are and wants to do an assembly in which the community decides what to do.
Jack is tall, and must be about the same age. His has a “offhand authority” in his voice that appears as intimidating, he comes into view as a person who goes his one way and does not care a lot about a common...