Lord Of The Flies Allegory Essay

Lord of the flies by William Golding, a novel about a group of boys in plane that gets shot down during a war. These young boys get trapped on an island, they strive to be adults and get saved overall. Lord of the flies is considered to be an allegorical novel, “having hidden spiritual meaning that transcends the literal sense of a sacred text” as Merriam Webster states. An allegory holds the reader's attention with storytelling but also hits underneath the surface (which is the allegorical level) with symbols that are accessible to the reader. Lord of the flies has many symbols such as the island which represents paradise. This “paradise” is equivalent to the garden of eden, it’s beautiful and has bountiful food. The boys can create their own “perfect” society which is slowly apart with their loss of innocence throughout the book, “His voice rose under the black smoke before the burning wreckage of the island; and infected by that emotion, the other little boys began to shake and sob too…. Ralph wept for the end of innocence, the darkness of a man’s heart…” …show more content…
The conch shell is used to call everyone together (i.e. assemblies), whoever has the conch gets to speak; “We can use this to call the others. Have a meeting.” The beast or lord of the flies is in the severed pig head that is left for an offering, this somewhat dark “character” represents the beast or “devil” in all of us, the inner savage. The beast saying “we are going to have fun on this island” which really means that they should indulge in every desire or want. These symbols relate to how the novel is an allegory because something so simple such as a conch shell symbols something so large in the novel, law and order. In conclusion, Lord of the flies is an allegorical novel because it has literal and metaphorical levels of a