Lord of the Flies short summary & analysis

Lord of the Flies - William Golding

Lord of the Flies Analysis

Lord of the Flies shows that even the naive and good kids can be brutal and can be slaved to their greed. All people are both good and bad. In time, they lean towards what they tend to within them. Lord of the Flies makes you think and question, it seems like it has a simple topic but contains a lot of important aspects and that makes it very valuable.

Lord of the Flies Short Summary

A plane that carries a group of British children to keep them safe from the nuclear war effects, crashes in a deserted island. Ralph is a good and smart boy. When he thinks about living on their own without the pressure from the adults, he gets happy. They don’t have anyone to tell them what to do. The boy, called piggy who is fat and has glasses is instead scared. Piggy is the only kid who is thinking straight in this island. He is thinking about how to escape from the island and tries to count how many of them are there in the island and he believes that they have to share the workload between them. To count them, he says that Ralph should blow on the horn that he got from the sea and gather everyone who survived from the plane. Ralph does not listen to him in the beginning but then he does what Piggy says and all the survivors from the crash comes to the shore of the island. They do a meeting and they talk in order when they have the seashell they are allowed to talk. With this, they have a democratic way to have these meetings. Ralph who gathered all of them with the seashell, is chosen to be the sheriff of the island because of it. Jack does not like this decision. Jack is the president of the church choir and he is leading his own group. Jack and his group argue that they have to hunt in order to survive, but Ralph and Piggy argue that they have to have a fire all the time for the smoke to be a sign to someone to save them. Because of this split, the leadership in the island divides. Jack and his team are responsible from anything hunting related and Ralph is responsible with the order of the island.

The children who decides that fire should be on the highest place of the island, gives this mission to Jack and his team. They think that they can control the fire while they are hunting. Jack accepts this mission not very voluntarily. Shelter and fruit picking are sought out by Ralph and others. But no one wants to help Ralph and Piggy. Ralph has to do everything by himself. The other kids on the island are too busy with swimming and having fun, they do not help with anything. They do not think they have to be saved, the thought of being without adults and rules is very fun for them.

A day when Jack and his team are on charge of hunting, a ship passes by the shore. But because the fire burned out, they do not realize the islanders. After this Ralph and Piggy go to top of the mountain and confront with Jack. Ralph argues that the fire is the most important thing on the island, but Jack does not bother himself with it and tells them to eat the pig that they hunted. However, the tension between them is already started.

Meantime, the little kids talks about a monster that looks like a snake. Although Jack and Ralph don’t believe them, they secretly are afraid of this monster too. One night, a dead parachutist falls to the top of the island and with the wind the parachute swells and moves. The kids are sure that this is the monster they are so afraid of. Jack and Ralph are afraid too, but they agree to go check it out. The both of them do not admit that they are afraid, wanting to be the strongest one. Jack and Ralph reach the peak of the mountain, they could not ignore the monster now and they start running towards to the shore. After that, no kid goes to the mountain and they cannot build a fire. Ralph and Piggy think that the fire should be on the shore, but they cannot follow through with this idea.

With the monster being real, the tension between Jack and Ralph intensifies. Jack says that Ralph cannot protect the island and accuses him of being a coward. He says that he can protect everyone with his hunting skills, and he wants to create his own group. At first, he does not have any votes but still leaves the island and goes to the woods. All of the older kids and some of the younger kids joins Jack’s painted face wild tribe and with this democratic order is gone. Piggy and Simon don’t leave Ralph and want him to continue with being sheriff. Ralph realizes Piggy’s intelligence and with his help he can do this job.

Only Piggy and Simon believe that there is not a monster in the island. In order to prove this, Simon goes to top of the mountain, and he realizes that the monster is just a dead parachutist. He immediately runs to the woods to let everyone know. Meanwhile, Jack and his team hunted a pig and they are doing some kind of ritual. Simon suddenly finds himself in the circle that the tribe created. Jack and his team think that Simon is the monster and they brutally murder him. Now, there is no good and bad in the island. Jack and his team steal Piggy’s glasses and that’s it. Ralph and Piggy go there to stand up for themselves, but they are not being taken seriously and Piggy is killed by the worst person of the island, Roger. Now, Ralph has to start running and whole island is burning. Ralph is sure that if he gets caught, he would be killed by Jack and others. When Ralph thinks that everything is over, and he is going to die, a military ship that see the smoke coming from the island lands on the shore, and they save kids from the island and Ralph from being killed.

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