Symbolism in Lord Of The Flies

Symbolism in Lord Of The Flies

Symbol is somethimg that stands for something else, most often a symbol in a novel is based upon an image. An image is something that can be recognised by one or more of the five senses. It can be seen, heard, tasted, felt or smelt. The image is then made to stand in place of an abstraction which cannot be easily visualised – an idea.

Symbols can be divided into two large categories, both of which appear in Lord Of The Flies – public symbols and private symbols. A public symbol is one which anyone can understand without explaination as it uses images that are familiar to us. A private symbol is one which must be explained by the author since its meaning is arbitrarily assigned by him. Thus when we see the crosses on the boys dresses, we know without further explaination that they are christians and that they are supposed to think and behave like Christians, follow The Ten Commandments and so on. This is what we come across in the case of the choir boys' cloak in Lord Of The Flies. Daytime and darkness are also symbols which are self explanatory. This is also true of the mountain as a high place or the lagoon as a safe place. These are publi c symbols because they have fairly universal meanings.

The novel also makes use of private symbols which do not mean the same things in the world at large as they mean in a book. For eg. A pair of glasses – all they mean is that the wearer is some defect of vision which the glasses help to correct. But Golding has made Piggy's glasses into a private symbol for the purpose of his novel. He has arbitrarily indicated that glasses will have something to do with reason. In that way the loss of one's lens, the weakening of Piggy's eyes and finally the theft of the glasses can be used to show the progressive loss of reasonable behaviour among the boys.

What does a conch shell mean in the world – It is something to look at, it maybe pretty but that is all about it. But Golding has made a private symbol of the quench by turning it into the emblem of Ralph's rule. It symbolises Ralph's power. We could also show that the pig's head on a stick or a dead airman are private symbols defined only by its use in this particular novel. The pig's head symbolises the rotten state of affairs in the island. All these are private symbols the author has given special meaning to, outside the novel they do not mean the same.

Scholars are also able to recognise a third kind of symbolism which need not concern us here called the unconcious symbolism. This is symbolism whivh the writer has created without realising it out of his own unconscious fears and his loves.