1. Lord of the Flies By William Golding

2. What should you come to understand by the end of this unit?
There is a little bit of evil in all of us.
The true nature of humans has perplexed thinkers for thousands of years.
Novelists often use their fiction to make statements about their personal or political beliefs.

3. Essential questions… What is our true human nature?
Why do people disagree about our true human nature?
How does Golding use setting and characters in Lord of the Flies to express his ideas about people?

4. Lord of the Flies facts
Most of the characters, actions and objects in the novel symbolize larger ideas
Golding’s novel deals with the conflict between the rational mind and natural instinct
Golding believed that people were instinctively evil and society was needed to protect humans from each other.

5. Lord of the Flies continued
The novel takes place during a fictional nuclear war.
A group of British schoolboys are flown out of their country to “protect” them from the horrors of war.

6. However, their plane crashes, killing all the adults on board.
Lord of the Flies continued
However, their plane crashes, killing all the adults on board.
The boys remain stranded on the tropical island to fend for themselves…

7. William Golding September 19, 1911- 1983 in Cornwall, England
Enlisted in the Royal Navy during WWII. This is where he lost his belief that men were inherently good.

8. William Golding cont.
After war went back to teaching and began writing novels on the side.
Lord of the Flies published in 1954
1983 Nobel Peace Prize in Literature

9. Literary Terms
Allegory - characters, settings and events stand for other people or events or for abstract ideas or qualities
Symbolism - representing things by means of symbols or of attributing meanings or significance to objects, events, or relationships

10. Symbolism
Piggy
when reason is destroyed, so is law and order

11. Symbolism Piggy’s Glasses
human intelligence and perceptivity—open to misuse and easily destroyed
the link to civilization
they show Piggy’s impaired ability. While Piggy knows or sees more than Ralph, he does not see the total situation on the island
the degeneration of their society

12. Symbolism
Simon
represents the highest aspirations of the human spirit towards beauty and holiness
participates in a symbolic dialogue with the Lord of the Flies

13. Symbolism Lord of the Flies
represents the lowest part of man, the source of violence, hatred, fear, murder.
The meeting with Simon represents the recognition of these forces in all men, even the saintly.

14. Symbolism The Conch Shell law and order, stability,communication
brings the boys out of isolation so they can become a group, a civilization, where they can think together. It calls them away from primitiveness and toward awareness.

15. Symbolism The increasing powers of evil.
The Chant, “Kill the pig. Cut her throat . ..”
The increasing powers of evil.
a formalization of the destructive passions that exist in the boys. It gives these passions an outlet. This, however, is dangerous because the more these passions are indulged, the more violent they become.

16. Symbolism Fire represents a hope for the future, hope for humanity
a contrast to the symbol of darkness that represents the barbarism within the boys

17. Symbolism Jack’s Knife associated with vengeance, death, sacrifice
the short blade of the knife represents the primacy of the man wielding it (whereas the long blade of a sword illustrates the spiritual height of a swordsman)

18. Symbolism The British Officer
authority that the boys have shown they needed on the island
the weakness, destructiveness, and hypocrisy of the society from which he comes.

19. What do you know about Beelzebub?
It is another name for the devil.
Beelzebub comes from a Greek word that means ‘lord of flies’

20. The Title of the Novel a translation of Beelzebub, the name of a devil
suggests that the boys are like flies, mere instinctive beings swarming to the kill

21. Character Analysis Ralph symbolizes rational leadership
fights against the superstition and terror
recognizes the universal presence of evil as a condition of life
most complete, most human, and most heroic of the characters

22. Character Analysis Jack
the Satanic and deathly force coming to confront the divine and life giving man of light a diabolical force, plunging the boys into a chaos of brute activities
symbolizes anarchy of the human soul

23. Character Analysis Piggy The intellectual
He represents an attitude of mind that is conservative and civilized
with his build, his nickname "Piggy," and his squealing, he resembles the sacrificial pig

24. Character Analysis Simon
willing to work and brave in the face of physical danger
does not share the fears of the other boys because he feels that the spirit world does not hold any terrors

25. Character Analysis Simon symbolizes rationality
discovers, that even he himself contains a destructive evil
right in saying that the only "beasts" are the ones that people create

26. Character Analysis Roger
A furtive, quiet boy, who evolves into a torturer and terrorist
Where Jack acts in fury, Roger performs his treacheries with cool detachment
he fears nothing
represents the complete death of conscience