Data Bases • Custom Term Papers • Free Term Papers • Free Research Papers • Free Essays • Free Book Reports • Plagiarism? Links • Top 100 Term Paper Sites • Top 25 Essay Sites • Top 50 Essay Sites • Search 97,000 Papers @ DirectEssays.com • Search 101,000 Papers @ ExampleEssays.com • Search 90,000 Papers @ MegaEssays.com Free Essays • Term Paper Sites • Chuck III's Free Essays • Free College Essays • TermPaperSites.com • My Term Papers • Get Free Essays • Essay World • Planet Papers	Search Lots of Essays Back to Subjects - English Lord of the Flies3 Lord of the Flies3 Golding uses many symbols in the novel, Lord of the Flies, to represent good and evil in society. He uses Simon to represent the peacefulness of life and the kindness of a good heart, while Piggy represents the civilization on the island and the adult viewpoint of the children. The conch symbolizes order and also adult behavior. It is a symbol of strength and knowledge as well, as the evil of the beast represents the fear in the boys. All of these symbols change as the story goes on, some changes are less obvious and are the result of the readers new perspective while others undergo dramatic, and quite obvious, change. Simon is a symbol of peace who sees only good in the world. The name Simon itself means, listener, and depicts Simon's character well as he always listens instead of giving an alternative opinion. Although at times his opinion differs from the others, he never complains. Simon's great sacrifice for the boys, dying for their sin, is a trait of a martyr. Simon's death results in a change of his affect on the boys and on the reader. Because he is killed by the other boys, he begins to represent the evil that has dominated over the good on the island. Piggy is another symbol for goodness, however his goodness is not the same as Simons. Piggy represents the goodness that comes from adults and order. Piggy's inability to see well makes him a perfect symbol for that of blind justice. Piggy not only thinks like an adult, but also is constantly worried about how adults would view the society on the island, showing he is concerned with the order and justice of things and want to be civilized. Piggy is picked on a lot by the other boys because of his weight and sight hindrance, but nonetheless he does not give up his share of the authority. Piggy is constantly saying, "I've got the conch," ( a sign of authority and a sign that all should listen to the person with the conch. Piggy's death symbolizes the destruction of society and civilization on the island, and the rise of savage behavior. It also shows the demise of order and the rise of the devil. The conch is a symbol that connects to Piggy in many ways. Both represent the order and structure a society needs for survival. The conch never stops being a symbol of order to some people until it is destroyed, and to others, it loses its meaning early on. For example, Piggy hold faith in the conch until the last minute, while Jack does not really care much about it from the start. Once the conch is broken, it shows the downfall of the role society plays on this island. The last symbol is the beast. At the beginning of the story, the beast is nothing but the fear of the boys showing through because they have never been alone before. Slowly though, the beast becomes a more real thing and eventually, because of the appearance of some things on the island, such as the parachutist, the beast graduates into a full-blown nightmare. Eventually, the degree to which the beast has scared the boys, becomes so great that some begin to be affected by it, not only being scared, but also by being violent. Jack, for example, takes the beast to a new level and uses it to scare the boys into joining in his tribe, and rebelling against and hunting Ralph. The beast rears its ugly head several times and even results I the deaths of some of the boys, which would probably never happened had no one been alarmed about a beast. Of course the beast was not a real monster, but it did harm the boys in a much larger way than fear, it turned them into savages, against their own kind, the ultimate evil. The symbols behind all the characters and objects change as the story goes on and the characters become more lost in the survival and fun aspect of being lost on the island. As the boys care less and less about the rules of civilization and become more and more savage-like. The symbols of good begin to vanish and the symbols of evil run rampant across the island. Essentially, as the boys stay on the island longer, they loose touch with reality and become savages, something not approved of by the society from whence they came. Bibliography: Word Count: 748
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