Lord of the flies - Analysis

Runningheader:Lordof the flies 1
Workshop Nº 5
Analysis: Lord of the flies
Ricardo Paulo Javier Arieu
Universidad Del Este
June 15, 2017
Professor César A. Román Laureano, M.A.
Psychology 222 – ADOLESCENT PSYCHOLOGY

Lord of the flies 2
Lord of the flies
I. Literary data”
a) Tittle: Lord of the flies
b) Reasonfor title: Because of the group of flies that were on the head of the boar, there is a
strong impression in Simon, who then, calls the head of the boar "Lord of the Flies". The title
refers to human evil, represented by Beelzebub, a Philistine deity and later also belonging to
Christian iconography.
c) Director: Harry Hook
d) Literary history: There is an earlier film directed by Peter Brook, 1963. It’s based on the
novel by William Golding. The novel, published in 1954, has a marked influence of The Island
of Coral (1857) of Robert Michael Ballantyne. Golding highlights that influence by calling his
two protagonists the same as two of the main characters in Ballantyne's novel, Ralph and Jack.
It also has a clear antecedent in 'Two years of vacations' (1888), one of the less well-known
novels of Jules Verne.

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The subject is completely analogous and raises the conflicts for the power between
children lost in an island without adults.
e) Author:
e.1) Name: Sir William Gerald Golding
e.2) Born: 19 de September de 1911, Cornualles (England).
e.3) Decease: June, 19 of 1993 (81 years old).
e.4) Nationality: Britannic.
e.5) Job: Writer and novelist. Participated in World War II. (Royal Navy).
e.6) Awards:
 Award James Tait Black
 Nobel Prize for Literature (1983).
f) Premiere:
 U.S.A 1990. The film raised 13 million dollars.
g) Epoch and place where the film was developed:
g.1) Epoch: First half of the 20th century.
g.2) Place: in a small, deserted island.
h) Literary classification: Epic
i) Historic context:
William Golding, to be born in 1911 will be immersed and influenced by all the currents
and experiences belonging to the first half of the 20th century. The historical context on which
his life is based is mainly the Second World War and its consequences. This century mainly
begins with the expansion of different doctrines and philosophies among which stands out the
Marxism. Product of the 1st and 2nd Industrial Revolution are formed two social classes that

Lord of the flies 4
marked Europe for many years, these are the proletariat and the bourgeoisie, and in 1914 the
First World War, which changes the feeling and act of man in 100%.
William Golding was officer in the British navy during World War II and, at the end of
the war, he exercised teaching. Both experiences, the human decadence of the war and the rigid
norms of the schools of his country forged their way of thinking about the man and his destiny;
reason for which was inspired to carry out this work which since its publication has been a
novel of social criticism.
j) Personages:
j.1) Principal:
 Ralph: Represents common sense.
 Piggy: Symbolizes intelligence, but is ignored for being asthmatic.
 Jack: The hunter, the savage. The anarchic leadership.
 Simon: He is afraid, but he is curious and he seeks the truth. His character is more kind.
j.2) Secondary: Make up the other guys. They represent some problems that society suffers. In
the work we see those who are looser, those who can’t think well for themselves and those who
are more sensible. They demonstrate that people need to be governed, being unable to maintain
moral order by themselves. There are also the character who plays the role of the dead
parachutist and the military who finally rescues them, but with minimal participation.
II. Analysis:
a) Introduction:
This American film deals with children survivors of an aeronautical accident in the
middle of the sea. The survivors find a deserted island with no native inhabitants. There they
immediately face the need to organize as a society, aiming to survive while they wait to be

Lord of the flies 5
rescued. But while the rescue comes, they can’t help but satisfy their basic needs. At one point,
they realize that they must establish basic rules of coexistence and discipline, using as a model
democracy, inheritance of the society from which they came. A dispute arises between two
youths for leadership (Ralph and Jack), which causes them to be divided into two groups. Ralph
proposes rules based on civilized customs, order and responsibility; Also decides to keep a fire
burning in the top of an island since for him, the fire symbolized the rescue. He also agrees to
abide by the rules, to build shelters and to explore the island, but after carelessness a fire is
caused which makes disappear one of the children (the child of the spot on the face). This is the
first death.
But due to the rivalry between Ralph and Jack, divisions are emerging within the group;
for some, the goal is security, responsibility, order, rescue and for others hunting, fun, "play to
be wild". This is clear when Ralph denounces Jack of not having taken care of the fire, and this
in turn reproaches him in the face not to have obtained meat for the lunch. Little by little they
begin to suffer the effects of being on the island, the lack of adults in the group and some of
them, especially the smaller ones, start with nightmares and fears. Over time, disputes between
Ralph and Jack, who makes the decision to separate with their hunters and form their own
"tribe", become wild, painting their bodies and faces, performing ritual dances and offerings to
the beast. One of those offerings was the boar's head set on a stick.
Finally, the young people who survive this period of survival on the island, are rescued.
b) Teachings I highlight:
b.1) The group:
During adolescence it is common for young people to form groups of friends, where
they share their concerns. The film tells the story of a group of schoolchildren who must learn

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to survive on a desert island, without adults, rules, boundaries, and away from civilization. The
Lord of the Flies by William Golding deals with the forms of behavior and ways of survival of
this group of children, who, following an air crash, are forced to remain on a desert island. Most
of them do not exceed twelve, and so they are conditioned to survive without the elderly,
creating their own rules and facing fear, anarchy, violence and death.
b.2) The leadership:
Ralph and Piggy, are the ones in charge to call to the others by the aid of the sound of a
conch that they find near the place. Ralph, is chosen like boss, situation that infuriates the other
young person named Jack. It is possible to identify in the text a representation of democratic
and authoritarian tendencies if we analyze the figures of the two leaders. Jack, is the typical
aggressive leader with violent and authoritarian features. From the beginning he is mobilized by
envy and competition, especially with respect to Ralph. Ralph represents the democratic leader
who, under the symbol of the conch, calls to organize the group around the use of the word.
Jack represents the authoritarian leader, whose power is based on martial organization, physical
superiority, superstition and fear.
b.3) Anarchy, violence and murder that results in death:
The film presents teenagers as human beings who at times act driven by their low
instincts begin with nightmares. There are different fears of snakes, ghosts, and monsters,
materializing in a figure they call "the beast", but in reality it was a dead parachutist who only
look from afar. This is the first death to be seen in the film. The first thing that was agreed
among the members of the group was to keep the fire on as a permanent signal to guide their
possible saviors. He also agrees to abide by the rules, to build shelters and to explore the island,

Lord of the flies 7
but after carelessness a fire is caused which makes disappear one of the children (the child of
the spot on the face). This was the second death observed.
Simon interrupts at one point a frenzied ritual of the group of wild teenagers, but these
do not recognize him by confusing him with the beast and end up murdering him. This would
be the third death to be observed. The boys, with Piggy without the glasses and unable to see,
decide to go talk to the others and try to reason with them, so they cross the island carrying the
conch to a rock that Jack and the others use as a fort. Ralph argues with Jack who takes Sam
and Eric as prisoners, Piggy, angry, raises the conch and makes itself heard despite the taunts,
trying to occupy reason, but in the middle of his speech, Roger drops a big stone which beats
Piggy, shattering the conch and pushing it down the cliff, who falls to death. This would be the
fourth death that occurs in the film.
c) Perspectives:
The film has a sociological, political, historical and philosophical background that
transcends the images of the young people who travel the island, images that we contemplate
for something more than an hour. In his novel, William Golding raises a transcendental
philosophical question: Is man good or evil by nature? These debates were common in the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Throughout the novel two themes are explored in
particular: the civilization against barbarism and the loss of childish innocence.
c.1) Social perspective: The anthropology and structuralism of Lévi-Strauss have shown that
man is a social being by nature, and it is based on a determined and finite number of kinship
relations. Jack, Piggy, Ralph and the rest of the protagonists, until the moment of the
shipwreck, have already lived under an organizational system imposed by adults. Seeing the

Lord of the flies 8
critical situation in which they are involved decides to retake those models and not, for
example, anarchism, in which each would provide food, defense and clothing. They are aware,
on the other hand, that the union makes the force and if they remain united they will be able to
overcome the circumstances and reach their first objective, to survive long enough to be
rescued. This idea has connection with the following section.
c.2) Political Perspective: The French philosopher Rousseau said that "man is good by nature.
It is the society that corrupts it. “The film makes it clear that man, in one way or another, must
organize himself as a society by nature, to survive. Now, what structure is more just and
balanced to coordinate efforts and provide rights and duties to each individual? In our opinion,
three models are proposed that could correspond to the successive steps of a ladder that ascends
progressively until the crystallization of the civilized group. In the first stage, savagery would
be placed, dominated by passions, anarchy and individualism. In a second ladder we would find
authoritarianism embodied in an outstanding personality who takes on the responsibility of
guiding, but also of subjecting the group to their will through different types of tools, such as
fear and promises. Finally, we would reach parliamentary democracy, a system that gives voice
and vote, rights and duties to all members, and at the top of which a leader is elected by
majority or unanimity. To make a greater impact on the viewer or reader, W. Golding exposes
the succession of political systems in a race to the dark, a downward gradation, from democracy
to the most instinctive savagery, in which Jack and his followers have forgotten, or how much
Less have dismissed, the principles learned in the society from which they come.
c.3) Historical-philosophical perspective: Thomas Hobbes said that "man is a wolf to man".
And as William Golding puts it, people, even if they seem naive, may harbor a feeling of envy
and resentment within. Even these innocent-looking children can show traits of violence and

Lord of the flies 9
tyranny in their minds. The debate between empiricists and rationalists was very fashionable
during the seventeenth century, when both Hobbes and Locke expressed opposing points about
the most just political model for the human being. The empiricists believed that we learned
through the senses that they manage to capture experiences from the outside world, while the
rationalists defended the opposite; all the knowledge had its origin in our brain or, in its defect,
as Descartes would say, in the divine inspiration.
c.4) Symbolic Perspective: Although the author tries to make the narration something utopian,
to dispose to humans in their childhood the least contaminated by civilization, can’t fail to
introduce a series of contemporary elements, such as glasses (first to cook and warm up, then
To create the fire that marks its position to the rescuers) or the fluorescent, as well as the knife.
In my opinion the best metaphors are the shell, the stick and the same "lord of the flies", the
head of the decomposing pig.
The conch symbolizes reason, tolerance democracy, word, even civilization. That at first
it was necessary to take it to be able to send a message to the group says much of some children
who, from the first moment, they want to do the things. However, the human is not a pure
aseptic reason, as we see in the film. The sticks they hunt with, their particular garments and the
paintings that use Jack's subjects as an identity element make the difference with the first group
of Ralph and Piggy.
d) Symbolism of objects:
d.1) The glasses: they are a symbol of progress. When the lens is broken it means that they are
in danger of losing contact with the civilized world they have left behind. With their lenses
broken, they now have half a foot on the side of savagery. But with the glasses, they will light
the fire.

Lord of the flies 10
d.2) The fire: The fire has a symbolism. Jung thought of the fire inside the unconscious, the
libido. But it is also a symbolism of adolescence. In Latin the word adolescentia comes from
the adolescent verb, which expresses the idea of "the crackling of sacred fires, those who carry
and transmit fire, grow, develop, develop reason, ardor." The Romans gave him the meaning:
"he who bears the fire of the new life". The fire of the bonfire symbolizes the hope and the
illusion of the rescue, through the messenger smoke and the warmth of the home that they
transmitted to them (especially Ralph). From the beginning of the novel, Ralph is determined to
maintain the signal of fire in case a ship passes near the island. That is fine until the first sign of
fire that ignites children is uncontrolled, and a child is burned. Fire then becomes a symbol,
paradoxically, of the hope of ransom and destruction as, ironically, with the fire that Jack
ignites at the end of the novel (in his attempt to hunt and kill Ralph) is when the children are
rescued.
d.3) The snail: It symbolizes parliamentary democracy. Ralph and Piggy, two of the big boys,
find a snail and use their sound to gather the rest of the survivors. From that moment, the snail
will be used as a symbol of power and power at the moment of speaking, summoning everyone
to an assembly when the situation requires it. The shell is used in several scenes of The Lord of
the Flies to organize the children. No one should speak unless he has the shell, and once it
begins it can’t be interrupted. Children have imposed these rules themselves, and consequently,
the shell represents social, political, and discursive rules. The shell plays an important role
when children decide to vote to choose a boss, and also lets anyone talk when they have one.
Notice that after the shell breaks, Jack begins to scream that he can now be boss. The reason he
could not be boss before (at least not like he wanted to) was that the shell allowed Piggy to

reassure all the other kids and demand their attention. Without the shell, the power is again in
dispute, and Jack wants to dispute it.
d.4) The head of the boar: It symbolizes fear. Fear is a typical human feeling. The Lord of the
Flies is the head of the bloody sow, which Jack impales on a stake in the forest as an offering to
the beast. This complicated symbol becomes the most important image of the novel when
Simon faces the head of the pig on a stick, which seems to speak to him saying that he was a
foolish and ignorant child, promising to have some "fun" with him. (This "fun" foreshadows the
death of Simon in the next chapter). In this way, the lord of the flies makes a physical
manifestation of the beast, a symbol of the evil energy, and a kind of figure of Satan.
III. Conclusion:
In conclusion, we must recognize that this film, although it seems to have a childish
argument, is not a movie for children. The underlying philosophical argument is the result of a
debate that was taking place in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries: Is man good or bad in
his deepest human nature? Personally, I do not think that the human being is good by nature
and it is society that makes it bad. I believe that violent or authoritarian instincts and behaviors
are inherent in human nature. Said in the words of the Bible, we are all sinners and we
constantly rebel against the moral and spiritual laws of our Creator.
Life in society sacrifices part of those instincts for the benefit of the community. To
prevent this coexistence is broken is that there are laws and authorities that watch over
compliance. But similarly, it may be that a society, driven by fear, is allowed to rule by a tyrant
or authoritarian dictator. In this film you see how young people first let themselves be governed
democratically, but then anarchy breaks out and the deaths of several of them show a more

violent profile of their participants. This allows us to discover that these children with infantile
faces were not as angelic as their physical appearances made them think at first.
The "Lord of the Flies" can have many meanings. We could interpret it as decomposing
humanity or as the incarnation of the fear that governs them all and that leads them to act in an
illogical way, so much as to decompose their primordial unity and face each other. This is
reinforced because the head of the pig surrounded by flies was on a stake next to the cave,
where the captain lay dying emitting moans that intimidated both groups. Fear, then, as a
catalyst for the fear of children. Both the novel and its adaptations are pessimistic fables about
society.
Finally we see that civilization triumphs over barbarism and young people are rescued
from the island, leaving behind their fears, fantasies and their acts so primitive and barbaric.
Surely William Golding, the author of this novel, based on which the film was based, was
impacted by the tragedy of the Second World War and its terrible moral and philosophical
questions. The observer of this film can easily be deceived by the harmless appearance of these
educated young men in a military lyceum. But the reality of the human being is such that, when
cultural codes and ethical and moral values fall, anarchy and violence take over the human
being.
Why, being this group of teenage boys supposedly so well educated, did they commit
such faulty acts of moral conscience as violence and murder? Could it be that the moral
education of these young people was only assumed by word and not de facto? Why did their
values succumb so easily to the lack of older people who put limits on their youthful passions? I
think we must affirm that the moral-social relationship is super complex and difficult and

consequently moral behavior is always a fact of social life: family, cultural, political, and
religious, etc. Thus, it can be said that individuals don’t invent society, and nor their morality.
Individual behavior itself is determined by the life of man in society; Culture, beliefs,
hatreds, loves, have their origin in the complex of different social practices. An individual
outside society and history can’t be held morally without being tempted to easily abandon his
civilized codes. Morality and its practices are an event of human beings living in society. An
isolated individual, as in the example of these young castaways, can’t keep their codes of
conduct civilized for long. The reality is that it would not be possible to live in a society and at
the same time not to belong to it.
It is not so simple to affirm that the human being is good and it is the society that
corrupts it. I think the film shows that, within every human being, there is a wolf stalking
another human being, as Hobbes claimed. And it is only possible to put a brake on this wolf,
with education, laws, religion and certain controls that prevent the human being from
manifesting as it really is. Living within these human limits and controls is what makes it
possible for us to be civilized people. Without these codes of conduct, we would easily fall into
barbarism and anarchy, as happened to the teenagers in the film. And as William Golding
showed through his work, people, even if they seem naive, may possess a feeling of envy and
resentment. Even those beautiful and seemingly innocent young men may prove to possess
traits of authoritarianism, tyranny, and evil in their minds and hearts.

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social-el-senor-moscas.shtml
Parra Albarracín, A. (n.d.). La Psicologia Simbolica Interna del Fuego. Retrieved 06-13-2017
from http://www.fundacion-jung.com.ar/forum/elfuego.htm
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sagrado. Retrieved 06-13-2017 from
https://www.reeditor.com/columna/911/24/psicologia/pubertad/adolescencia/crepitar/fu
ego/sagrado
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from http://www.shmoop.com/el-senor-de-las-moscas/el-fuego.html
Shmoop.(n.d.). El señor de las moscas de William Golding. La concha. Retrieved 06-13-2017
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Shmoop. (n.d.). El señor de las moscas de William Golding. Los lentes. Retrieved 06-13-2017
from http://www.shmoop.com/el-senor-de-las-moscas/los-lentes.html
Sobre Libros (11-28-2012). William Golding – El Señor de las Moscas. Retrieved 06-13-2017
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