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Allegory In Lord Of The Flies

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Allegory In Lord Of The Flies
In the novel Lord of the Flies William Golding writes about how a group of a group of civilized of British boys as they slowly descend into savagery. It starts when the boys who crash land on an island where any adults on the plane died leaving them to survive on their own. As they try to keep order they elect a boy named Ralph as their chief and Jack, who lost the election as chief, leader of the hunters. Simon, one of the other boys, is socially awkward but has more of a moral conscience then some of the other boys on the island. The novel Lord of the Flies is an extended metaphor which can be read as a psychological, social, and religious allegory.
A psychological allegory is broken up into three different personality types, which focuses
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Jack and Ralph symbolizes the brothers Cain and Abel. Cain and Abel were the sons of Adam and Eve and when the brothers both sacrifice something to God, he favors Abel’s sacrifice which angers Cain. Trying to take revenge Cain kills his brother out of jealously. This relates to Ralph and Jack when Ralph is elected chief, and Jack disappears “under a blush of mortification” (23). This leads Jack to jealously making him want to “viciously, with full intention, he hurled his spear at Ralph” (181). Another character is Simon who signifies a Christ figure. One of the way he embodies Christ is confronting the devil, which in the book was the lord of the flies. The lord of the flies was a pig head sacrifice that the hunters left for the beast. Simon confronted the “devil” when is started to talk to him try to persuade Simon to “get back to the others and we’ll forget the whole thing” (142) because they can’t escape the beast for the beast is inside of them. Finally, the whole island itself symbolizes part of the bible. We see it as the Garden of Eden because it is perfect until humans destroy it. At the beginning when Ralph, Simon, and Jack climb to the top of the mountain to see if the island is actually an island or not, and describe it as spilling “lavishly among the canopy of the forest” (28). Then when the boys descend into savagery and try to burn down the forest into a “bright thunder of lighting” (200) trying to smoke out Ralph so they can find him and kill

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