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Piggy is the first boy Ralph encounters on the island after the crash and remains the most true and loyal friend throughout Lord of the Flies. An overweight, intellectual, and talkative boy, Piggy is the brains behind many of Ralph’s successful ideas and innovations, such as using the conch to call meetings and building shelters for the group. Piggy represents the scientific and rational side of humanity, supporting Ralph’s signal fires and helping to problem solve on the island. However, Piggy’s asthma, weight, and poor eyesight make him physically inferior to the others, making him vulnerable to scorn and ostracism. Piggy is also the only boy who worries about the rules of English civilization, namely what the grownups will think when they find the savage boys. Piggy believes in rules, timeliness, and order, and as the island descends into brutal chaos, Piggy’s position comes under threat of intense violence.
Piggy’s independence and thoughtfulness prevent him from being fully absorbed by the group, so he is not as susceptible to the mob mentality that overtakes many of the other boys. However, like Ralph, Piggy cannot avoid the temptations of savagery on the island. The morning after the frenzied dance, Piggy and Ralph both admit to taking some part (although they remain vague) in the attack and murder of Simon. While Piggy tries to convince himself that Simon’s murder was an accident, his participation suggests that his willingness to be accepted by the group led him to betray his own morals and better judgment. Piggy’s death suggests that intellectualism is vulnerable to brutality. While Simon’s death can be viewed as an accident or an escalation of mob mentality, Piggy’s murder is the most intentional and inevitable on the island, and the moment when the group’s last tie to civilization and humanity is severed.
The Conch Shell
Ralph and Piggy discover the conch shell on the beach at the start of the novel and use it to summon the boys together after the crash separates them. Used in this capacity, the conch shell becomes a powerful symbol of civilization and order in the novel. The shell effectively governs the boys’ meetings, for the boy who holds the shell holds the right to speak. In this regard, the shell is more than a symbol—it is an actual vessel of political legitimacy and democratic power. As the island civilization erodes and the boys descend into savagery, the conch shell loses its power and influence among them. Ralph clutches the shell desperately when he talks about his role in murdering Simon. Later, the other boys ignore Ralph and throw stones at him when he attempts to blow the conch in Jack’s camp. The boulder that Roger rolls onto Piggy also crushes the conch shell, signifying the demise of the civilized instinct among almost all the boys on the island.
The Lord of the Flies
The Lord of the Flies is the bloody, severed sow’s head that Jack impales on a stake in the forest glade as an offering to the beast. This complicated symbol becomes the most important in the novel when Simon confronts the sow’s head in the glade and it seems to speak to him, telling him that evil lies within every human heart and promising to have some “fun” with him. (This “fun” foreshadows Simon’s death in the following chapter.) In this way, the Lord of the Flies becomes both a physical manifestation of the beast, a symbol of the power of evil, and a kind of Satan figure who evokes the beast within each human being. Looking at the novel in the context of biblical parallels, the Lord of the Flies recalls the devil, just as Simon recalls Jesus. In fact, the name “Lord of the Flies” is a literal translation of the name of the biblical name Beelzebub, a powerful demon in hell sometimes thought to be the devil himself.
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