Human actuality

LORD OF THE FLIES
Time: The story is set during an unnamed time of war (a fictional atomic war).
Place: It is set on a deserted tropical island in the Pacific Ocean.
Characters- Ralph: he’s one of the oldest boys and quickly becomes the leader. He is calm and rational and has a natural sense of authority.
- Jack: He is cruel and sadistic and has little time for rules and order. He is motivated by pure self-interest and represents the military mindset with dictatorial tendencies. He’s a cruel boy. He represents the instinct of savagery, violence and the desire of power.
- Simon: he is the most introspective character in the novel. He has a deep affinity with nature and often walks alone in the jungle. Against the idea of evil on the island, Simon represents the idea of essential human goodness.
- Piggy: he is clear-thinking, intellectual and h e represents the voice of reason and logic. He is dedicated to the ideal of civilization and consistently reprimeands the other boys for behaving as
savages. His nickname symbolically connects him to the pigs on the island . He dies.
- Sam and Eric (Samneric): they are twins and considered to be a single individual. They are
easily excitable. At the beginning they are allied with Ralph, but at the end of the novel, they fall
victim to Jack’s manipulation and coercion.




- Roger: he is Jack’s equal in cruelty and his “lieutenant”. He is boorish and crude, and after the other boys lose all idea of civilization, he is the one who murders Piggy.
- The Lord of the Flies: “he” is the pig’s head that Jack impales on a stick as an offering to “the Beast”. It represents savagery and amorality of Jack’s tribe. Beelzebub.
Themes
- Civilization (rules and order) vs. Savagery (primitivity)
- Power
-Wisdom and knowledge
- Individualism vs. Community
- The nature of evil - Innate human evil
- Fear
- Man vs. Nature
- Dehumanization of relationships
- The loss of innocence
- The negative consequences of war
Narrative style
The novel has a third person (omniscient) narrator. It is an anonymous narrator who conveys
the events of the novel without commenting on the action or intruding into the story.
Tone: The tone is pessimistic, tragic, dark, violent.
Language: Verb tense -> inmediate past