lord of the flies by william golding

            I am currently reading a very interesting book called “Lord of the flies” by William Golding. I am not too far into the book because I have just started but here is what I do know: this book is basically (so far) about a group of boys on a plane during a fictional war, who crash onto a deserted island. One boy, Ralph, is elected as a group leader, while another boy, jack, is elected leader of the hunters of the group. However, it is obvious that jack wanted to be the leader. The first boy, Ralph is the kinder one, and he found a pink conch shell that is used to summon the other boys during meetings and such. The other boy, jack is much more harsh, and a little evil, and devious.

While I was reading the first parts of this amazing book, what caught my mind, was not the plot, but the role of the conch shell. It was used by Ralph to summon the boys to meetings, but it also had another role. During the meetings, whoever held the conch shell had the right to speak, and everyone else had to be quiet and listen. More and more, this conch shell kind of struck me as a symbol of order, power, and organization. It represented order and organization because it prevented anyone from speaking out of turn during meetings. However, it also represented power because Ralph is the one who blew on it to summon everyone, and he was the king.

All this made me think “is order necessary on a deserted island?” I would think so, because without order, there would anarchy, and chaos. However, if I was speaking form the other side, who may think that you don’t need order on a deserted island, you are a group of teenage boys after all, who are far away from civilization. I mean, the first thing that would’ve popped into my head wouldn’t have been “let’s make a constitution, and organize daily rations”. It would’ve been “Lets party!”.