Deterioration in the Lord of the Flies

When the boys first arrived at the island they were all nice little British school boys that followed the rules, but then quickly deteriorated into malicious killing savages. There are three examples of symbols that illustrate deterioration in the book The Lord of The Flies by William Golding. The examples are: when the conch breaks, when the fire burns down the forest, and when Jack kills the first pig.

The first symbol that illustrates deterioration is when the conch breaks. The conch breaks when Roger rolls a rock down the hill at Castle Rock and it crushes the conch into thousands of pieces and it throws Piggy down the cliff. This illustrates deterioration because without the conch nobody will follow and listen to the rules. The conch was a symbol of authority and tradition, they would rather hunt and kill then have the conch and rules. In chapter 11 when Jack shouts “See? See? That’s what you’ll get! There isn’t a tribe for you any more! The conch is gone” (200). When the conch breaks deterioration of rules and authority all become absolute because the conch had all the power since the beginning. The conch was all Piggy and Ralph had to keep everybody from going insane, but when it broke the boys society and order fell apart.

The second symbol that illustrated deterioration is when the forest burns down.

When the savages are trying find Ralph , they set a fire in order to smoke him out , but the whole forest burns down. This illustrates deterioration because in order to kill Ralph

they burn the whole island down, something well-mannered boys would not do. The boys think killing Ralph is better than living on the island with food and fire wood but what they didn’t know was that the fire was the reason why they were saved from the island.

When the officer was talking to them at the end he says “We saw your smoke. What have you been doing? Having a war or something” (221). The boys got so out of control trying to kill that they started a war with each other. The savages were trying