Foil Characters In Lord Of The Flies

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Nobel Prize winning English author, William Golding, published his bestselling novel, Lord of the Flies, on September 17th, 1954. Chosen by TIME magazine as one of the “All-TIME 100 Best Novels” written within the time frame of 1923 to 2005, this literary work has received much notice worldwide. The novel, along with its two movie adaptations, portrays a storyline involving the burden of survival falling upon a group of young, stranded boys that eventually has them succumbing to their own violent human nature. Within this captivating plot, Golding conveys a corruption theme through the foil characters of Piggy and Jack. The contrasting aspects between the two and what each symbolizes that lead to inevitable endings in Golding’s work model the …show more content…
Jack represents the savageness within humans while Piggy is a representation of society’s rules (Neighbors, “Individual”). Jack’s leadership led the group to “paint their faces, hunt pigs, and then start killing one another” (Magill, ed. 1350) and through actions such as these, he came to be the vicious representation of evil. However, this downward spiral to brutality also came from inside his human nature and Jack “... tried to convey the compulsion to track down and kill [which] was swallowing him up” (Golding 51). In quite the dissimilarity, Golding allowed for Piggy to represent society, its rules, and everything good, almost simulating an adult presence on the island. For example, Piggy is the first to take notice and point out the adolescent behaviors of the boys as they become reckless with fire on the mountain (Golding 45). “Piggy, the rationalist” (Magill, ed. 1351) attempts to steer the now savage boys back to society’s ways in order to prevent their ruination and insists upon them creating and following their own rules such as the one who holds the conch shall be able to speak without interruption. Contrary to Jack’s intentions, he wants the best for all of the group. Through their symbolisms, Piggy and Jack came to represent the continually conflicting sides of good and evil within human …show more content…
As the novel progresses, their differences and conflicts help them transform into the symbols of rationality and brutality which eventually lead them to paramount endings. These endings model those that Golding believes happen in the war within human nature and, like in Lord of the Flies, when the final dissension is reached, goodness will capitulate to evil. Golding left readers with this dark message in the hopes of having them take note of their own, previously unrecognized internal war and allowing them the chance to change the seemingly inevitable conclusion, one that plagues plagues humanity
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