A Study Of Symbolism In Lord Of The Flies

William Golding is an outstanding and prolific British writer, Lord of the Flies as his early masterpiece has left an indelible glory in the history of world literature. A variety of symbolism features in this book have formed a complete and ingenious system and it implicates a deep discussion of such a theme: humanity. What plays a bridging role to connect virtual and reality in the book is the description of symbolism.The author of this thesis takes Golding’s Lord of the Flies as the research object, trying to analyze various symbolic meanings in Lord of the Flies from three aspects. First, the author presents the implication of symbolism system in the novel from the symbolic images of character, object and environment. With Jung’s theory of collective unconscious, the author tries to retrospect the main characters’ archetype, together with the symbolic narration of the two collectives to reveal the theme of the novel---- human nature is evil. Finally it points out the root causes of Golding’s tragic consciousness of "human nature is evil" and reveals the metaphor of way of salvation.There are three chapters in this thesis:The first chapter narrates the allegorically artistic expression of symbolical ingredients in Lord of the Flies, with a detailed description of the symbolic meaning of characters, objects and environment, in order to analyze the symbolism system in the book.The second chapter draws on Jung’s collective unconscious theory, to give a further description and analysis on the goodness and ugly, conflicts and struggles between the civilized collective and the barbaric collective presented by William Golding. Then, it traces to the archetype of the main characters to symbolically reveal the theme of the novel.The third chapter is committed to call for humanity. First, it points out Golding’s pessimistic consciousness of human nature, explaining from both Golding’s social background and religious belief. Then, it goes beyond the text itself to the whole human world to satire the darkness and the evil side of human nature, and points out the inherited way of salvation of humanity in Lord of the Flies.In the conclusion part, it summarizes the symbolic meaning and the causes generally in Lord of the Flies, and it also analyses the deep-seated fundament and essential information of the novel through the organic integration.