Drama Lord of the Flies Protagonist, Antagonist, Setting & Genre by William Golding
To view Summary and Analysis of other chapter Click Here.
The protagonist of Lord of the Flies is Ralph. Ralph’s narrative opens and closes the novel, while his position as chief makes him a central inciting force. Ralph’s motivation throughout the book is to maintain order and civility, and to keep a signal fire lit in hopes of being rescued, but he is regularly thwarted by the antagonist Jack and the potential for evil inherent in mankind. While Ralph and Jack start the book as friends and near equals, they devolve into mortal enemies, each one representing an opposing form of leadership. Jack’s savage nature and embrace of violence clashes with Ralph’s focus on long-term survival, as represented by his insistence on building shelters and maintaining the signal fire. While Ralph attempts to appease Jack in the beginning by allowing him to control his hunters, eventually he grows frustrated by Jack’s shortsightedness. Ralph’s goal is to maintain order and work towards rescue. Although Jack appears to agree on this goal, his actions obstruct Ralph from attaining his goal. Ralph’s decision to challenge Jack proves a crucial plot point, as the tensions between the two boys result in the formation of two separate, warring tribes.
While Ralph proves in many ways a thoughtful, charismatic, and effective leader, his leadership is flawed by his indecision and inability to think clearly in crucial moments. Ralph’s confusion in decisive moments proves too great a weakness for him to maintain his leadership peacefully. Ralph’s unwillingness to resort to fear tactics and violence to lead the boys also makes him ultimately ineffective as a leader. As the protagonist, Ralph represents both the possibilities and limitations of democracy. Ralph is only effective as a leader as long as the boys voluntarily follow his command. Because they aren’t afraid of the consequences of rebelling against Ralph, the boys are quick to leave his tribe and join forces with Jack. In this way, the very qualities that make Ralph a natural leader in the beginning lead to his downfall. By the end of the book, Ralph has changed from a confident, charismatic leader to a frightened, hunted outcast.
Lord of the Flies takes place on an unnamed, uninhabited tropical island in the Pacific Ocean during a fictional worldwide war around the year 1950. The boys arrive on the island when an airplane that was presumably evacuating them crashes. From the moment of their arrival, the boys begin destroying the natural harmony of the island. The scorched land where the airplane crashed, ripping up trees, is described as a “scar.” The boys set a fire that burns out of control, kill the wild pigs living on the island, use the beach as a bathroom, and finally burn the entire island, so that is “scorched up like dead wood.” Although the boys initially rejoice at the adventures they’ll have on the island, saying it’s “wizard,” the island itself is described as an inhospitable terrain, as though the land is attempting to reject its new inhabitants. The coconuts are “skull-like,” the sun’s rays are “invisible arrows,” the sound of the trees rubbing against each other is “evil.” The natural world is violent and impartial to the civility and order of human life, as evidenced when the tide reclaims the brutalized bodies of Simon and Piggy.
Allegorical Fiction, Dystopian Fiction
Allegorical Fiction
Lord of the Flies is an allegorical novel that employs the realistic situation of a group of boys stranded on a desert island to embody abstract ideas about human beings’ inherent savagery and the dangers of mob mentality and totalitarian leadership. Allegorical fiction employs specific images, characters, and settings to represent intangible emotions or ideas, such as a character named The Lover personifying the concept of romantic love. In Lord of the Flies, Golding creates a backdrop of global war for a narrative about boys attempting to build a civil society following the presumed destruction of civilization. Characters represent different negative and positive aspects of humanity, such as Piggy, who stands for reason and intellect, and Jack, who stands for violence, cruelty, and totalitarianism. Objects on the island serve allegorical functions as well: most significantly, the conch represents communication and the democratic process. Allegorical fiction as a genre asks readers to the question the concepts governing human interaction, and explores the way larger forces impact individual lives. In telling the story of an isolated group of young boys attempting to remake society, the book asks whether the breakdown of civilizations into war is inevitable, and what forces within us drive us toward self-destruction.
Lord of the Flies deviates from the genre of allegorical fiction in that the main characters are fully-developed, conflicted, believable boys. In traditional allegory, characters are often representative of a single attribute, and the work can feel bombastic in the author’s insistence on the main idea. Most of the characters in Lord of the Flies, in contrast, have a degree of ambivalence and are presented as initially sympathetic. Ralph, who symbolizes fair, progress-minded leadership, is also afflicted by self-doubt and an inability to articulate his thoughts, or even think clearly, at crucial moments. Even Jack, rather than being a symbol of pure evil or mindless violence, experiences moments of weakness, as when the boys vote to keep Ralph chief. Jack is presented sympathetically in the beginning of the novel, and grows increasingly aggressive as he is corrupted by the violence he enacts on the pigs and the other boys. Rather than remaining static, one-dimensional stand-ins for ideas, the characters change over the course of the novel, making it different than classic works of allegorical fiction.
Dystopian Fiction
Because Lord of the Flies presents the characters as living in a nightmarish, oppressive society as a result of to their inherently flawed natures, it is also an example of dystopian fiction. In direct contrast to utopian fiction, which posits that human beings are perfectible and a society free of suffering is possible, dystopian fiction asserts that societal injustice is inevitable. The genre became popular during the 20th century, when works like George Orwell’s Animal Farm and 1984 presented futuristic worlds beset by tyranny, violence, and suppressed speech. It is an especially popular genre for contemporary young adult novels like The Hunger Games. Although the setting of Lord of the Flies initially appears an Edenic utopia, with abundant fruit, fresh water, and beautiful beaches, it quickly devolves into a dystopian landscape where the boys are hungry, dirty, fearful of the unnamed beast, and tyrannized by an increasingly sadistic leader. Dystopian writers employ fear, suspense, and often violence to warn readers about the dangers of totalitarianism; the message of their novels is that societies can never be truly perfect, but can get better if individuals work together in democratic processes. Ralph, in Lord of the Flies, represents this potential, in his insistence on free speech, voting, and collaborative labor to provide shelter, gather food, and tend the fire.
