Lord of the Flies has the ability to take the reader through many emotional ups and downs. In this novel, leaders are formed, dictatorship fights with democracy in a struggle for power, and innocent children become an evil force infecting an untouched island. Literature is a parallel to real life, and Golding uses several techniques to tell his story. He uses Freud's personality to further explain characters, symbols are used as representation to deeper meanings, and imagery is accomplished through vivid details of the action. In the novel, Golding illustrates how the defects in human nature cause defects in society.
To illustrate the corruption that is taking place on the island Golding uses imagery to allow the reader to see every action occurring. Using imagery to produce fear in the reader, Golding vividly describes a scene where Simon is attacked and killed by an onslaught of boys. Golding establishes the scene by describing the boys having another mock pig fight. "A circling movement" develops and Roger becomes the hunted miming the "terror of the pig." The circle is beginning to be described by Golding as a "stamp of a single organism" then the ring of boys becomes "a horseshoe" that Simon enters. Returning to the tribe of boys with news of what they think is the beast, Simon frightens the boys and falls into "the mouth of the new circle" and is attacked by the "tearing of teeth and claws.".
The death of Simon is only one example of the evil present on the island. Golding also uses the symbolic meanings of objects on the island and how they are equivalent to the evil that begins with one, and flows into the populace of boys. The two-headed spear is a perfect example of one of the many symbols that is used throughout the novel to represent the savagery of the boys. The reader is first introduced to this malice contraption after the pig hunt and Roger is told by Jack to "sharpen a stick at both ends.
