Jeff Scudder
Honors English
Period E
Lord of the Flies Character Essay

The characters in Golding's Lord of the Flies consisted of several boys stranded on an island. Using this situation, Golding was able to make each character symbolize somehing in his book. Each character in the book stands for something, especially the main characters, who are Ralph, Piggy, Roger, Simon, and Jack.
	Ralph is the leader of the boys. When the boys' plane crashes on the island, and all the characters don't know what to do, Ralph comes forward as their leader. When they have an election Ralph becomes their official leader. In the novel, Ralph symbolizes hope, and the last link the boys have to civilization. Ralph makes the rules of the island, which the boys must follow, in their small island society. The most important reason why Ralph symbolizes hope is because his number one rule is that a fire should always be going on the island. Ralph will do anything to keep the fire and the smoke signals going, in hope that a ship rescues them.
	The next character, Piggy, is a logical and smart boy. He is fat, and at the beginning of the book all the kids call him a "momma's boy". Piggy symbolizes logic and science. He is an optimist who always finds a way around an obstacle the boys must face. He gets made fun of an awful lot, because of his asthma, and his weight. But towards the end of the story he begins to earn respect, and he becomes braver. Piggy is killed on the island by an evil character named Roger.
	Roger, represents pure evil. He is a boy who is always putting bad ideas into people's heads, especially Jack's. He makes fun of, and  he once threw rocks at littluns. He hates Piggy and Ralph. When Jack goes off to make his own tribe, Roger is his co-leader. Part of the reason why Jack seems so mean and evil is because Roger is trying to get Jack to act on the bad ideas that he tells him. At the point where Roger rolls the boulder down the hill at Castle Rock in order to kill Piggy, he is looked upon as pure evil.
	On the contrary, Simon represents good. He never makes fun of any kids on the island, and he is always a big help to everyone. He helps Ralph with the shelters, and he always does what Ralph asks of him. Simon sometimes has conversations with The Lord of the Flies, which is really a pig's head impaled on a stick. The Pig's head represents the devil. When the boys on accident kill Simon, it is a tragedy. His own people killed him and all he wanted to do was help out.
	The last main character, Jack, symbolizes savagery. He is a hunter who leads a hunting tribe on the island. He eventually does away with Ralph's rules and goes off to make his own tribe, called by the author as simply, the savages. Jack sometimes seems evil because of having Roger as his company. But he is not pure evil at all. He represents the opposite of the civilized world, which is the world of savages.	In Lord of the Flies the characters were developed to portray a certain symbol. Through these characters, the reader learns alot from the novel. Golding put so much symbolism in his book so that it could be looked at and pondered for ages, and he did a good job of it.