To fully understand an author's central theme, one must appreciate the symbols he uses and what the symbols represent. The symbols used by Nobel Prize winning author William Golding, in his novel Lord of the Flies, illustrates this need for comprehension. The characters in this novel, a group of school aged British boys, are stranded on a tropical utopia. Ralph, who is the chosen chief, tries to keep a sense of civilization alive with rules and responsibility; Piggy aids Ralph by being the voice of reason and knowledge. A split between the boys leads to Jack taking control and creating...
proper British society to complete savagery. Moreover, Piggy's glasses, which symbolized intelligence and technology, later through their gradual destruction became a symbol of corrupt power. The fire, which was so imperative to the boys' rescue slowly regressed and at the end became a symbol of the old rules. The conch, which once was a symbol of rules and authority, held no meaning at the end besides reminding the boys of how far they drifted from civilization. To conclude, the greater understanding a reader has of the symbols in a novel, the greater the impact of the author's central theme.