Lord of the Flies : Title

The title is said to be a reference to the Hebrew name Beelzebub ("god of the fly", "host of the fly" or
literally "Lord of Flies"), a name sometimes used as a synonym for Satan. Beelzebub was next only to
Satan ‘in power and next in crime’ (Paradise Lost BK1, 179). It may also be a reference to a line from
King Lear - "As flies to wanton boys, are we to the gods, — They kill us for their sport". (King Lear Act
IV, Scene 1) In Doctor Faustus Lucifer introduces Beelzebub to Faustus as ‘my companion prince in
Hell’. So Beelzebub, the lord of the flies, is evil incarnate. Golding chooses the nickname of a notorious
false god as the title of his novel because the novel demonstrates the innate propensity to evil in children
who have been traditionally supposed to represent seraphic innocence.

The name is a Biblical reference. Christ comes upon a man possessed by the devil, and Jesus asks the
man his name. The devil, inside the man, speaks through his voice, "My name is Beelzebub, Lord of the
Flies," and when Jesus asks, "How many are you?", the demon replies, "I am legion" -- there are
hundreds of demons in here. 

The Lord of the Flies is the bloody, severed sow’s head that Jack impales on a stake in the forest glade as
an offering to the beast. This complicated symbol becomes the most important image in the novel when
Simon confronts the sow’s head in the glade and it seems to speak to him, telling him that evil lies within
every human heart and promising to have some “fun” with him. ... the Lord of the Flies recalls the devil,
just as Simon recalls Jesus. In fact, the name “Lord of the Flies” is a literal translation of the name of the
biblical name Beelzebub, a powerful demon in hell sometimes thought to be the devil himself.

In the story the panic and decay that takes place is symbolized by this pig's head. In its "talk" with Simon
it explains what the Beast really is:

“Fancy thinking the Beast was something you could hunt and kill!” said the head…. “You knew,
didn’t you? I’m part of you?”… “This is ridiculous. You know perfectly well you’ll only meet me
down there—so don’t try to escape!”

With this hallucinatory revelation the novelist endows Simon the knowledge that ‘the beast’ lies within
the self. The degenerated children, who are decayed and decomposed, just like the dead body of the pilot,
embody the beast within. Eventually Simon, the quester starts down the mountain to share his knowledge
with the other boys but meets beasts of the boys, as promised by the beast itself and gets cut, ripped off as
a sacrifice in their celebration. He is like Cassandra, the ineffective seer, as nobody pays heed to his
voice. He is the Christ figure who sacrifices himself for the sake of others. Golding himself writes,
‘Simon’s death was the re-enacting of the crucifixion of Jesus Christ. Simon was originally in my version
a much more overtly sanctified victim. I made him a Christ figure.’

Lord of the Flies is deliberately modeled after R. M. Ballantyne's 1857 novel The Coral Island. In this
story, a group of English boys are shipwrecked on a tropical island. They work hard together to save
themselves. The only evil in the book is external and is personified by a tribe of cannibals that live on the
island. The book offers a Victorian view of the world: through hard work and earnestness, one can
overcome any hardship.

By giving his characters the same names as those in Ballantyne's book and by making direct reference
to The Coral Island in the text of Lord of the Flies, Golding clearly wants readers to see his book as a
response to the Victorian world view. Golding's view is a much bleaker one: the evil on the island is
internal, not external. At the end of the book, the adult naval officer who invokes The Coral
Island almost serves as Ballantyne's voice: "I should have thought that a pack of British boys — you're
all British, aren't you? —would have been able to put up a better show than that." Golding's
understanding of the world, colored by his own experiences in World War II, is better represented by
Ralph's weeping "for the end of innocence, the darkness of man's heart, and the fall through the air of the
true, wise friend called Piggy."

Initially, critics commented less on the novel as a work of art than on its political, religious, and
psychological symbolism. For example, James Stern in a 1955 review for The New York Times Book
Review wrote "Lord of the Flies is an allegory on human society today, the novel's primary implication
being that what we have come to call civilization is at best no more than skin deep."

Namesake of the novel, the Lord of the Flies is literally a pig's head that has been cut off by Jack, put on
a stick sharpened at both ends, stuck in the ground, and offered to the "beast". Created out of fear, the
Lord of the Flies used to be a mother sow which, though once clean, loving, and innocent, has now
become a manically smiling, bleeding last image of evil. This transformation clearly represents the
transformation that Jack and the boys have undergone during their time in the island. In addition, the
name "Lord of the Flies" is the literal English translation of Beelzebub, a demonic figure that is often
considered synonymous with Satan.

Lord of the Flies is actually related to a poem written by William Butler Yeats, called The Second
Coming:

And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,

Thus, the Lord of the Flies is a physical manifestation of the evil that is in the boys, and the evil that
Golding believed exists in all of us. The theme of this story is an attempt to trace the defects of society to
the defects of human nature. The degeneration in the modern world where there is war, corruption,
hypocrisy and hatred everywhere gets voice in the novel in an unexpected and different manner. The
innate propensity to evil in children who have been traditionally supposed to represent seraphic
innocence, is shown to be a false notion. Even the savior in the very end is a representation of the war-
torn earth, a naval officer who comes in a war-cruise and is equipped and ready to go for war anytime.

“Golding’s Lord of the Flies is not the biblical Satan who tempts Christ nor the Miltonic counterpart who
speaks in glorious rhetoric. Rather it is a pig’s head—evil reduced to one of its vilest incarnations.
Golding will have nothing to do with a suave Mephistopheles or a honey—tongued Lucifer; his Devil is
more in keeping with Dorian Gray’s decaying portrait because it abandons rhetorical finery for the stark
reality of spiritual corruption. The Lord of the Flies was correct: the beast is in man; and, when it
expresses itself, it is in the form of a rotting self-portrait.” (William Golding by Bernard F. Dick)

Ayan Mukherjee 12.01 p.m 24/07/2010