In the book ‘Lord of the Flies’ by William Golding, a book about a group of school children stranded on a tropical island after their plane crashed and is set during a time of war. Lord of the Flies has a lot of underlying themes like the struggle of power, savagery and the civilisation of today. Although the means of conveying this message was represented in multiple different ways, one interesting way that they were portrayed was through the use of objects. One object that displayed these themes in a way was a conch.

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The conch was one of the first discoveries in the book found by two of the main characters, Piggy and Ralph, and quickly established itself to be something of significance and is used to symbolise order and civilisation. When it was found by Ralph, he blew into it to round up kids from around the island. This may not matter much but its later use is important as it is used to control conversations. “And another thing. We can’t have everybody talking at once. We’ll have to have ‘hands up’ like at school” Here, Ralph identifies a problem that it’s too disharmonious and that there needs to be order which is then where someone butts in and says “Then I’ll give them the conch”. The holder of the conch has to be given full attention and only them can speak whilst in possession of the conch to make order between.

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Ideas: talk about it being crushed by the rock Symbolic to represent the discord, order and broken unity between the group