LOTF Quotes

Question 1

Civilisation

Answer 1

• “I got the conch!”
• “Hands up like at school”
• “Round the squatting child there was the protection of parents and school and policemen and the law”
• “He held the shell up instead and showed it to them and they understood”
• Piggy “cradled” the conch
• “Piggy glanced nervously into hell and cradled the conch”

Question 2

Deterioration of Civilisation + Democracy / spiral into savagery

Answer 2

• “We don’t need the conch anymore!”
• “clothes worn away”
• “exploded into a thousand white fragments”
• “Piggy glanced nervously into hell and cradled the conch”
• “Bollocks to the rules!”

Question 3

Wisdom + Knowledge

Answer 3

• “You’ll get back all right”
• Piggy’s specs symbolise knowledge
• “Piggy’s glasses flew off”
• “remaining lens”
• “Give me my specs!”
• Simon’s clairvoyance

Question 4

“Man’s inherent evil”

Challenging Golding’s initial idea of “the perfectibility of man”

Answer 4

• “Fancy thinking the beast was something you could kill”
• “I am part of you”
• “Maybe it’s only us”
• “the protection of parents and school” — conditioned/taught civilisation and morals — not present in man’s natural form