The Significance of Using Symbolism in Literature: A Case Study of William Golding's Novel Lord of the Flies (1954)
No Thumbnail Available
Date
2020
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
UNIVERSITY OF ABBES LAGHROUR-KHENCHELA
Abstract
Abstract:
William Golding’s “Lord of the Flies” is a worthy symbolic novel; it is rich with symbols and signs that hold significant meanings. The aim of this study is to explore symbols that are used in the novel in terms of settings, characters, objects, and colors, and how Golding succeeded to convey the main theme of his novel through demonstrating its different meanings and interpretations.. The research is divided into two chapters. The first chapter is divided into two parts; the first one introduces a historical overview about the novel and contains the summary of the novel and its themes. The second part deals with the notion of symbolism and its major theories attributed to some scholars such as:Alfred North Whitehead, Susanne Langer, Sigmund Freud, andFerdinand de Saussure. De Saussure’s theory of semiotics is the one applied in this work. The second chapter deals with the analysis of the use of symbolism in the novel. By following the descriptive method, we came up to find that William Golding was successful in transmitting the idea, and clarifying the main theme of the novel, the fallen nature of man, using symbols. We also arrived to the point that symbolism used in Lord of the Flies is not only a decorative technique used by the writer to enrich the beauty of the novel, yet it has a clarifying function more than being decorative.