The Effects

On the first page of the first chapter in Lord of the Flies, William Golding mentions that Piggy wears specs. I think he mentions this because the specs become a very important prop in the book. First off, they let Piggy see so he isn’t blind. Second, they make all the fire and the fire is really important. It gives heat, warms up food and makes smoke signals. It can also be very dangerous, especially in the hand of a wrong person who is not afraid of using it too its full ability. You would think that the specs wouldn’t be any use for anything bad but they really can be. Just like any other object or more importantly, a human. They could seem really harmless at first but once you get to know who they are and what they are truly like they could be really dangerous, especially when dangerous measures are involved. Leaving us with a theme, be careful who you trust, they may not always seem to be who they really are.

I think another important decision William Golding makes is when he tells us in the first paragraph that Ralph is dragging his “school sweater”. I think it’s important because he is letting us know that the main character is young and so will the rest of them be. With deciding to make the characters young you are already developing natural problems, like being naive, or not being very smart, and getting spooked too easily and being very easy to influence. And one of the most important problems is that they probably don't like to be away from their parents for a long time. On top of all these problems they have the issue where they are all stranded on an island and that there are bullies and selfish kids, which then makes even more problems. It seems that when you are in a problem its gonna be hard to get out of it without digging yourself farther in first.