There are several possible meanings of the boys killing a sow. The first is that they are killing the thing that brings life, in a sense killing their connection to their parents and the world that they used to exist in. The fact that they stumble upon the sow while she is feeding her piglets and still decide to kill her is also an indication of their descent into savagery. This tendency towards brutal violence is emphasized during the final killing when Roger stabs his spear directly into the sow’s anus and the other boys find it “uproariously” funny.
This idea of violence against the symbol of a parent is also important as Golding tries to demonstrate his theory about how boys (or humans in general) would behave without the trappings of civilization to hold them back.
No comments:
Post a Comment