The Lord of the Flies

The Lord Of The Flies ends with the rescue of the school boys from the island when the British navy sights the fire meant to smoke out Ralph. At first sight, this does look like a typical happy ending: the children are rescued before the “hero” is killed, and go back to civilisation... but if you think about it, this ending only serves to highlight the greater tragedy of what happened during their relatively short …

…civilisation. Summing up, William Golding has written this book as an allegory to pass on a message to readers, using the boys on a desert island, away from adults to see what is going on both within and out of civilisation. Therefore, I believe that the ending isn’t a simple “happy ending”, instead, it reinforces this message as can be seen in the main character’s reaction: “Ralph wept for the end of innocence”.