In the book The Lord of the Flies, the author uses the conch as a symbol of unity. At the beginning of the story, the conch was spotted by a boy named Ralph who did not know what it was, but the other boy named Piggy said that it was called a conch. Piggy had an idea to blow it to get other people on the island to come to them. After Ralph retrieved the conch from the lagoon Piggy showed Ralph how to blow it. His first couple of tries were weak, then he bellowed into it. The conch made a deep, harsh noise.
After a few blows, boys started to come out out of the jungle. The conch is what first united the stranded boys together. The author also used the conch as a sign of power, because after the boys were together they decided that they needed a chief so they chose Ralph because he used the conch to call the others to them. Ralph also used the power of the conch to quiet the boys. When he wanted their attention and for them to be quiet he would hold up the conch and wait for them to be quiet and pay attention. He also used it to call the boys back to camp.
In the beginning, the boys went out to look for water but by the time they found some Ralph had blown on the conch to call them back to camp. The conch was used by Ralph to call the boys to a meeting. During the meetings, a person could only speak if they raise their hand and hold up the conch. At the meeting to discuss the fire, Ralph blew on the conch to call them to the meeting. After everyone was seated Ralph lifted the conch for them to be silent then he began to explain that they were on an uninhabited island with no grownups so they would have to look after themselves.
That’s when Ralph made the rules about the conch at the meetings. He tried to boost their morale by making the island sound fun. In the book when Ralph notices that the conch has been practically bleached by the sun and had become a creamy-pink color. The author used the fading color of the conch to show that the boys were growing apart.
Because that’s when you really notice that Jack holds no regard for Ralphs’s rules and rather goes his own way. At the same meeting is when the little boy speaks out about a beast that Simon classist real and the beast is inside man himself. Jack insists that they need to hunt more, but Ralph doesn’t agree with him and instead, he said they needed to build shelters in case another storm came like the one they encountered upon their arrival. Ralph also said their first priority is to get rescued and to get rescued they needed more smoke. But Jack still insisted they needed to hunt more.
Jack’s defiance shows that he will soon go his own way. Near the end of the book when the conch is destroyed and Piggy is killed by a huge boulder that was rolled down a hill at the castle rock by Roger. After Jack and some other boys split off into their own tribe. They set up camp at a place they called Castel Rock. Piggy was upset that they had taken his glasses.
So Ralph and Piggy went to go and get them back. Ralph told Piggy to get the conch to take it with them as if he thought it still possessed power over Jacks’s tribe. When they got down there Ralph asked for Jack. When Jack came out Ralph told him to give Piggys glasses back.
After some arguing over the fire among other things, Roger started tossing rocks down at them from the top of the castle rock. Roger still had one hand on the lever that was wedged under the boulder while he was throwing the rocks. Then Roger, with a sense of delirious abandonment, leaned all his weight on the lever and the boulder went crashing down the hill. The rock struck Piggy with a hard blow from his chin to his knee.
The conch exploded into a million white fragments and ceased to exist. Piggy, without saying anything not even time for a grunt sailed through the air sideways of the big red boulder he fell forty feet and landed on his back on a square rock in the sea. His head was split and stuff was coming out, then the waves sucked him out into the sea. . When the conch exploded the author used this to show that there is no more order and that the boys were completely divided.
