"ParadiseLost..." (Commentonthesettingofthenovel "LordoftheFlies")
The setting in the novel ‘L’, is a symbol. Is the beginning of the novel the boys are put into a really paradise place: they have enough food fresh water; there are no dangerous animals. This world is so harmonious and beautiful, that is reminds us that lines of Bible where is described that garden of Edem where the first people were set.
But from the first pages of the novel we see how the people destroy that paradise by their own hands, by their unconsidered actions, by their uncontrollable ambitions; from the first fire to the last apocalyptic fire, when the whole island is destroyed.
As far as children do harm to the nature of the island, we can see the degradation of their socium: the first fire on the island marbles the appearing of hostility between the 2 leaders; the beginning of hunting makes the appearing of extra needs (unnecessary) and forgetting of the global aim-returning home. The first killed pig shows the possibility of killing.
What about the description of the landscape- in the first chapters we see a peaceful and safe picture: the lagoon, the palms, the beach. But the far the children live there the more dangerous does it seem to them, and the descriptions of their become more and more fearful, in the last chapter in the scene of the final hunting, the world of island is unfriendly, unsafe, unable to protect.
The scene of the final fire of the forest involuntarily reminds the first day on the island, and the contrast between the purity and harmony of the first day, when the fire was caused by carelessness, and the fire of the last day, when the island is still able to be inhabited but is completely destroyed by the people’s will, that contrast is shocking. And the tears in the final lines of the novel are in some meaning weeped for the last paradise, for that beautiful, peaceful and harmonious world where the man could live but which suffers and dies with people and through the people’s fault.