Commentaire Texte Lord of the Flies par William Golding

How does Golding make the contrasts between Ralph and Piggy very apparent in the opening pages ?

In the opening pages, Golding makes many very apparent contrasts between Ralph and Piggy, both physical and mental. After the lagoon and the forest is described to the reader, Piggy is described as having a ‘’Deep, pink, « V » on the bridge’’. A mark in the shape of a V on your forehead is something looked down on by society. With this description, Golding is already showing us that Piggy isn’t the most handsome boy on the island :On the contrary, he is one of the less physically appealing characters on the island, and the reader will see that this has a considerable impact on him throughout the book. Ralph, on the other hand, is in some ways an opposite of Ralph, as he is referred to as the ‘’Fair boy’’ and describes him as having ‘’lost the prominent tummy of childhood’’ and then goes on to compare his body to one of a boxer’s : He shows us that Ralph is handsome, and physically mature : He has ideal body that is looked up upon in society, and this also has an impact on what happens throughout the rest of the novel, but also for the reader, as we can automatically deduce that he will be an important figure following the meet-up with the other boys on the island. Another contrast Golding makes throughout the first few pages in the book is a few examples, especially in the dialogs, of the socio-economic background of the two boys. For example, as Ralph is playing with the sand and admiring the water, Ralph says excuses himself by saying ‘’I’m sorry I been such a time. Them fruit…’’. Ralph uses words such as ‘’them ‘’ to refer to fruits and uses ‘’I’’ instead of ‘’I’ve’’. This is all that suffices for us to see that Piggy probably has a less fortunate and poorer background, as his English is not as good as the other boys’s, another reason he is looked down upon by the others. On the other hand, Ralph’s English is perfectly normal, as we see when he says that the pilot ‘’Must have flown off after he dropped us’’. As the readers can see, there are many indirect hints left for us by Golding in the first few pages, enough for us to get a rough idea of the hierarchy of these two characters, and which one of them will prevail, as this will definitely not be a society where the people are in equilibrium of one another.

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