Return to Sender Literary Elements

by Julia Alvarez

Return to Sender Literary Elements

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Genre: Allegory, adventure

Setting (include time and place) and Context: Present time on a deserted tropical island

Narrator and Point of View: An anonymous third-person narrator who is omniscient and provides access to the characters’ inner thoughts.

Tone and Mood: Frightening, violent, tragic, unsettling

Protagonist and Antagonist: Ralph is the protagonist who tries to build and uphold civilization, Jack is the antagonist who destroys and wreaks havoc and chaos.

Major Conflict: The stranded boys devolve into two groups, one of which tries to preserve civilized rules and behaviors, while the other becomes barbaric and savage.

Climax: Simon realizes that the Lord of the Flies is not a physical entity, but rather something each boy has within him. When he approaches the other boys with his realization, they kill him.

Foreshadowing: Piggy’s death is foreshadowed by the boulders rolling off the Castle Rock in Chapter 6.

Understatement: The Lord of the Flies promises Simon he will have “fun” with him. This ultimately foreshadows Simon’s death but also understates the violence about to ensue.

Allusions: One of the major points of debate between critics who have studied Lord of the Flies is the significance of the substantial number of allusions to Judeo-Christian mythology. While many scholars have argued that these references qualify the novel as biblical allegory, others have suggested that the novel’s allusions to the Old and New Testaments turn out to be ironic and thus criticize religion. A careful reading of Lord of the Flies should take into account not only the abundance of biblical images and themes in the text, but also the ways in which religion and religious themes are used.

In particular, the biblical account of good and evil is invoked-but the account in the novel is not quite the same. Take, for instance, the narrative of Eden. The early chapters of the novel, the island itself resembles the Garden of Eden from Genesis, with its picturesque scenery, abundant fruit, and idyllic weather. Accordingly, the boys are symbolically linked to Adam and Eve before the fall. Ralph’s first act after the plane crash is to remove his clothes and bathe in the water, a gesture that recalls the nudity of the innocent Adam and Eve and the act of baptism, a Christian rite which, by some accounts, renews in the sinner a state of grace. Naming also becomes important in Genesis, reflected in the novel as the boys give their names. Golding extends the Edenic allusion when he presents the contentment of island life as soon corrupted by fear, a moment that is first signified by reports of a creature the boys refer to as “snake-thing.” The “snake-thing” recalls the presence of Satan in the Garden of Eden, who disguised himself as a serpent. But unlike Adam and Eve, the boys are mistaken about the creature, which is not a force external (like Satan) but a projection of the evil impulses that are innate within themselves and the human psyche. Still, it is the boys’ failure to recognize the danger of the evil within themselves that propels them deeply into a state of savagery and violence. They continue to externalize it as a beast (again “Lord of the Flies” and “the Beast” are used in religion to refer to Satan), but they become more and more irrational in their perception of it, and they end up developing alternative religious ideas about the Beast and what it wants and does. Although Satan in the Genesis account also has been read as a reflection of evil within human nature, readers usually consider Satan an external force. Original sin enters human nature because of Satan. Without a real Satan in the novel, however, Golding stresses the ways that this Eden is already fallen; for these boys, evil already is within them waiting to be discovered.

On the positive side, Simon’s story is that of a prophet or of Jesus Christ. Simon is deeply spiritual, compassionate, non-violent, and in harmony with the natural world. Like many biblical prophets and like Jesus, he is ostracized and ridiculed as an “outsider” for what the others perceive as his “queer” or unorthodox behavior. Critics also have noted that Simon’s confrontation with The Lord of the Flies resembles Christ’s conversation with the devil during his forty days in the wilderness as described in the New Testament gospels, and critics have noted parallels between Simon’s murder and Christ’s sacrifice on the cross. But Simon’s revelation is more of a debunking and a turn to the secular, rather than a prophetic condemnation of evil or a call to the higher things. His revelation is that the beast does not exist but is just a dead human.

Imagery: Jack’s authority over the other boys becomes increasingly disturbing and dangerous in Chapter 9. When Ralph finds Jack, he is painted and garlanded, sitting on a log like an idol. This distinctly pagan image is at odds with the ordered society from which Jack came and is the final manifestation of his rejection of civilization.

Paradox: The boy’s relationship with the beast is a paradox. The boys believe the Beast is “out there” when in reality it is inside them. By fighting the “out there” Beast, they are increasing the strength of the Beast within themselves.

Parallelism: In chapter 9 of Lord of the Flies, Golding draws a deliberate parallel between Jack and Kurtz in order to emphasize the extent of Jack’s power over the other boys and to call the reader’s attention to the severity of the tension between Ralph and Jack which, like the tension between Marlow and Kurtz, is strongly ideological (Marlow and Ralph representing civilization, and Jack and Kurtz representing savagery). This tension eventually leads to violent conflict.

Metonymy and Synecdoche: In Their Eyes Were Watching God, Zora Neale Hurston uses metonymy several times in order to express motifs which appear throughout the novel. For instance, one of the clearest examples of metonymy, the porch, appears as a whole or general entity, which Hurston uses to describe specific elements of Janie’s experience, in this case, the people, or particularly, the men. The porch represents a community, a cooperative body of people. At the end of the day, Hurston notes, the porch serves as a place to relax for the black people, after, “Mules and other brutes had occupied their skins” (1). Here, people gather to socialize, becoming one body, an example of metonymy.

Most importantly, the porch acts as a gathering place for Eatonville’s men to engage in discussions and forums. For example, Hurston states, “The porch was boiling now. Starks left the store to Hezekiah Potts, the delivery boy, and come took a seat in his high chair” (66). This quotation shows the conformist nature of the black men of Janie’s community. Instead of describing how Lige Moss, Sam Watson, or others boiled, Hurston depicts them as a collective body where all share the same ignorant sentiments and views and find themselves unwilling to profess a different set of opinions. They boil, laugh, and cry at the same time for the same reasons. The “boiling” does not apply to Jody’s porch itself, but the men which occupy and define it. Plus, this example shows that Jody’s porch holds a central role in the community and reinforces his role as the leader the one who sits in the “high chair.”

Personification: In Chapter 8, “The circle shivered with dread.