The Lord of the Flies: A Complex Web of Symbolism “The whole book is symbolic in nature except the rescue in the end where adult life appears, dignified and capable, but in reality enmeshed in the same evil as the symbolic life of the children on the island.” William Golding summed up the complex novel he had written not as a simple adventure story, but as a complex web of symbolism. The Lord of the Flies mirrored the world as it was in the 1950’s, a world where uncertainty was common and conflict was widespread. In his book, the symbols that Golding used can easily be i