Lord of the Flies
1
6.6
- noun
- Literature
:
El Señor de las Moscas
- Upstairs, I found a copy of Lord of the Flies and felt mature to be reading it at age ten, judging the characters to be realistic, as opposed to the usual adult view of children as harmlessly blissful.
It's very sentimental, but it's the real Lord of the Flies.
- It's very sentimental, but it's the real Lord of the Flies.
Examples
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Throughout my literature class, we discussed how Lord of the Flies illustrates the breakdown of order in society.
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The kids of Springfield Elementary are trapped on an island after a bus crash and live like the kids in the novel, Lord of the Flies.
Blog text (24) -
I enjoyed the Lord of the Flies subtext.
Blog text (20) -
All the "Lord of the Flies" references had a big Purgatory vibe to me.
Blog text (20) -
In school, Eve is studying both the Book of Genesis and William Golding's Lord of the Flies, the latter serving as an extended metaphor.
Academic text (2013) -
She is, in some ways, Eve's antagonist, playing The Lord of the Flies' Jack to Eve's Ralph; and Eve has clearly thought of her, that "everything you're saying is a lie" (73).
Academic text (2013) -
Many themes of societal collapse and chaos are explored in William Golding's Lord of the Flies.
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The conflict among the boys in Lord of the Flies symbolizes the inherent savagery of human nature.
Surface Forms
Morphology
Although the phrase can be literally parsed as 'a lord' + 'of' + 'the' + 'flies', its intended meaning is a literary and cultural reference (title of Golding's novel and an emblem of chaos, savagery, and a Biblical allusion) that cannot be inferred from the constituent words by a B1 learner. Understanding this use requires background knowledge of the book or cultural references, so the meaning is not derivable from the parts.
Etymology
Lord of the Flies comes from William Golding's novel, where boys stuck on an island become violent and set up a pig's head called the 'Lord of the Flies' that is covered in flies. So today Lord of the Flies means 'chaos', 'savagery', or a situation where rules and order break down.