A literary device used in the novel "Lord of the Flies" is allegory. The characters and setting that feature in the novel are used by the author, William Golding, to represent the universal theme of the conflict between civilization and savagery.
The author uses the boys' predicament to examine how circumstances influence human instinct and man’s capacity to do good and bad.
The island the boys find themselves on can be seen as a microcosm of the wider world, and the ideologies they adopt in order to survive as representing political systems or philosophical and religious points of view.
The allegory ends with the boys' rescue and return to civilization.
