In William Golding's Lord of the Flies: Why are the following considered symbols: conch, Piggy, Jack, the island? Explain.

William Golding's novel, Lord of the
Flies, has been approached critically in differing ways.  One such way is the
psychoanalytical approach, particularly that of Sigmund Freud. According to Freud, gods
and devils are basically human processes projected onto the human world.  Thus,
according to critic Claire Rosenfield, Ralph represents a projection of man's good
impulses, from which people derive authority figures, and Jack, on the contrary,
represents the evil, instinctual forces of the
unconscious.

Working with this dichotomy, Piggy, who is
associated with Ralph represents the rational side of man, the mature man of society who
has an acceptance of rules and order.  As such, he looks older with his thinning hair,
myopic eyes that need glasses, and heavy body.  It is Piggy who suggests using the conch
to call the boys to order when they need to meet and discuss important
issues: 

How
can you expect to be rescued if you don't put first things first and act
proper? 

The conch is much
like the gavel that is used by judges who call the court to order.  Near the end of
Golding's narrative, the conch crashes against the rock, "that token of preposterous
time," symbolizing the end of an societal order on the island.  Also, according to
Rosenfield, Piggy, a father figure, is also a symbol of the degeneration of boys from
adults to animalistic savages when he, too, is dashed against the large, sharp rocks and
the conch

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exploded into a thousand white fragments and
ceased to exist....Piggy fell forty feet....Then the sea breathed again in a long, slow
sigh, the water boiled white and pink over the rock; and when it went, sucking back
again, the body of Piggy was
gone.

Because Golding based
his narrative upon the Victorian novel, Coral Island, in which boys
were stranded on an island, but were able to fight the natives there and be victorious
over savagery, the island is used in Lord of the Flies without any
natives to represent a type of Garden of Eden so that Golding can demonstrate that man,
on his own, releases his savage impulses when the controls of society are not present;
and, these savage impulses symbolized in the character of Jack, and his sadistic
counterpart, Roger, "who carried death in his hands."