Chapter #8: What is represented metaphorically through

the killing of the sow in Chapter 8: "Gift for the Darkness"?

The killing of the sow represents the boys' loss of innocence in the land and their desperation without a mother figure.

Explanation:

William Golding's Lord of the Flies is a story about a group of young boys stranded on an island after their plane crashed. Their life on the island and their gradual loss of order and civilization is shown in the story.

Chapter 8: Gift for the Darkness reveals the boys' killing of the sow and the piglets. Under the leadership of Jack, the group of boys killed the pigs and put her head on a stick. This act of beheading the sow is representative of the group's loss of innocence in being motherless in a deserted land. The sow's death is the missing mother figure in the young boys' lives. The sow and her young piglets are representative of the innocence of nature. And when they are murdered, the innocence was lost.