Lord of the Flies by William Golding, Passage 3 (page

     A nearer cry stood him on his feet and immediately he was away again, running fast among thorns and brambles. Suddenly he blundered into the open, found himself again in that open space—and there was the fathom-wide grin of the skull, no longer ridiculing a deep blue patch of sky but jeering up into a blanket of smoke.

     It is only mentioned briefly in this passage, but this was the point when I realized what the pig skull symbolized. Here's a quick back story to get you caught up: The boys thought there was some kind of island beast, so they killed a pig and put its head on a stick as an offering to the beast. It attracted a lot of flies, so it was called the "Lord of the Flies." I wondered for a long time why Golding would decide to name the book after such an unimportant character (if you can even call it that).
     When I read this passage, I saw that the pig was jeering at the smoke from the fire that covered most of the island. I realized that it represented the decline into insanity that the island had brought to the boys. When they came to the island, they were a bunch of well-mannered kids, but after a while, they become savage killers. In this way, the skull's jeering sums up everything that happens in the book.