What is the weather like in Lord of the Flies?

In William Golding's Lord of the Flies, the characters are stranded on a tropical island. The weather is hot and humid, with periodic storms and torrential rainfall, as is typical of a tropical island. The sweltering heat is constant on the island, causing many of the boys to shed their clothes, as well as their senses of civility.

At several points in the novel, the weather reflects the events taking place and the emotions felt by the characters. For example, in the first chapter, Piggy tells Ralph that no one knows their location and they are likely to die on the island. In the next line, Golding writes,

With that word the heat seemed to increase till it became a threatening weight and the lagoon attacked them with a blinding effulgence.

The heat becomes more intense, mirroring the boys' anxiety, which also intensifies.

One of the best examples of weather reflecting emotion occurs in chapter nine. Simon wakes to find the clouds growing heavier, which suggests an oncoming storm and also foreshadows horrific events to come. He discovers that the monster they had all feared is actually a corpse enveloped in a parachute. He eagerly heads to Jack's feast to share this news with the others. As he heads to the party, the weather continues to worsen.

Meanwhile, at the party, Jack demands that his hunters perform a hunting dance. The dance and chanting are performed as thunder and lightning take over the sky:

The dark sky was shattered by a blue-white scar. An instant later the noise was on them like the blow of a gigantic whip. The chant rose a tone in agony.

The boys work themselves into an increasingly frenzied state. As the storm intensifies and becomes progressively threatening, the boys' wild, feral behavior also intensifies and becomes more threatening. The boys see Simon emerging from the woods. They take him for a beast and brutally beat and kill him. The storm breaks just as the boys kill Simon. The storm reaches its peak at the same moment the boys reach the apex of their ferocity:

Then the clouds opened and let down the rain like a waterfall.

In Lord of the Flies, William Golding uses imagery and symbolism in nature to reflect the behaviors of the boys who are stranded on the tropical island. The water surrounding the island is incredibly warm—it's described as bath-like—and the boys are constantly dealing with the oppressive heat of the climate. This incessant heat represents the hot, uncontrollable anger and authoritarian behavior that flows through some of the older boys, like Jack, as they navigate life and tenuous social structures on the island. The overwhelming heat appears to be inescapable and, in fact, seems to be growing hotter still, as the violence among the boys steadily intensifies and grows more and more deadly. Heat is often used as a symbol for overwhelming emotions and as a precursor for violence. We can see this in act 3, scene 1, of Romeo and Juliet, for example, when Benvolio and Mercutio comment on the scorching weather before getting into a duel with Tybalt.

In the novel 'Lord of the Flies' William Golding has the boys crash land on an exotic island on the other side of the world. All the way through we get references to luxuriant foliage, coconuts and sunshine so we can presume it is an island that has a fairly tropical climate. Here are some weather quotes from 'Lord of the Flies' that may help:

Sun:

Chapter 1

'Ralph sat on a fallen trunk, his left side to the sun.'

Chapter 3

'amid the roar of bees in the afternoon sunlight Simon found...the fruit they could not reach'

You might like to compare the image of the bees with the title and the very different image of buzzing insects that exists at the beginning of the novel and at the end. There are lots more images which may not refer to the weather but tell us about the climate the exotic plants are thriving in. (Buds,fruits)

The group of boys is being evacuated from England during a war. Their plane crash lands on a deserted tropical island. In chapter 1, Ralph and Piggy are discussing the crash and they first say they were shot down, but they also discuss the fact that there was a storm. In any case, the time of year is not given, or the season, but Piggy is wearing a windbreaker that he quickly takes off because of the intense heat he feels on the tropical island.

Since the island is in the tropics, it is always going to be hot, but usually tropical islands are even hotter in the summer months. In chapter one, Golding refers to "the intense heat" so we can infer that it is most likely not winter time in the tropics. The fact that Piggy is wearing a windbreaker and not a heavy coat might also indicate that it was spring or fall when the group left England. All of this is extrapolation, however. The only thing we know for sure is that it is a tropical island, and the boys go around wearing few clothes, so the temperature and weather is always tropical and warm. I don't believe we know for certain what the season is.

Lord of the Flies, by William Golding, is the story of an airplane full of English schoolboys which is shot down during World War II. The boys survive, though none of the adults do, and the story begins the morning after the plane deposits the boys on a tropical island; like most tropical islands, the weather on this island is generally very good. In fact, we have no specific evidence that it ever even rained during the time the boys spent on the island. 

We do know, however, that it is hot. The opening paragraph of the novel says the "jungle was a bath of heat." A short time later, Ralph takes his first real look across the shimmering water and sees the following scene:

Out there, perhaps a mile away, the white surf flinked [flashed and winked?]on a coral reef, and beyond that the open sea was dark blue. Within the irregular arc of coral the lagoon was still as a mountain lake--blue of all shades and shadowy green and purple. The beach between the palm terrace and the water was a thin stick, endless apparently, for to Ralph's left the perspectives of palm and beach and water drew to a point at infinity; and always, almost visible, was the heat.

Later we read that Ralph, in particular, is annoyed by the heat, salt, and sand which make his clothes scratchy and prompt him to tie his hair back.

In general, the island is beautiful and the weather is clear but hot. 

How would you describe the atmosphere and environment in Lord of the Flies?

The environment in "Lord of the Flies" shifts as the story progresses.  At the start of the story, the island is described in terms that portray a nearly idyllic place.  We learn right away that this is a lush tropical scene.  The only ugly spot, the spot that lets the reader know this won't be a "Swiss Family Robinson" type of tale, is the "scar".  We learn in the first pages that the two boys described first didn't know each other until this moment.  This creates some curiosity and hints to us that the boys aren't here out of choice.  Soon it becomes evident that a crash landing has occurred.  When Jack marches the choir boys into the scene and we see how he acts, we know that there is going to be trouble because Jack is a bully from the first.  He makes the boys march and wear their hot choir robes and hats even in the harsh tropical sun.  This sets up the conflict between Ralph and his idealogies and Jack and his opposing ideologies.  The island changes as the boys change becoming more and more sinister. The dead parachutist lands on the island creating the illusion of a physical beast.  The boys hunt and kill. Simon talks to the Lord of the Flies - the skull of a dead pig. By the time we get to the end of the story, the island that we saw at the beginning as being a tropical paradise has become a scene of much death and a raging inferno. 

How would you describe the atmosphere in Lord of the Flies?

Golding's island, I would have said, is presented as a natural paradise, with extreme weather conditions, but, most significantly of all, it is regularly seen through the eyes of the boys themselves as something ominous, and rather threatening.

Early on in Chapter 1, Golding sets up the oppressive heat of the jungle:

...the jungle was a bath of heat. He was clambering heavily among the creepers and broken trunks when a bird, a vision of red and yellow, flashed upwards with a witch-like cry; and this cry was echoed by another.

"Witch-like cry", I always think, is a simile which must be meant to be heard through Ralph's ears: he is the one who makes the comparison in his head to a witch. And it has a sort of ominous, horror-movie energy about it which lays the ground for the beast to come later on.

The island, with its pink rocks, its candle-buds, and its deep lagoons is a place of magic. But there's also a sense that that magic can have some bite, some danger to it:

Some act of God— a typhoon perhaps, or the storm that had accompanied his own arrival— had banked sand inside the lagoon so that there was a long, deep pool...  The water was warmer than his blood...

It's a glorious warm pool, like a hot bath. Yet the way it is presented draws our attention to its origins in a scary storm, and makes an odd comparison between water and blood. And that sense of beauty tinged with danger is, I would say, the novel's atmosphere.