Lord of the Flies is a classic work of literature published in 1954 which won the Nobel Prize and was written by William Golding. Lord of the Flies focuses on human nature and the conflict between instinctive violence and reasoned thinking, earning it its great reputation and making it a fantastic book to read for everyone.
Lord of the Flies takes place amidst a war (in this alternative history, the war probably occurred after WWII, and was very intense, seeing that nuclear bombs were used). Some children escaped from Britain on a plane, but the plane was struck down by enemy aircraft and landed on a deserted island. The book begins with a fat boy (who was intelligent and wore spectacles, though suffering quite severely from asthma) talking to someone with fair hair. The boy with fair hair was named Ralph, while the fat boy never explicitly gave out his name in the book. He tells Ralph that he doesn’t care what people call him, so long as they didn't imitate the behavior of his previous classmates. Ralph asks him what he was called before, and the fat boy confesses it was “Piggy.” Ralph, hearing this, bursts into laughter and starts shouting the name repeatedly. Piggy is extremely bothered by this, though he still remains calm. The setting consists of an island which was quite beautiful, though it was somewhat daunting as well. In Golding’s original words, “The shore was fledged with palm trees … a hundred feet up in the air. The ground beneath them was a bank covered with coarse grass, torn everywhere by the upheavals of fallen trees, scattered with decaying coconuts and palm saplings. Behind this was the darkness of the forest proper and the open space of the scar. Ralph stood, one hand against a grey trunk … Out there, perhaps a mile away, the white surf flinked 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 … always, almost visible, was the heat.” To clarify, the “scar” mentioned in the passage was the space carved into the forest by the falling plane: this can be read as illustrating humanity’s detrimental impact on the environment. Golding then illustrates that Ralph (like many of the others boys) was in between childhood and adolescence. A further contrast is made between Ralph and Piggy: Golding illustrates that Piggy was envious of Ralph’s body. To elaborate, Piggy tells Paul that he can’t swim because of his asthma, and that his father died previously (Ralph’s father is supposedly still alive, and is also a naval commander), and that something happened to his mother, which caused him to have to live with his aunt who owned a candy store. Piggy then starts to panic, saying that the atomic bomb which was used in Britain probably killed a vast amount of people, causing no one to know of their existence. Piggy then determines that they probably are on an island, and that they should find the other boys. Piggy and Ralph come across a conch shell that was devoid of its mollusk, and Ralph blows it, summoning the surviving boys to gather around him. There were quite a few of them, and their age range was quite diverse, seeing that some were very young children while others were on the verge of adolescence.
Jack is then introduced: he’s one of the older boys and was the head of his school’s choir. Interestingly, he and his followers were dressed in black: “Their bodies, from throat to ankle, were hidden by black cloaks which bore a long silver cross on the left breast and each neck was finished off with a ham-bone frill.” Jack quickly demonstrates that he commands respect (or more accurately, fear) from the other members of the choir, seen in how he could silence them effectively. One of the first things all the boys do is to harass Piggy: as they introduced their names, someone called Piggy “Fatty.” Ralph then corrected the statement, saying that “Fatty” should be called “Piggy.” When people finally stopped laughing, it was quickly decided that a chief should be elected. Ralph and Jack nominated themselves as potential candidates. Jack says that he should be the chief since he can sing C sharp and that he is the head of the chorus. Ralph, however, was remarkably elected to the position of chief: no one could have predicted beforehand he would win the election. That is, “Jack started to protest but the clamor changed from the general wish for a chief to an election by acclaim of Ralph himself. None of the boys could have found good reason for this; what intelligence had been shown was traceable to Piggy while the most obvious leader was Jack. But there was a stillness about Ralph as he sat that marked him out: there was his size, and attractive appearance; and most obscurely, yet most powerfully, there was the conch.” When Ralph was elected, Jack was deeply embarrassed. Ralph, in an attempt to make up to Jack, offered him control of his own group. Jack says that he wants to control the choir, though he wants to change their name to “hunters.” After announcing that they will be hunters, the choir boys take off their cloaks and await further instruction. Ralph says that they need to know the geography of the island: he, Jack, and Simon will go navigate the island and come back with the news. Piggy confronts Ralph, telling him that he betrayed his trust. Ralph, genuinely remorseful, is able to remain the leader at the same time by telling Piggy that the name was better than Fatty. He then orders him to take a census by recording the names, and Piggy obeys. Jack, Ralph, and Simon proceed on their journey, and while they explore the island, they succeed in pushing a rock off the cliff. They eventually find the coral reef, and find a place that could make a decent place to gather around: “There, where the island petered out in water, was another island; a rock, almost detached, standing like a fort, facing them across the green with one bold, pink bastion.”
The three of them eventually come across a pig. Jack took out his knife and prepared to strike the pig to kill and consume it, but hesitated out of fear of getting blood over his body. While his period of hesitation was brief, that single pause allowed the pig to escape. Jack, enraged and embarrassed, excused himself by saying that he was conflicted over where to stab it. To show his resolve, Jack “snatched his knife out of the sheath and slammed it into a tree trunk. Next time there would be no mercy. He looked round fiercely, daring them to contradict. Then they broke out into the sunlight and for a while they were busy finding and devouring food as they moved down the scar toward the platform and the meeting.” After reconvening with the others, Ralph informs them that they are indeed on the island. He then says that there needs to be a division of labor: the hunters can find food while the others can build shelters and keep a fire atop the mountain (to show passing airplanes and ships that there are people on the island). One of the children starts weeping and says that he saw a monster in the woods. While the others initially shook off his claims, they were still somewhat afraid. When the children made the fire, they continued to mistreat Piggy, snatching his glasses away from him unexpectedly to concentrate sunlight to start what could become an inferno. Piggy, angry, tried to talk some sense into the others, but then noticed that they had accidentally caused a forest fire that burned down a large portion of the forest. That is, “The flames, as though they were a kind of wild life, crept as a jaguar creeps on its belly toward a line of birch-like saplings that fledged an outcrop of the pink rock. They flapped at the first of the trees, and the branches grew a brief foliage of fire. The heart of flame leapt nimbly across the gap between the trees and then went swinging and flaring along the whole row of them. Beneath the capering boys a quarter of a mile square of forest was savage with smoke and flame. The separate noises of the fire merged into a drum-roll that seemed to shake the mountain.” Piggy becomes even angrier, telling the others that if they continue with their reckless behavior, they may starve to death: they largely rely on the fruit from the trees for nourishment. He continued to reprimand the others, demanding for a headcount to be done to make sure everyone was present. To everyone’s horror, one of the children (who had a mark on his face) was absent: most likely, he burned to death in the forest fire. Despite the death of one of their number, the group didn't mourn for long, as the others continued building huts while maintaining the fire. Piggy tellingly noted amid seeing the boys insult and verbally attack each other, “‘People don’t help much.’”
Later on, Simon’s character was developed when Golding shows that he’s a compassionate, kind person: he helped the small children (nicknamed littluns) reach the fruit of the trees which were beyond their reach. In Golding’s own words, “Flower and fruit grew together on the same tree and everywhere was the scent of ripeness and the booming of a million bees at pasture. Here the littluns who had run after him caught up with him. They talked, cried out unintelligibly, lugged him toward the trees. Then, amid the roar of bees in the afternoon sunlight, Simon found for them the fruit they could not reach, pulled off the choicest from up in the foliage, passed them back down to the endless, outstretched hands. When he had satisfied them he paused and looked round. The littluns watched him inscrutably over double handfuls of ripe fruit.” After helping the littluns get their food, Simon went into the forest and found a good place to sleep: a screen of leaves which hid very well in plain sight and required the person inside of it to use their hearing while putting their sight to the side. As the night arrived, the island became quite beautiful, as a fragrant scent came from white flowers and spread all around by riding the wind. Later on, Jack succeeds in applying paint to his face, which helped him become more prone to behavior he would have viewed as bad before. That is, when he saw that his face had been utterly transformed, he felt like he was a different person. He laughed and snarled: “Beside the pool his sinewy body held up a mask that drew their eyes and appalled them. He began to dance and his laughter became a bloodthirsty snarling. He capered toward Bill, and the mask was a thing on its own, behind which Jack hid, liberated from shame and self-consciousness. The face of red and white and black swung through the air and jigged toward Bill.” With his “mask,” Jack told the others that he wanted to hunt again amid cries for fresh meat. To make a bad situation (being stuck on the island, of course) even worse, at that exact moment a ship passed by the island without picking them up: the fire at the top of the mountain had gone out, as the boys responsible for keeping it lit (the hunters) were completely distracted the entire time. To specify, upon wearing war paint, they had followed a pig into the woods and slew it, chanting “‘Kill the pig. Cut her throat. Spill her blood.’” Even when they were accosted and berated by Ralph for getting rid of their only chance of rescue, they didn't care that much, for they continued to reenact the way in which they caught and killed the pig in a way that suggested they were utterly entranced by the power which they realized they had and could practice: the ability to decide life and death for some.
Even after being told of his failure, Jack remained proud, boasting that he himself slit the throat of the sow. Remembering the blood he had personally spilled, he laughed and shuddered. Piggy lost his composure and screamed in fury at Jack. Irritated, Jack grabbed his glasses and broke one of the lenses. Piggy complained of what Jack had done, only for Jack to continue to insult him by mimicking his voice. That night, they ate the pig. In another meeting, Ralph informs everyone that the only fires which should be allowed (for the sake of safety) will be on the mountain. He is yelled at by the hunters, but he overrides them. Jack then mentions that some of his hunters have seen “the beast” too, though he himself didn't see anything. One of the littluns, a boy named Phil, described in vivid detail that he saw the beast in the jungle. Another one of the littluns, Percival Wemys Madison, also claimed to have seen the beast, and began weeping immensely when he recollected his past (when he gave out his name, he also tried to recite his telephone number). Percival then claimed that the beast came from the ocean, and this causes fear to erupt, though the mood of hysteria was still controlled: a boy named Maurice recollected that his father told him that scientists haven’t found all the organisms in the oceans yet. Simon then tried to correct the delusion that the beast came from the water by telling them that the beast could be inside each of them: it represents the primal, brutal drive that is closely interconnected with fear and barbarism. In Golding’s own words, “Simon went on. ‘We could be sort of…’ Simon became inarticulate in his effort to express mankind’s essential illness. Inspiration came to him.” Simon, being unable to detail his hypothesis, was jeered at by the others, and the boys started to believe that the beast might be a ghost. Piggy loudly disagrees but is quickly booed into silence by the others, who told him that they didn't care about his opinion. Jack challenges Ralph’s authority, telling him that he has no special skills to ensure that he should be the chief. Ralph responds by trying to calm him down, invoking the importance of rules. Jack shrugs his advice off and states that if there is a beast, then he and his hunters will kill it. Ralph thinks of resigning, but Piggy tells him he mustn’t: if Jack becomes the leader, then they are likely to spend most of their time hunting and not trying to come up with a way to escape the island. Ralph heeds Piggy’s advice and decides to remain in his position for the time being.
One night, a parachutist landed on the island, lifeless. The body came down slowly, and his parachute snagged some trees, giving the corpse a menacing appearance (the parachute made his body look larger than it actually was). Golding tellingly details, “A sliver of moon rose over the horizon, hardly large enough to make a path of light even when it sat right down on the water … not even a faint popping came down from the battle fought at ten miles’ height. But a sign came down from the world of grown-ups, though at the time there was no child awake to read it. There was a sudden bright explosion and corkscrew trail across the sky; then darkness again and stars. There was a speck above the island, a figure dropping swiftly beneath a parachute, a figure that hung with dangling limbs … three miles up, the wind steadied and bore it in a descending curve round the sky and swept it in a great slant across the reef and the lagoon toward the mountain. The figure fell and crumpled among the blue flowers of the mountain-side … the parachute flopped and banged and pulled … Yard by yard, puff by puff, the breeze hauled the figure through the blue flowers, over the boulders and red stones, till it lay huddled among the shattered rocks of the mountain-top. Here the breeze was fitful and allowed the strings of the parachute to tangle and festoon; and the figure sat, its helmeted head between its knees, held by a complication of lines. When the breeze blew, the lines would strain taut and some accident of this pull lifted the head and chest upright so that the figure seemed to peer across the brow of the mountain. Then, each time the wind dropped, the lines would slacken and the figure bow forward again, sinking its head between its knees. So as the stars moved across the sky, the figure sat on the mountain-top and bowed and sank and bowed again.” Two young twins, Sam and Eric, saw the body of the parachutist in the darkness. Believing it to be the beast, they sprinted towards the other boys. After telling them in a terrified tone that they saw the beast, the other boys were convinced due to their genuineness. Jack screams that a hunt shall begin, and Piggy is confused as to whether the beast actually exists or not. Simon was also skeptical: he found it hard to accept that a beast that was supposedly very large and had the ability of flight couldn’t catch two young boys who were running away. Sometime later, Jack did indeed do a hunt, and they managed to wound a boar by sticking it in the snout with a spear. Despite being almost successful in capturing it, those who were present (including Ralph) were still frustrated that it managed to escape. Deciding to take out their anger, they made one of their number, Robert, pretend to be the boar. Robert played his part with mock-seriousness in the beginning, pretending to squeal in terror and fear. However, he later began actually moaning in pain, as the other boys began to strike him with the butt ends of their spears. They lost themselves to their bloodlust and aggression, and had difficulty discerning fiction from reality, friend from foe. That is, “All at once, Robert was screaming and struggling with the strength of frenzy. Jack had him by the hair and was brandishing his knife. Behind him was Roger, fighting to get close. The chant rose ritually, as at the last moment of a dance or a hunt. ‘Kill the pig! Cut his throat! Kill the pig! Bash him in!’ Ralph too was fighting to get near, to get a handful of that brown, vulnerable flesh. The desire to squeeze and hurt was over-mastering.” Fortunately, they didn't take it so far that Robert was killed. However, Robert was still shocked from what happened, and one of the boys, Maurice, said that if they do it again, they should use a drum to introduce the right atmosphere and to keep the tempo. Robert then suggested that they should use a real pig, seeing that if they get carried away, they can seriously injure or kill a person. Jack then laughs lightheartedly, mandating that they could use a littlun as the substitute for the pig.
The hunters go up the mountain with their spears. They then realize that night is approaching, and Ralph and Jack decide that one of them should go tell Piggy (who was watching the littluns) that they would only be back after dark. Simon volunteers and quickly goes through the forest to reach Piggy. Jack challenges Ralph to follow him up the mountain to prove that he’s not scared of the potential beast. Ralph, unwilling to turn down a challenge, agrees. When they scaled the mountain, they saw the dead parachutist at the top. However, since it was dark, they didn't see it for what it was: they interpreted it as the dreaded beast. When Ralph and Jack saw the creature “lifting its head,” they were driven by panic, and quickly ran down the mountain, leaving their spears (referred to humorously as mere “sticks” by Golding) on the ground. Upon sprinting into the camp, they confirm the existence of the beast. Piggy and Simon become concerned, as they believe that escape is impossible because of the beast: it is technically “guarding” the top of the mountain, the most viable place for their fire (after all, it was located there before). After discussing how to drive the beast somewhere else, Jack is insulted by Ralph: Ralph realistically said that his “hunters” were merely inexperienced boys with pointy sticks. The situation escalates with Piggy denouncing Ralph as a coward (despite the fact that he shrieked like a coward and escaped too) and announces that he should be made the chief. He says that he is a better candidate, seeing that he was a prefect, was the leader of the previous choir, and was a hunter who got meat for everyone. He then says that Ralph only talks and doesn’t do anything effective: after saying this, he asks for those who think Ralph should be removed as chief to raise their hands. No one complies: the entire scene remains silent. Jack, mortified (he was crying), put the conch back on the ground before telling everyone that he’s not going to be a part of the group if Ralph remains the leader. He informs everyone that he’s going to form his own group, and that the members of his tribe will have fun: they will hunt pigs and devour meat. He also clarifies before leaving that anyone can join his tribe. Piggy, seeing his departure, was quite happy, as he noted that Jack and those who joined his tribe weren’t needed for their escape and for the sake of stability. Simon then comes up with a good idea, telling those in Ralph’s tribe that they should start the signal fire on the ground of the beach. Golding acknowledges that even though the fire wouldn’t be as noticeable than if it was on the mountain, it would still be visible. More importantly, it was better than nothing. Golding narrates: “The greatest ideas are the simplest. Now there was something to be done they worked with passion. Piggy was so full of delight and expanding liberty in Jack’s departure, so full of pride in his contribution to the good of society, that he helped to fetch wood. The wood he fetched was close at hand … Then the twins realized they would have a fire near them as a comfort in the night and this set a few littluns dancing and clapping hands.” As for Jack’s tribe, some of the people who joined included Maurice, Bill, and Roger. Piggy dismisses their absences, saying that they, like Jack, are not needed for their rescue. In another place on the island, Jack tells his tribe that when they hunt, they should leave a portion of the kill for the beast in an attempt to appease it.
They then went on a hunt, going into the forest with fear. Golding describes that the pigs they hunted were quite innocent, a clear contrast to the nature of the boys: “The pigs lay, bloated bags of fat, sensuously enjoying the shadows under the trees. There was no wind and they were unsuspicious; and practice had made Jack silent as the shadows. He stole away again and instructed his hidden hunters. Presently they all began to inch forward sweating in the silence and heat. Under the trees an ear flapped idly. A little apart from the rest, sunk in deep maternal bliss, lay the largest sow of the lot. She was black and pink; and the great bladder of her belly was fringed with a row of piglets that slept or burrowed and squeaked.” Jack then called for the hunters to attack. The pigs, expectedly, tried to escape. A piglet, “with a demented shriek, rushed into the sea” as Roger chased after it with a spear. The sow, when getting up, was pierced in the behind by two spears. The boys chased after her into the forest and were able to follow her due to the trail of blood which she left behind. After some time of running, the sow, exhausted, gave up. The boys then attacked her viciously, stabbing her to death in a fit of rage that was akin to orgasm: “Roger ran round the heap, prodding with his spear whenever pigflesh appeared. Jack was on top of the sow, stabbing downward with his knife. Roger found a lodgment for his point and began to push till he was leaning with his whole weight. The spear moved forward inch by inch and the terrified squealing became a highpitched scream. Then Jack found the throat and the hot blood spouted over his hands. The sow collapsed under them, and they were heavy and fulfilled upon her. The butterflies still danced, preoccupied in the center of the clearing.” As I said before, the language used has implicit sexual undertones: I find it eerie that the boys were described as “fulfilled” as they lay upon her twitching body: this can be seen as their anger leaving their bodies and minds (albeit temporarily) by finding an outlet. This theme was furthered immediately after the sow was dead: they pushed a spear into her anus as they laughed. Staying true to their word, they decided to leave the beast a portion of the body: sharpening a spear, they planted it into the earth. Jack then decapitated the head of the pig and stuck it onto the top of the stick. The boys remained silent, and the only sound was the buzzing of flies over the blood and guts of the sow. Jack ordered Maurice and Rober to pick up the body of the pig, planning to take it to a better place to cook and eat. As they left the scene, “The silence accepted the gift and awed them. The head remained there, dim-eyed, grinning faintly, blood blackening between the teeth. All at once they were running away, as fast as they could, through the forest toward the open beach.”
Simon, upon going into the forest, saw the pig head on the stick. Noting the scene, he saw that it was quite horrendous: “Even the butterflies deserted the open space where the obscene thing grinned and ripped … The pile of guts was a black blob of flies that buzzed like a saw. After a while, these flies found Simon … They were black and iridescent green and without number; and in front of Simon, the Lord of the Flies hung on his stick and grinned. At last Simon gave up and looked back; saw the white teeth and dim eyes, the blood-and his gaze was held by that ancient, inescapable recognition. In Simon’s right temple, a pulse began to beat in the brain.” It is quite interesting to note that “Lord of the Flies” can be a reference to the demon Beelzebub in Christian mythology: Beelzebub was a “Prince of Hell,” the demon who personified gluttony. Said gluttony can be interpreted as the boys overindulging their desires on the island. For instance, they: (1) expressed their anger without restraint (ex. burning down a large portion of the forest), gave their fear too much strength and leeway in their hearts (which would soon lead to barbarous behavior), refusing to be satisfied with the ample fruit of the trees (some of them had to find a pig and violently butcher it), and (4) allowing their brutal instincts and primal desires to override their reason by expressing their unhealthy wants in their actions (they brutally slaughtered the pig and refused to cooperate in a large degree with each other, not to mention that they continuously insulted Piggy for merely being fat despite the promise which he held). After Simon saw the head, he fainted. Deciding to go to Jack’s camp to see what was going on, Ralph led Piggy to the area. When Simon awoke from his slumber, the Lord of the Flies (the pig head) began speaking to him. The Lord of the Flies called him a silly child, and told him that it was the beast. It also revealed that the beast isn’t an external entity: it is the capability of violence, brutality, and evil within each individual person, including the boys. In its own words, “‘Fancy thinking the Beast was something you could hunt and kill!’ … ‘You knew, didn't you? I’m part of you? Close, close, close! I’m the reason why it’s no go? Why things are what they are?’” The head then told Simon to go to the others, promising him that they were going to have some fun. It also tells him not to attempt to evade its presence, seeing that escape from it was impossible.
Simon, awakening, walked to the top of the mountain to see if the beast really was an external entity: he came across the body of the parachutist and identified it for what it was. Realizing that there was no external beast, Golding describes that he understood the situation upon noting that “The tangle of lines showed him the mechanics of this parody; he examined the white nasal bones, the teeth, the colors of corruption. He saw how pitilessly the layers of rubber and canvas held together the poor body that should be rotting away. Then the wind blew again and the figure lifted, bowed, and breathed foully at him. Simon knelt on all fours and was sick till his stomach was empty.” Upon realizing the truth, he immediately ran to Jack’s camp to inform them of what he had seen. While he made his way back to the camp, Piggy and Ralph reached Jack’s stronghold. Ralph realizes that he no longer is in control: Jack has won over many of the remaining members of his group by offering them meat. Jack and some of the other boys reenact the hunt, with Roger pretending to be the pig. At that moment, Simon came crashing out of the woods. The boys, unable to see him clearly in the darkness, believed that he was the beast. Horrified, they decided to kill it: they murdered Simon in cold blood. Golding describes, “The sticks fell and the mouth of the new circle crunched and screamed. The beast was on its knees in the center, its arms folded over its face. It was crying out against the abominable noise something about a body on the hill. The beast struggled forward, broke the ring and fell over the steep edge of the rock to the sand by the water. At once the crowd surged after it, poured down the rock, leapt on to the beast, screamed, struck, bit, tore. There were no words, and no movements but the tearing of teeth and claws.” After Simon was callously murdered, rain emitted from the sky. His body found its way into the ocean, as well as the body of the parachutist, which was moved by the wind which accompanied the rain. After the terrible incident, Piggy and Ralph left the party. Later on, Piggy correctly identified what had just happened: murder. With only a few people left in his tribe, Ralph tried to keep things together. However, he failed, for they were assaulted by some of the boys from Jack’s tribe. Golding describes that “Then there was a vicious snarling in the mouth of the shelter and the plunge and thump of living things. Someone tripped over Ralph and Piggy’s corner became a complication of snarls and crashes and flying limbs. Ralph hit out; then he and what seemed like a dozen others were rolling over and over, hitting, biting, scratching. He was torn and jolted, found fingers in his mouth and bit them. A fist withdrew and came back like a piston, so that the whole shelter exploded into light … Then the shelter collapsed with smothering finality … Dark figures drew themselves out of the wreckage and flitted away, till the screams of the littluns and Piggy’s gasps were once more audible.” Initially believing that they had done a good job warding Jack’s followers off, they were horrified when they realized that Piggy’s glasses had been stolen (Jack’s tribe wanted to use it to start campfires and grills to cook future kills).
Piggy, upon realizing his glasses were missing, was very angry. He followed Ralph’s lead to Jack’s camp, seeing that he was largely blind. Ralph, upon seeing Jack, denounces him as a thief in front of his followers. Jack, angry, fights with him. While Ralph tries to speak some sense into those in Jack’s tribe, he was met only with failure: they didn't feel responsible for themselves when their faces were covered with paint. Jack then orders his followers to tie up Sam and Eric. Piggy tries to restore order by telling them that they should act responsibly, only to be jeered into silence. Even worse, Roger murdered him by dislocating a large rock which struck him into the ocean: “High overhead, Roger, with a sense of delirious abandonment, leaned all his weight on the lever. Ralph heard the great rock before he saw it … The rock struck Piggy a glancing blow from chin to knee; the conch exploded into a thousand white fragments and ceased to exist. Piggy, saying nothing, with no time for even a grunt, traveled through the air sideways from the rock, turning over as he went. The rock bounded twice and was lost in the forest. Piggy fell forty feet and landed on his back across the square red rock in the sea. His head opened and stuff came out and turned red. Piggy’s arms and legs twitched a bit, like a pig’s after it has been killed. 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.” Jack, unremorseful, orders his followers to grab Ralph, and throws a spear ferociously towards him (while it only grazes him, the wound it produces is still painful). Knowing that he would probably be killed if he stayed any longer, he sprinted away, leaving Sam and Eric in the clutches of Jack’s followers. Ralph succeeded in escaping, and after eating some fruit, came across the skull of the sow. Looking at it, he felt he was being mocked by its open jaw (reminiscent of a smile) and empty sockets (by that point all the flesh on the skull was eaten away by the flies and ants). Enraged, he punched it, only to have it come back to hit him. This perhaps represents that resisting one’s aggressive instincts is counterproductive: not only will you get nowhere, but you’ll harm yourself in the process. In Golding’s own words, “Fiercely he hit out at the filthy thing in front of him that bobbed like a toy and came back, still grinning into his face, so that he lashed and cried out in loathing. Then he was licking his bruised knuckles and looking at the bare stick, while the skull lay in two pieces, its grin now six feet across. He wrenched the quivering stick from the crack and held it as a spear between him and the white pieces. Then he backed away, keeping his face to the skull that lay grinning at the sky.” Ralph spied on Jack’s followers, and saw Sam and Eric: they were guards. He tried to talk to them, and they responded by telling him that he should leave, since Jack wanted to kill him: he was going to organize a hunt for him. They also revealed that they had been tortured by Roger and Jack to coerce them into joining the tribe. After hearing Roger’s voice, Ralph went away and hid. He then saw Roger getting a stick with two sharp sides: they were going to find and kill him, decapitate his corpse, and put his head on top of the stick to appease the beast. He also heard the twins being tortured yet again by Roger and Jack, who promised them additional punishment if they wouldn’t lead them to Ralph. Complying to save themselves from pain, they led Jack and Roger close to where Ralph was. Jack then ordered for the forest to be set aflame; when Ralph realized that they were trying to suffocate him, he had no choice but to leave the safety of the thicket and to run for the beach (he also realized that the fire was so intense that it would destroy many of the fruit trees: Jack’s tribe could die of starvation if they kept their behavior up). When Ralph ran, he was quickly followed by Jack’s tribe (they were able to locate him quickly due to their ululations). Fortunately for him, he was able to reach the beach. However, he accidentally tripped, putting himself in danger: “He stumbled over a root and the cry that pursued him rose even higher. He saw a shelter burst into flames and the fire flapped at his right shoulder and there was the glitter of water. Then he was down, rolling over and over in the warm sand, crouching with arm to ward off, trying to cry for mercy.”
As he raised his head, he saw a naval officer, an adult, looking at him quizzically. The naval officer was also accompanied by other officials who had weapons (ex. revolvers and sub-machine guns). The officer, confused as to what was happening, told Ralph and the others (whose bloodlust were stifled upon seeing adults) that they came after seeing the massive fire that ravaged the forest. The officer, oblivious to what was happening, asked if they were having “‘Fun and games’” and if they were “‘Having a war or something.’” Upon asking Ralph if any had died in the war, Ralph concedes that two had lost their lives (of course, their corpses were gone too - carried away by the ocean). The officer offers the boys safety, as he promises his ship can take them off the island. He then asked who was the leader. Ralph loudly proclaims himself as the chief. Jack tries to complain, but stops, supposedly due to his shame: “A little boy who wore the remains of an extraordinary black cap on his red hair and who carried the remains of a pair of spectacles at his waist, started forward, and changed his mind and stood still.” The officer then told them that he expected better behavior from children belonging to a supposedly “civilized race,” which shows his prejudice: as stated before, the Lord of the Flies dwells within each individual, not those of a specific race. Furthermore, Europeans were largely responsible for much of the world’s suffering, from the plundering of the Congolese to the extermination of American Indians. In the officer’s own words, “‘I should have thought that a pack of British boys-you’re all British, aren’t you?-would have been able to put up a better show than that-I mean-’”. Ralph tells the officer that everything began well in the beginning, but things had deteriorated pretty quickly. Ralph, for the first time on the island, broke down and wept without restraint - not an unreasonable response, seeing all the trauma he had seen and experienced. In Golding’s own words, “Ralph looked at him [the officer] dumbly. For a moment he had a fleeting picture of the strange glamour that had once invested the beaches. But the island was scorched up like dead wood-Simon was dead-and Jack had…. The tears began to flow and sobs shook him. He gave himself up to them now for the first time on the island; great, shuddering spasms of grief that seemed to wrench his whole body … infected by that emotion, the other little boys began to shake and sob too. And in the middle of them, with filthy body, matted hair, and unwiped nose, Ralph wept for the end of innocence, the darkness of man’s heart, and the fall through the air of the true, wise friend called Piggy.” The officer, seeing all of this, was pretty embarrassed. He proceeds to turn his head in another direction to give them some privacy. The book ends with the declaration that the officer saw his ship in the distance which was supposedly going to “rescue” the children (who were presumably brought into the mainstream countries of the world which were trying to obliterate each other with atomic bombs and armies - the countries were acting in the midst of eternal space in a way similar to that of the children surrounded by seemingly endless ocean).
Read the book online:
Personal thoughts:
Lord of the Flies by William Golding is a classic. Written not long after WWII, it shows the depths humanity (even children) can sink into, which calls into question whether mindless aggression and anger or prudence and rationality will win at the end of the day. This book is quite disturbing, for it details how some children (albeit not innocent) lost control over themselves and descended into brutal behavior under the behest of bad but charismatic leaders (sounds familiar?). If there is a lesson to be gained from the book, it is that caution, knowledge, and calmness should be widely practiced, for they are the best antidotes to many of humanity’s undesirable tendencies (ex. tribalism). I appreciate the fact that Golding shows that the “grown-ups” are not good role models for the boys, seeing that they were stuck on the island due to the fact that grown-ups started a war which could wipe out countless lives (not just those belonging to humans). The ending is greatly appreciated by me, as Golding makes it clear that the children, while being traditionally rescued, were merely brought into the “real world” once again and therefore exposed to potentially even greater danger (they could lose their lives, just not to each other). I highly recommend Lord of the Flies to anyone interested in classics, human nature, adventure stories, and intense plots.
Get the book: