LORD OF THE FLIES
By William Golding
Context
William golding was born on
Golding’s experience in World War II had a profound
effect on his view of humanity and the evils of which it was capable. After the
war, Golding resumed teaching and started to write
novels. His first and greatest success came with
Lord of the Flies (1954), which
ultimately became a bestseller in both
Lord of the Flies tells the story of a group of English
schoolboys marooned on a tropical island after their plane is shot down during
a war. Though the novel is fictional, its exploration of the idea of human evil
is at least partly based on Golding’s experience with
the real-life violence and brutality of World War II. Free from the rules and
structures of civilization and society, the boys on the island in Lord of the Flies descend into savagery. As the
boys splinter into factions, some behave peacefully and work together to
maintain order and achieve common goals, while others rebel and seek only
anarchy and violence. In his portrayal of the small world of the island, Golding paints a broader portrait of the fundamental human
struggle between the civilizing instinct—the impulse to obey rules, behave
morally, and act lawfully—and the savage instinct—the impulse to seek brute
power over others, act selfishly, scorn moral rules, and indulge in violence.
Golding employs a relatively straightforward writing style in Lord of the Flies, one that avoids highly poetic
language, lengthy description, and philosophical interludes. Much of the novel
is allegorical, meaning that the characters and objects in the novel are
infused with symbolic significance that conveys the novel’s central themes and
ideas. In portraying the various ways in which the boys on the island adapt to
their new surroundings and react to their new freedom, Golding
explores the broad spectrum of ways in which humans respond to stress, change,
and tension.
Readers and critics have interpreted Lord of
the Flies in widely varying ways over the years since its publication.
During the 1950s and 1960s,
many readings of the novel claimed that Lord of the
Flies dramatizes the history of civilization. Some believed that the
novel explores fundamental religious issues, such as original sin and the
nature of good and evil. Others approached Lord of
the Flies through the theories of the psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud, who
taught that the human mind was the site of a constant battle among different
impulses—the id (instinctual needs and desires), the ego (the conscious,
rational mind), and the superego (the sense of conscience and morality). Still
others maintained that Golding wrote the novel as a
criticism of the political and social institutions of the West. Ultimately,
there is some validity to each of these different readings and interpretations
of Lord of the Flies. Although Golding’s story is confined to the microcosm of a group of
boys, it resounds with implications far beyond the bounds of the small island
and explores problems and questions universal to the human experience.
Plot Overview
In the midst of a raging war, a plane
evacuating a group of schoolboys from
Ralph, Jack, and another boy, Simon,
set off on an expedition to explore the island. When they return, Ralph
declares that they must light a signal fire to attract the attention of passing
ships. The boys succeed in igniting some dead wood by focusing sunlight through
the lenses of Piggy’s eyeglasses. However, the boys
pay more attention to playing than to monitoring the fire, and the flames
quickly engulf the forest. A large swath of dead wood burns out of control, and
one of the youngest boys in the group disappears, presumably having burned to
death.
At first, the boys enjoy their life without grown-ups and spend much of
their time splashing in the water and playing games. Ralph, however, complains
that they should be maintaining the signal fire and building huts for shelter.
The hunters fail in their attempt to catch a wild pig, but their leader, Jack,
becomes increasingly preoccupied with the act of hunting.
When a ship passes by on the horizon one day, Ralph and Piggy notice, to
their horror, that the signal fire—which had been the
hunters’ responsibility to maintain—has burned out. Furious, Ralph
accosts Jack, but the hunter has just returned with his first kill, and all the
hunters seem gripped with a strange frenzy, reenacting the chase in a kind of
wild dance. Piggy criticizes Jack, who hits Piggy across the face. Ralph blows
the conch shell and reprimands the boys in a speech intended to restore order.
At the meeting, it quickly becomes clear that some of the boys have started to
become afraid. The littlest boys, known as “littluns,”
have been troubled by nightmares from the beginning, and more and more boys now
believe that there is some sort of beast or monster lurking on the island. The
older boys try to convince the others at the meeting to think rationally,
asking where such a monster could possibly hide during the daytime. One of the littluns suggests that it hides in the sea—a proposition
that terrifies the entire group.
Not long after the meeting, some military planes engage in a battle high
above the island. The boys, asleep below, do not notice the flashing lights and
explosions in the clouds. A parachutist drifts to earth on the signal fire
mountain, dead. Sam
and Eric, the twins responsible for watching the fire at night, are asleep
and do not see the parachutist land. When the twins wake up, they see the
enormous silhouette of his parachute and hear the strange flapping noises it
makes. Thinking the island beast is at hand, they rush
back to the camp in terror and report that the beast has attacked them.
The boys organize a hunting expedition to search for the monster. Jack
and Ralph, who are increasingly at odds, travel up the mountain. They see the
silhouette of the parachute from a distance and think that it looks like a
huge, deformed ape. The group holds a meeting at which Jack and Ralph tell the
others of the sighting. Jack says that Ralph is a coward and that he should be
removed from office, but the other boys refuse to vote Ralph out of power. Jack
angrily runs away down the beach, calling all the hunters to join him. Ralph
rallies the remaining boys to build a new signal fire, this time on the beach
rather than on the mountain. They obey, but before they have finished the task,
most of them have slipped away to join Jack.
Jack declares himself the leader of the new tribe of hunters and
organizes a hunt and a violent, ritual slaughter of a sow to solemnize the
occasion. The hunters then decapitate the sow and place its head on a sharpened
stake in the jungle as an offering to the beast. Later, encountering the
bloody, fly-covered head, Simon has a terrible vision, during which it seems to
him that the head is speaking. The voice, which he imagines as belonging to the
Lord
of the Flies, says that Simon will never escape him, for he exists within
all men. Simon faints. When he wakes up, he goes to the mountain, where he sees
the dead parachutist. Understanding then that the beast does not exist
externally but rather within each individual boy, Simon travels to the beach to
tell the others what he has seen. But the others are in the midst of a chaotic
revelry—even Ralph and Piggy have joined Jack’s feast—and when they see Simon’s
shadowy figure emerge from the jungle, they fall upon him and kill him with
their bare hands and teeth.
The following morning, Ralph and Piggy discuss what they have done.
Jack’s hunters attack them and their few followers and steal Piggy’s glasses in the process. Ralph’s group travels to
Jack’s stronghold in an attempt to make Jack see reason, but Jack orders Sam
and Eric tied up and fights with Ralph. In the ensuing battle, one boy, Roger,
rolls a boulder down the mountain, killing Piggy and shattering the conch
shell. Ralph barely manages to escape a torrent of spears.
Ralph hides for the rest of the night and the following day, while the
others hunt him like an animal. Jack has the other boys ignite the forest in
order to smoke Ralph out of his hiding place. Ralph stays in the forest, where
he discovers and destroys the sow’s head, but eventually, he is forced out onto
the beach, where he knows the other boys will soon arrive to kill him. Ralph
collapses in exhaustion, but when he looks up, he sees a British naval officer
standing over him. The officer’s ship noticed the fire raging in the jungle.
The other boys reach the beach and stop in their tracks at the sight of the
officer. Amazed at the spectacle of this group of bloodthirsty, savage
children, the officer asks Ralph to explain. Ralph is overwhelmed by the
knowledge that he is safe but, thinking about what has happened on the island,
he begins to weep. The other boys begin to sob as well. The officer turns his
back so that the boys may regain their composure.
Character List
Ralph -
The novel’s
protagonist, the twelve-year-old English boy who is elected leader of the group
of boys marooned on the island. Ralph
attempts to coordinate the boys’ efforts to build a miniature civilization on
the island until they can be rescued. Ralph represents human beings’ civilizing
instinct, as opposed to the savage instinct that Jack
embodies.
Jack -
The
novel’s antagonist, one of the older boys stranded on the island. Jack becomes the leader of the hunters but
longs for total power and becomes increasingly wild, barbaric, and cruel as the
novel progresses. Jack, adept at manipulating the other boys, represents the
instinct of savagery within human beings, as opposed to the civilizing instinct
Ralph represents.
Simon -
A
shy, sensitive boy in the group. Simon,
in some ways the only naturally “good” character on the island, behaves kindly
toward the younger boys and is willing to work for the good of their community.
Moreover, because his motivation is rooted in his deep feeling of connectedness
to nature, Simon is the only character whose sense of morality does not seem to
have been imposed by society. Simon represents a kind of natural goodness, as
opposed to the unbridled evil of Jack and the imposed morality of civilization
represented by Ralph and Piggy.
Piggy -
Ralph’s
“lieutenant.” A whiny, intellectual boy, Piggy’s
inventiveness frequently leads to innovation, such as the makeshift sundial
that the boys use to tell time. Piggy represents the scientific, rational
side of civilization.
Roger -
Jack’s
“lieutenant.” A sadistic, cruel older boy who brutalizes the littluns and eventually murders Piggy by rolling a boulder
onto him.
Sam and Eric -
A pair of twins
closely allied with Ralph. Sam
and Eric are always together, and the other boys often treat them as a
single entity, calling them “Samneric.” The easily
excitable Sam and Eric are part of the group known as the “bigguns.”
At the end of the novel, they fall victim to Jack’s manipulation and coercion.
The Lord of the Flies -
The name given to the sow’s head that Jack’s
gang impales on a stake and erects in the forest as an offering to the “beast.” The Lord
of the Flies comes to symbolize the primordial instincts of power and
cruelty that take control of Jack’s tribe.
Analysis of Major
Characters
Ralph
Ralph
is the athletic, charismatic protagonist of Lord of
the Flies. Elected the leader of the boys at the beginning of the novel,
Ralph is the primary representative of order, civilization, and productive
leadership in the novel. While most of the other boys initially are concerned
with playing, having fun, and avoiding work, Ralph sets about building huts and
thinking of ways to maximize their chances of being rescued. For this reason,
Ralph’s power and influence over the other boys are secure at the beginning of
the novel. However, as the group gradually succumbs to savage instincts over
the course of the novel, Ralph’s position declines precipitously while Jack’s
rises. Eventually, most of the boys except Piggy
leave Ralph’s group for Jack’s, and Ralph is left alone to be hunted by Jack’s
tribe. Ralph’s commitment to civilization and morality is strong, and his main
wish is to be rescued and returned to the society of adults. In a sense, this
strength gives Ralph a moral victory at the end of the novel,
when he casts the Lord
of the Flies to the ground and takes up the stake it is impaled on to
defend himself against Jack’s hunters.
In the earlier
parts of the novel, Ralph is unable to understand why the other boys would give
in to base instincts of bloodlust and barbarism. The sight of the hunters
chanting and dancing is baffling and distasteful to him. As the novel
progresses, however, Ralph, like Simon,
comes to understand that savagery exists within all the boys. Ralph remains
determined not to let this savagery -overwhelm him, and only briefly does he consider
joining Jack’s tribe in order to save himself. When Ralph hunts a boar for the
first time, however, he experiences the exhilaration and thrill of bloodlust
and violence. When he attends Jack’s feast, he is swept away by the frenzy,
dances on the edge of the group, and participates in the killing of Simon. This
firsthand knowledge of the evil that exists within him, as within all human
beings, is tragic for Ralph, and it plunges him into listless despair for a
time. But this knowledge also enables him to cast down the Lord
of the Flies at the end of the novel. Ralph’s story ends semi-tragically:
although he is rescued and returned to civilization, when he sees the naval
officer, he weeps with the burden of his new knowledge about the human capacity
for evil.
Jack
The strong-willed,
egomaniacal Jack is the novel’s primary representative of the instinct of
savagery, violence, and the desire for power—in short, the antithesis of Ralph.
From the beginning of the novel, Jack desires power above all other things. He
is furious when he loses the election to Ralph and continually pushes the
boundaries of his subordinate role in the group. Early on, Jack retains the
sense of moral propriety and behavior that society instilled in him—in fact, in
school, he was the leader of the choirboys. The first time he encounters a pig,
he is unable to kill it. But Jack soon becomes obsessed with hunting and
devotes himself to the task, painting his face like a barbarian and giving
himself over to bloodlust. The more savage Jack becomes, the more he is able to
control the rest of the group. Indeed, apart from Ralph, Simon, and Piggy, the
group largely follows Jack in casting off moral restraint and embracing
violence and savagery. Jack’s love of authority and violence are intimately
connected, as both enable him to feel powerful and exalted. By the end of the
novel, Jack has learned to use the boys’ fear of the beast to control their
behavior—a reminder of how religion and superstition can be manipulated as
instruments of power.
Simon
Whereas Ralph and
Jack stand at opposite ends of the spectrum between civilization and savagery,
Simon stands on an entirely different plane from all the other boys. Simon
embodies a kind of innate, spiritual human goodness that is deeply connected
with nature and, in its own way, as primal as Jack’s evil. The other boys
abandon moral behavior as soon as civilization is no longer there to impose it
upon them. They are not innately moral;
rather, the adult world—the threat of punishment for misdeeds—has conditioned
them to act morally. To an extent, even the seemingly civilized Ralph and Piggy
are products of social conditioning, as we see when they participate in the
hunt-dance. In Golding’s view, the human impulse
toward civilization is not as deeply rooted as the human impulse toward
savagery. Unlike all the other boys on the island, Simon acts morally not out
of guilt or shame but because he believes in the inherent value of morality. He
behaves kindly toward the younger children, and he is the first to realize the
problem posed by the beast and the Lord of the Flies—that is, that the monster
on the island is not a real, physical beast but rather a savagery that lurks
within each human being. The sow’s head on the stake
symbolizes this idea, as we see in Simon’s vision of the head speaking to him.
Ultimately, this idea of the inherent evil within each human being stands as
the moral conclusion and central problem of the novel. Against this idea of
evil, Simon represents a contrary idea of essential human goodness. However,
his brutal murder at the hands of the other boys indicates the scarcity of that
good amid an overwhelming abundance of evil.
Themes, Motifs &
Symbols
Themes
Themes are the fundamental
and often universal ideas explored in a literary work.
Civilization vs. Savagery
The central concern of Lord of the Flies
is the conflict between two competing impulses that exist within all human
beings: the instinct to live by rules, act peacefully, follow moral commands,
and value the good of the group against the instinct to gratify one’s immediate
desires, act violently to obtain supremacy over others, and enforce one’s will.
This conflict might be expressed in a number of ways: civilization vs.
savagery, order vs. chaos, reason vs. impulse, law vs. anarchy, or the broader
heading of good vs. evil. Throughout the novel, Golding
associates the instinct of civilization with good and the instinct of savagery
with evil.
The conflict between the two instincts is the driving force of the
novel, explored through the dissolution of the young English boys’ civilized,
moral, disciplined behavior as they accustom themselves to a wild, brutal,
barbaric life in the jungle. Lord of the Flies
is an allegorical novel, which means that Golding
conveys many of his main ideas and themes through symbolic characters and
objects. He represents the conflict between civilization and savagery in the
conflict between the novel’s two main characters: Ralph,
the protagonist, who represents order and leadership; and Jack,
the antagonist, who represents savagery and the desire for power.
As the novel progresses, Golding shows how
different people feel the influences of the instincts of civilization and
savagery to different degrees. Piggy,
for instance, has no savage feelings, while Roger
seems barely capable of comprehending the rules of civilization. Generally,
however, Golding implies that the instinct of
savagery is far more primal and fundamental to the human psyche than the
instinct of civilization. Golding sees moral
behavior, in many cases, as something that civilization forces upon the
individual rather than a natural expression of human individuality. When left
to their own devices, Golding implies, people
naturally revert to cruelty, savagery, and barbarism. This idea of innate human
evil is central to Lord of the Flies, and
finds expression in several important symbols, most notably the beast and the
sow’s head on the stake. Among all the characters, only Simon
seems to possess anything like a natural, innate goodness.
Loss of Innocence
As the boys on the island progress from well-behaved, orderly children
longing for rescue to cruel, bloodthirsty hunters who have no desire to return
to civilization, they naturally lose the sense of innocence that they possessed
at the beginning of the novel. The painted savages in Chapter 12 who have hunted, tortured,
and killed animals and human beings are a far cry from the guileless children
swimming in the lagoon in Chapter 3. But Golding does not portray this loss of innocence as
something that is done to the children; rather, it results naturally from their
increasing openness to the innate evil and savagery that has always existed
within them. Golding implies that civilization can
mitigate but never wipe out the innate evil that exists within all human
beings. The forest glade in which Simon sits in Chapter 3 symbolizes this loss of innocence. At first, it is a
place of natural beauty and peace, but when Simon returns later in the novel,
he discovers the bloody sow’s head impaled upon a stake in the middle of the
clearing. The bloody offering to the beast has disrupted the paradise that
existed before—a powerful symbol of innate human evil disrupting childhood
innocence.
Motifs
Motifs are recurring
structures, contrasts, or literary devices that can help to develop and inform
the text’s major themes.
Biblical Parallels
Many critics have characterized Lord of the
Flies as a retelling of episodes from the Bible. While that description
may be an oversimplification, the novel does echo certain Christian images and
themes. Golding does not make any explicit or direct
connections to Christian symbolism in Lord of the
Flies; instead, these biblical parallels function as a kind of subtle
motif in the novel, adding thematic resonance to the main ideas of the story.
The island itself, particularly Simon’s glade in the forest, recalls the Garden
of Eden in its status as an originally pristine place that is corrupted by the
introduction of evil. Similarly, we may see the Lord
of the Flies as a representation of the devil, for it works to promote evil
among humankind. Furthermore, many critics have drawn strong parallels between
Simon and Jesus. Among the boys, Simon is the one who arrives at the moral
truth of the novel, and the other boys kill him sacrificially as a consequence
of having discovered this truth. Simon’s conversation with the Lord of the
Flies also parallels the confrontation between Jesus and the devil during
Jesus’ forty days in the wilderness, as told in the Christian Gospels.
However, it is important to remember that the parallels between Simon
and Christ are not complete, and that there are limits to reading Lord of the Flies purely as a Christian allegory.
Save for Simon’s two uncanny predictions of the future, he lacks the
supernatural connection to God that Jesus has in Christian tradition. Although
Simon is wise in many ways, his death does not bring salvation to the island;
rather, his death plunges the island deeper into savagery and moral guilt.
Moreover, Simon dies before he is able to tell the boys the truth he has
discovered. Jesus, in contrast, was killed while spreading his moral
philosophy. In this way, Simon—and Lord of the Flies
as a whole—echoes Christian ideas and themes without developing explicit,
precise parallels with them. The novel’s biblical parallels enhance its moral
themes but are not necessarily the primary key to interpreting the story.
Symbols
Symbols are objects,
characters, figures, or colors used to represent abstract ideas or concepts.
The Conch Shell
Ralph and Piggy discover the conch shell on the beach at the start of
the novel and use it to summon the boys together after the crash separates
them. Used in this capacity, the conch shell becomes a powerful symbol of
civilization and order in the novel. The shell effectively governs the boys’
meetings, for the boy who holds the shell holds the right to speak. In this
regard, the shell is more than a symbol—it is an actual vessel of political
legitimacy and democratic power. As the island civilization erodes and the boys
descend into savagery, the conch shell loses its power and influence among
them. Ralph clutches the shell desperately when he talks about his role in
murdering Simon. Later, the other boys ignore Ralph and throw stones at him
when he attempts to blow the conch in Jack’s camp. The boulder that Roger rolls
onto Piggy also crushes the conch shell, signifying the demise of the civilized
instinct among almost all the boys on the island.
Piggy’s
Glasses
Piggy is the most intelligent, rational boy in the group, and his
glasses represent the power of science and intellectual endeavor in society.
This symbolic significance is clear from the start of the novel, when the boys
use the lenses from Piggy’s glasses to focus the
sunlight and start a fire. When Jack’s hunters raid Ralph’s camp and steal the
glasses, the savages effectively take the power to make fire, leaving Ralph’s
group helpless.
The Signal Fire
The signal fire burns on the mountain, and later on the beach, to
attract the notice of passing ships that might be able to rescue the boys. As a
result, the signal fire becomes a barometer of the boys’ connection to
civilization. In the early parts of the novel, the fact that the boys maintain
the fire is a sign that they want to be rescued and return to society. When the
fire burns low or goes out, we realize that the boys have lost sight of their
desire to be rescued and have accepted their savage lives on the island. The
signal fire thus functions as a kind of measurement of the strength of the
civilized instinct remaining on the island. Ironically, at the end of the
novel, a fire finally summons a ship to the island, but not the signal fire.
Instead, it is the fire of savagery—the forest fire Jack’s gang starts as part
of his quest to hunt and kill Ralph.
The Beast
The imaginary beast that frightens all the boys stands for the primal
instinct of savagery that exists within all human beings. The boys are afraid
of the beast, but only Simon reaches the realization that they fear the beast
because it exists within each of them. As the boys grow more savage, their
belief in the beast grows stronger. By the end of the novel, the boys are
leaving it sacrifices and treating it as a totemic god. The boys’ behavior is
what brings the beast into existence, so the more savagely the boys act, the
more real the beast seems to become.
The Lord of the Flies
The Lord
of the Flies is the bloody, severed sow’s head that Jack impales on a stake
in the forest glade as an offering to the beast. This complicated symbol
becomes the most important image in the novel when Simon confronts the sow’s
head in the glade and it seems to speak to him, telling him that evil lies
within every human heart and promising to have some “fun” with him. (This “fun”
foreshadows Simon’s death in the following chapter.) In this way, the Lord of
the Flies becomes both a physical manifestation of the beast, a symbol of the
power of evil, and a kind of Satan figure who evokes the beast within each
human being. Looking at the novel in the context of biblical parallels, the
Lord of the Flies recalls the devil, just as Simon recalls Jesus. In fact, the
name “Lord of the Flies” is a literal translation of the name of the biblical
name Beelzebub, a powerful demon in hell sometimes thought to be the devil
himself.
Ralph, Piggy, Jack, Simon,
Roger
Lord of the Flies is an allegorical novel, and many of its
characters signify important ideas or themes. Ralph represents order,
leadership, and civilization. Piggy represents the scientific and intellectual
aspects of civilization. Jack represents unbridled savagery and the desire for
power. Simon represents natural human goodness. Roger represents brutality and
bloodlust at their most extreme. To the extent that the boys’ society resembles
a political state, the littluns might be seen as the
common people, while the older boys represent the ruling classes and political
leaders. The relationships that develop between the older boys and the younger
ones emphasize the older boys’ connection to either the civilized or the savage
instinct: civilized boys like Ralph and Simon use their power to protect the
younger boys and advance the good of the group; savage boys like Jack and Roger
use their power to gratify their own desires, treating the littler boys as
objects for their own amusement.
Chapter
1
Summary
A fair-haired boy lowers himself down some rocks toward a lagoon on a
beach. At the lagoon, he encounters another boy, who is chubby, intellectual,
and wears thick glasses. The fair-haired boy introduces himself as Ralph
and the chubby one introduces himself as Piggy.
Through their conversation, we learn that in the midst of a war, a transport
plane carrying a group of English boys was shot down over the ocean. It crashed
in thick jungle on a deserted island. Scattered by the wreck, the surviving
boys lost each other and cannot find the pilot.
Ralph and Piggy look around the beach, wondering what has become of the
other boys from the plane. They discover a large pink- and cream-colored conch
shell, which Piggy realizes could be used as a kind of makeshift trumpet. He
convinces Ralph to blow through the shell to find the other boys. Summoned by
the blast of sound from the shell, boys start to straggle onto the beach. The
oldest among them are around twelve; the youngest are around six. Among the
group is a boys’ choir, dressed in black gowns and led by an older boy named Jack.
They march to the beach in two parallel lines, and Jack snaps at them to stand
at attention. The boys taunt Piggy and mock his appearance and nickname.
The boys decide to elect a leader. The choirboys vote for Jack, but all the other boys vote for Ralph. Ralph wins the vote,
although Jack clearly wants the position. To placate Jack, Ralph asks the choir
to serve as the hunters for the band of boys and asks Jack to lead them.
Mindful of the need to explore their new environment, the Ralph chooses Jack
and a choir member named Simon
to explore the island, ignoring Piggy’s whining
requests to be picked. The three explorers leave the meeting place and set off
across the island.
The prospect of exploring the island exhilarates the boys, who feel a
bond forming among them as they play together in the jungle. Eventually, they
reach the end of the jungle, where high, sharp rocks jut toward steep
mountains. The boys climb up the side of one of the steep hill. From the peak,
they can see that they are on an island with no signs of civilization. The view
is stunning, and Ralph feels as though they have discovered their own land. As
they travel back toward the beach, they find a wild pig caught in a tangle of
vines. Jack, the newly appointed hunter, draws his knife and steps in to kill
it, but hesitates, unable to bring himself to act. The pig frees itself and
runs away, and Jack vows that the next time he will not flinch from the act of
killing. The three boys make a long trek through dense jungle and eventually
emerge near the group of boys waiting for them on the beach.
Analysis
Lord of the Flies dramatizes the conflict between the
civilizing instinct and the barbarizing instinct that exist in all human
beings. The artistic choices Golding makes in the
novel are designed to emphasize the struggle between the ordering elements of
society, which include morality, law, and culture, and the chaotic elements of
humanity’s savage animal instincts, which include anarchy, bloodlust, the
desire for power, amorality, selfishness, and violence. Over the course of the
novel, Golding portrays the rise and swift fall of an
isolated, makeshift civilization, which is torn to pieces by the savage
instincts of those who comprise it.
In this first chapter, Golding establishes the
parameters within which this civilization functions. To begin with, it is
populated solely with boys—the group of young English schoolboys shot down over
the tropical island where the novel takes place. The fact that the characters
are only boys is significant: the young boys are only half formed, perched
between civilization and savagery and thus embodying the novel’s central
conflict. Throughout the novel, Golding’s foundation
is the idea that moral and societal constraints are learned rather than
innate—that the human tendency to obey rules, behave peacefully, and follow
orders is imposed by a system that is not in itself a fundamental part of human
nature. Young boys are a fitting illustration of this premise, for they live in
a constant state of tension with regard to the rules and regulations they are
expected to follow. Left to their own devices, they often behave with
instinctive cruelty and violence. In this regard, the civilization established
in Lord of the Flies—a product of
preadolescent boys’ social instincts—seems endangered from the beginning.
In Chapter 1, the boys, still unsure of
how to behave with no adult presence overseeing them, largely stick to the
learned behaviors of civilization and order. They attempt to re-create the
structures of society on their deserted island: they elect a leader, establish
a division of labor, and set about systematically exploring the island. But
even at this early stage, we see the danger that the boys’ innate instincts
pose to their civilization: the boys cruelly taunt Piggy, and Jack displays a
ferocious desire to be elected the group’s leader.
Throughout Lord of the Flies, Golding makes heavy use of symbols to present the themes
and dramatic conflicts of the novel. In this chapter, for instance, Golding introduces the bespectacled Piggy as a
representative of the scientific and intellectual aspects of civilization.
Piggy thinks critically about the conch shell and determines a productive use
for it—summoning the other boys to the beach. The conch shell itself is one of
the most important symbols in the novel. The conch shell represents law, order,
and political legitimacy, as it summons the boys from their scattered positions
on the island and grants its holder the right to speak in front of the group.
Later in the novel, Golding sharply contrasts the
conch shell with another natural object—the sinister pig’s head known as the Lord
of the Flies, which comes to symbolize primordial chaos and terror.
Chapter
2
Summary
When the explorers return, Ralph
sounds the conch shell, summoning the boys to another meeting on the beach. He
tells the group that there are no adults on the island and that they need to
organize a few things to look after themselves. Jack
reminds Ralph of the pig they found trapped in the vines in the jungle, and
Ralph agrees that they will need hunters to kill animals for meat. Ralph
declares that, at meetings, the conch shell will be used to determine which boy
has the right to speak. Whoever holds the conch shell will speak, and the
others will listen silently until they receive the shell in their turn. Jack
agrees with this idea.
Piggy
yells about the fact that no one knows they have crashed on the island and that
they could be stuck there for a long time. The prospect of being stranded for a
long period is too harrowing for many of the boys, and the entire group becomes
silent and scared. One of the younger children, a small boy with a
mulberry-colored mark on his face, claims that he saw a snakelike “beastie” or
monster the night before. A wave of fear ripples through the group at the idea
that a monster might be prowling the island. Though they are frightened, the
older boys try to reassure the group that there is no monster. The older boys
say that the little boy’s vision was only a nightmare.
Thinking about the possibility of rescue, Ralph proposes that the group
build a large signal fire on top of the island’s central mountain, so that any
passing ships might see the fire and know that someone is trapped on the
island. Excited by the thought, the boys rush off to the mountain, while Ralph
and Piggy lag behind. Piggy continues to whine about the childishness and
stupidity of the group.
The boys collect a mound of dead wood and use the lenses from Piggy’s glasses to focus the sunlight and set the wood on
fire. They manage to get a large fire going, but it quickly dies down. Piggy
angrily declares that the boys need to act more proficiently if they want to
get off the island, but his words carry little weight. Jack volunteers his
group of hunters to be responsible for keeping the signal fire going. In their
frenzied, disorganized efforts to rekindle the fire, the boys set a swath of
trees ablaze. Enraged at the group’s reckless disorganization, Piggy tells them
furiously that one of the littlest boys—the same boy who told them about the
snake-beast—was playing over by the fire and now is missing. The boys are
crestfallen and shocked, and Ralph is struck with shame. They pretend that
nothing has happened.
Analysis
The conflict between the instincts of civilization and savagery emerges
quickly within the group: the boys, especially Piggy, know that they must act
with order and forethought if they wish to be rescued, but the longer they
remain apart from the society of adults, the more difficult it becomes for them
to adhere to the disciplined behavior of civilization. In Chapter 1, the boys seem determined to re-create the society
they have lost, but as early as Chapter 2, their
instinctive drive to play and gratify their immediate desires undermines their
ability to act collectively. As a result, the signal fire nearly fails, and a
young boy apparently burns to death when the forest catches fire. The
constraints of society still linger around the boys, who are confused and ashamed
when they learn the young boy is missing—a sign that a sense of morality still
guides their behavior at this point.
Golding’s portrayals of the main
characters among the group of boys contributes to the allegorical
quality of Lord of the Flies, as several of
the boys stand for larger concepts. Ralph, the protagonist of the novel, stands
for civilization, morality, and leadership, while Jack, the antagonist, stands
for the desire for power, selfishness, and amorality. Piggy represents the
scientific and intellectual aspects of civilization, as his glasses—a symbol of
rationality and intellect—enable the boys to light fires. Already the boys’
savage instincts lead them to value strength and charisma above intelligence:
although Piggy has a great deal to offer the boys’ fledgling civilization, they
see him as a whiny weakling and therefore despise him and refuse to listen to
him, even when his ideas are good. For instance, when Piggy suggests that the
boys find a way to improve their chances of being rescued, they ignore him;
only when the stronger and more charismatic Ralph suggests the same thing do
they agree to make the signal fire.
Apart from the boys themselves, the signal fire and the “beastie” also
carry symbolic significance. The signal fire serves as a barometer for the
boys’ interest in maintaining ties to civilization: as long as it burns, they
retain some hope that they will be rescued and returned to society, but as they
become increasingly obsessed with power and killing, they lose interest in the
fire. When the fire ultimately burns out, the boys’ disconnection from the
structures of society is complete. Meanwhile, the beast the young boy claims to
have seen also emerges as an important symbol in the novel. At this point, the
beast is merely an idea that frightens some of the boys. But as the novel
progresses, all the boys tacitly accept the beast’s existence. The beast comes
to represent the instincts of power, violence, and savagery that lurk within
each human being.
Chapter
3
Summary
Carrying a stick sharpened into a makeshift spear, Jack
trails a pig through the thick jungle, but it evades him. Irritated, he walks
back to the beach, where he finds Ralph
and Simon
at work building huts for the younger boys to live in. Ralph is irritated
because the huts keep falling down before they are completed and because,
though the huts are vital to the boys’ ability to live on the island, none of
the other boys besides Simon will help him. As Ralph and Simon work, most of
the other boys splash about and play in the lagoon. Ralph gripes that few of
the boys are doing any work. He says that all the boys act excited and
energized by the plans they make at meetings, but none of them is willing to
work to make the plans successful. Ralph points out that Jack’s hunters have
failed to catch a single pig. Jack claims that although they have so far failed
to bring down a pig, they will soon have more success. Ralph also worries about
the smaller children, many of whom have nightmares and are unable to sleep. He
tells Jack about his concerns, but Jack, still trying to think of ways to kill
a pig, is not interested in Ralph’s problems.
Ralph, annoyed that Jack, like all the other boys, is unwilling to work
on the huts, implies that Jack and the hunters are using their hunting duties
as an excuse to avoid the real work. Jack responds to Ralph’s complaints by
commenting that the boys want meat. Jack and Ralph continue to bicker and grow
increasingly hostile toward each other. Hoping to regain their sense of
camaraderie, they go swimming together in the lagoon, but their feelings of
mutual dislike remain and fester.
In the meantime, Simon wanders through the jungle alone. He helps some
of the younger boys—whom the older boys have started to call “littluns”—reach fruit hanging from a high branch. He walks
deeper into the forest and eventually finds a thick jungle glade, a peaceful,
beautiful open space full of flowers, birds, and butterflies. Simon looks
around to make sure that he is alone, then sits down
to take in the scene, marveling at the abundance and beauty of life that
surrounds him.
Analysis
The personal conflict between Ralph and Jack mirrors the overarching
thematic conflict of the novel. The conflict between the two boys brews as
early as the election in Chapter 1 but remains
hidden beneath the surface, masked by the camaraderie the boys feel as they
work together to build a community. In this chapter, however, the conflict
erupts into verbal argument for the first time, making apparent the divisions
undermining the boys’ community and setting the stage for further, more violent
developments. As Ralph and Jack argue, each boy tries to give voice to his basic
conception of human purpose: Ralph advocates building huts, while Jack
champions hunting. Ralph, who thinks about the overall good of the group, deems
hunting frivolous. Jack, drawn to the exhilaration of hunting by his bloodlust
and desire for power, has no interest in building huts and no concern for what
Ralph thinks. But because Ralph and Jack are merely children, they are unable
to state their feelings articulately.
At this point in the novel, the conflict between civilization and
savagery is still heavily tilted in favor of civilization. Jack, who has no
real interest in the welfare of the group, is forced to justify his desire to
hunt rather than build huts by claiming that it is for the good of all the
boys. Additionally, though most of the boys are more interested in play than in
work, they continue to re-create the basic structures of civilization on the
island. They even begin to develop their own language, calling the younger
children “littluns” and the twins Sam
and Eric “Samneric.”
Simon, meanwhile, seems to exist outside the conflict between Ralph and
Jack, between civilization and savagery. We see Simon’s kind and generous
nature through his actions in this chapter. He helps Ralph build the huts when
the other boys would rather play, indicating his helpfulness, discipline, and
dedication to the common good. Simon helps the littluns
reach a high branch of fruit, indicating his kindness and sympathy—a sharp
contrast to many of the older boys, who would rather torment the littluns than help them. When Simon sits alone in the
jungle glade marveling at the beauty of nature, we see that he feels a basic
connection with the natural world. On the whole, Simon seems to have a basic
goodness and kindness that comes from within him and is tied to his connection
with nature. All the other boys, meanwhile, seem to have inherited their ideas
of goodness and morality from the external forces of civilization, so that the
longer they are away from human society, the more their moral sense erodes. In
this regard, Simon emerges as an important figure to contrast with Ralph and
Jack. Where Ralph represents the orderly forces of civilization and Jack the
primal, instinctual urges that react against such order, Simon represents a
third quality—a kind of goodness that is natural or innate rather than taught
by human society. In this way, Simon, who cannot be categorized with the other
boys, complicates the symbolic structure of Lord of the Flies.
Chapter
4
Here, invisible yet strong,
was the taboo of the old life. Round the squatting child was the protection of
parents and school and policemen and the law.
(See Important
Quotations Explained)
Summary
Life on the island soon develops a daily rhythm. Morning is pleasant,
with cool air and sweet smells, and the boys are able to play happily. By
afternoon, though, the sun becomes oppressively hot, and some of the boys nap,
although they are often troubled by bizarre images that seem to flicker over
the water. Piggy
dismisses these images as mirages caused by sunlight striking the water.
Evening brings cooler temperatures again, but darkness falls quickly, and
nighttime is frightening and difficult.
The littluns, who spend most of their days
eating fruit and playing with one another, are particularly troubled by visions
and bad dreams. They continue to talk about the “beastie” and fear that a
monster hunts in the darkness. The large amount of fruit that they eat causes
them to suffer from diarrhea and stomach ailments. Although the littluns’ lives are largely separate from those of the
older boys, there are a few instances when the older boys torment the littluns. One vicious boy named Roger
joins another boy, Maurice, in cruelly stomping on a sand castle the littluns have built. Roger even throws stones at one of the
boys, although he does remain careful enough to avoid actually hitting the boy
with his stones.
Jack,
obsessed with the idea of killing a pig, camouflages his face with clay and
charcoal and enters the jungle to hunt, accompanied by several other boys. On
the beach, Ralph
and Piggy see a ship on the horizon—but they also see that the signal fire has
gone out. They hurry to the top of the hill, but it is too late to rekindle the
flame, and the ship does not come for them. Ralph is furious with Jack, because
it was the hunters’ responsibility to see that the fire was maintained.
Jack and the hunters return from the jungle, covered with blood and
chanting a bizarre song. They carry a dead pig on a stake between them. Furious
at the hunters’ irresponsibility, Ralph accosts Jack about the signal fire. The
hunters, having actually managed to catch and kill a pig, are so excited and
crazed with bloodlust that they barely hear Ralph’s complaints. When Piggy
shrilly complains about the hunters’ immaturity, Jack slaps him hard, breaking
one of the lenses of his glasses. Jack taunts Piggy by mimicking his whining
voice. Ralph and Jack have a heated conversation. At last, Jack admits his
responsibility in the failure of the signal fire but never apologizes to Piggy.
Ralph goes to Piggy to use his glasses to light a fire, and at that moment,
Jack’s friendly feelings toward Ralph change to resentment. The boys roast the
pig, and the hunters dance wildly around the fire, singing and reenacting the
savagery of the hunt. Ralph declares that he is calling a meeting and stalks
down the hill toward the beach alone.
Analysis
At this point in the novel, the group of boys has lived on the island
for some time, and their society increasingly resembles a political state.
Although the issue of power and control is central to the boys’ lives from the
moment they elect a leader in the first chapter, the dynamics of the society
they form take time to develop. By this chapter, the boys’ community mirrors a
political society, with the faceless and frightened littluns
resembling the masses of common people and the various older boys filling
positions of power and importance with regard to these underlings. Some of the
older boys, including Ralph and especially Simon,
are kind to the littluns; others, including Roger and
Jack, are cruel to them. In short, two conceptions of power emerge on the
island, corresponding to the novel’s philosophical poles—civilization and
savagery. Simon, Ralph, and Piggy represent the idea that power should be used
for the good of the group and the protection of the littluns—a
stance representing the instinct toward civilization, order, and morality.
Roger and Jack represent the idea that power should enable those who hold it to
gratify their own desires and act on their impulses, treating the littluns as servants or objects for their own amusement—a
stance representing the instinct toward savagery.
As the tension between Ralph and Jack increases, we see more obvious
signs of a potential struggle for power. Although Jack has been deeply envious
of Ralph’s power from the moment Ralph was elected, the two do not come into
open conflict until this chapter, when Jack’s irresponsibility leads to the
failure of the signal fire. When the fire—a symbol of the boys’ connection to
civilization—goes out, the boys’ first chance of being rescued is thwarted.
Ralph flies into a rage, indicating that he is still governed by desire to
achieve the good of the whole group. But Jack, having just killed a pig, is too
excited by his success to care very much about the missed chance to escape the
island. Indeed, Jack’s bloodlust and thirst for power have overwhelmed his
interest in civilization. Whereas he previously justified his commitment to
hunting by claiming that it was for the good of the group, now he no longer
feels the need to justify his behavior at all. Instead, he indicates his new
orientation toward savagery by painting his face like a barbarian, leading wild
chants among the hunters, and apologizing for his failure to maintain the
signal fire only when Ralph seems ready to fight him over it.
The extent to which the strong boys bully the weak mirrors the extent to
which the island civilization disintegrates. Since the beginning, the boys have
bullied the whiny, intellectual Piggy whenever they needed to feel powerful and
important. Now, however, their harassment of Piggy intensifies, and Jack begins
to hit him openly. Indeed, despite his position of power and responsibility in
the group, Jack shows no qualms about abusing the other boys physically. Some
of the other hunters, especially Roger, seem even crueler and less governed by
moral impulses. The civilized Ralph, meanwhile, is unable to understand this
impulsive and cruel behavior, for he simply cannot conceive of how physical
bullying creates a self-gratifying sense of power. The boys’ failure to
understand each other’s points of view creates a gulf between them—one that
widens as resentment and open hostility set in.
Chapter
5
“What I mean is . . . Maybe
it’s only us . . .”
(See Important
Quotations Explained)
Summary
As Ralph
walks along the beach, he thinks about how much of life is an improvisation and
about how a considerable part of one’s waking life is spent watching one’s
feet. Ralph is frustrated with his hair, which is now long, mangy, and always
manages to fall in front of his eyes. He decides to call a meeting to attempt
to bring the group back into line. Late in the evening, he blows the conch
shell, and the boys gather on the beach.
At the meeting place, Ralph grips the conch shell and berates the boys
for their failure to uphold the group’s rules. They have not done anything
required of them: they refuse to work at building shelters, they do not gather
drinking water, they neglect the signal fire, and they do not even use the designated
toilet area. He restates the importance of the signal fire and attempts to
allay the group’s growing fear of beasts and monsters. The littluns,
in particular, are increasingly plagued by nightmare visions. Ralph says there
are no monsters on the island. Jack
likewise maintains that there is no beast, saying that everyone gets frightened
and it is just a matter of putting up with it. Piggy
seconds Ralph’s rational claim, but a ripple of fear runs through the group
nonetheless.
One of the littluns speaks up and claims that
he has actually seen a beast. When the others press him and ask where it could
hide during the daytime, he suggests that it might come up from the ocean at
night. This previously unthought-of explanation terrifies all the boys, and the
meeting plunges into chaos. Suddenly, Jack proclaims that if there is a beast,
he and his hunters will hunt it down and kill it. Jack torments Piggy and runs
away, and many of the other boys run after him. Eventually, only Ralph, Piggy,
and Simon
are left. In the distance, the hunters who have followed Jack
dance and chant.
Piggy urges Ralph to blow the conch shell and summon the boys back to the
group, but Ralph is afraid that the summons will go ignored and that any
vestige of order will then disintegrate. He tells Piggy and Simon that he might
relinquish leadership of the group, but his friends reassure him that the boys
need his guidance. As the group drifts off to sleep, the sound of a littlun crying echoes along the beach.
Analysis
The boys’ fear of the beast becomes an increasingly important aspect of
their lives, especially at night, from the moment the first littlun
claims to have seen a snake-monster in Chapter 2.
In this chapter, the fear of the beast finally explodes, ruining Ralph’s
attempt to restore order to the island and precipitating the final split
between Ralph and Jack. At this point, it remains uncertain whether or not the
beast actually exists. In any case, the beast serves as one of the most
important symbols in the novel, representing both the terror and the allure of
the primordial desires for violence, power, and savagery that lurk within every
human soul. In keeping with the overall allegorical nature of Lord of the Flies, the beast can be interpreted in
a number of different lights. In a religious reading, for instance, the beast
recalls the devil; in a Freudian reading, it can represent the id, the
instinctual urges and desires of the human unconscious mind. However we
interpret the beast, the littlun’s idea of the
monster rising from the sea terrifies the boys because it represents the
beast’s emergence from their own unconscious minds. As Simon realizes later in
the novel, the beast is not necessarily something that exists outside in the
jungle. Rather, it already exists inside each boy’s mind and soul, the capacity
for savagery and evil that slowly overwhelms them.
As the idea of the beast increasingly fills the boys with dread, Jack
and the hunters manipulate the boys’ fear of the beast to their own advantage.
Jack continues to hint that the beast exists when he knows that it probably
does not—a manipulation that leaves the rest of the group fearful and more
willing to cede power to Jack and his hunters, more willing to overlook
barbarism on Jack’s part for the sake of maintaining the “safety” of the group.
In this way, the beast indirectly becomes one of Jack’s primary sources of
power. At the same time, Jack effectively enables the boys themselves to act as
the beast—to express the instinct for savagery that civilization has previously
held in check. Because that instinct is natural and present within each human
being, Golding asserts that we are all capable of
becoming the beast.
Chapter
6
Summary
In the darkness late that night, Ralph
and Simon
carry a littlun back to the shelter before going to
sleep. As the boys sleep, military airplanes battle fiercely above the island.
None of the boys sees the explosions and flashes in the clouds because the
twins Sam
and Eric, who were supposed to watch the signal fire, have fallen asleep.
During the battle, a parachutist drifts down from the sky onto the island,
dead. His chute becomes tangled in some rocks and flaps in the wind, while his
shape casts fearful shadows on the ground. His head seems to rise and fall as
the wind blows.
When Sam and Eric wake up, they tend to the fire to make the flames
brighter. In the flickering firelight, they see the twisted form of the dead
parachutist and mistake the shadowy image for the figure of the dreaded beast.
They rush back to the camp, wake Ralph, and tell him what they have seen. Ralph
immediately calls for a meeting, at which the twins reiterate their claim that
a monster assaulted them. The boys, electrified and horrified by the twins’
claims, organize an expedition to search the island for monsters. They set out,
armed with wooden spears, and only Piggy
and the littluns remain behind.
Ralph allows Jack
to lead the search as the group sets out. The boys soon reach a part of the
island that none of them has ever explored before—a thin walkway that leads to
a hill dotted with small caves. The boys are afraid to go across the walkway
and around the ledge of the hill, so Ralph goes to investigate alone. He finds
that, although he was frightened when with the other boys, he quickly regains
his confidence when he explores on his own. Soon, Jack joins Ralph in the cave.
The group climbs the hill, and Ralph and Jack feel the old bond between
them rekindling. The other boys begin to play games, pushing rocks into the
sea, and many of them lose sight of the purpose of their expedition. Ralph angrily
reminds them that they are looking for the beast and says that they must return
to the other mountain so that they can rebuild the signal fire. The other boys,
lost in whimsical plans to build a fort and do other things on the new hill,
are displeased by Ralph’s commands but grudgingly obey.
Analysis
As fear about the beast grips the boys, the balance between civilization
and savagery on the island shifts, and Ralph’s control over the group
diminishes. At the beginning of the novel, Ralph’s hold on the other boys is
quite secure: they all understand the need for order and purposive action, even
if they do not always want to be bothered with rules. By this point, however,
as the conventions of civilization begin to erode among the boys, Ralph’s hold on
them slips, while Jack becomes a more powerful and menacing figure in the camp.
In Chapter 5, Ralph’s attempt to reason with the
boys is ineffective; by Chapter 6, Jack is able
to manipulate Ralph by asking him, in front of the other boys, whether he is frightened.
This question forces Ralph to act irrationally simply for the sake of
preserving his status among the other boys. This breakdown in the group’s
desire for morality, order, and civilization is increasingly enabled—or
excused—by the presence of the monster, the beast that has frightened the littluns since the beginning of the novel and that is
quickly assuming an almost religious significance in the camp.
The air battle and dead parachutist remind us of the larger setting of Lord of the Flies: though the boys lead an
isolated life on the island, we know that a bloody war is being waged elsewhere
in the world—a war that apparently is a terrible holocaust. All Golding tells us is that atom bombs have threatened
Chapter
7
Summary
The boys stop to eat as they travel toward the mountain. Ralph
gazes disconsolately at the choppy ocean and muses on the fact that the boys
have become slovenly and undisciplined. As he looks out at the vast expanse of
water, he feels that the ocean is like an impenetrable wall blocking any hope
the boys have of escaping the island. Simon,
however, lifts Ralph’s spirits by reassuring him that he will make it home.
That afternoon, the hunters find pig droppings, and Jack
suggests they hunt the pig while they continue to search for the beast. The
boys agree and quickly track a large boar, which leads them on a wild chase.
Ralph, who has never been on a hunt before, quickly gets caught up in the
exhilaration of the chase. He excitedly flings his spear at the boar, and
though it glances off the animal’s snout, Ralph is thrilled with his
marksmanship nonetheless. Jack holds up his bloodied arm, which he claims the
boar grazed with its tusks.
Although the boar escapes, the boys remain in a frenzy
in the aftermath of the hunt. Excited, they reenact the chase among themselves
with a boy named Robert playing the boar. They dance, chant, and jab Robert
with their spears, eventually losing sight of the fact that they are only
playing a game. Beaten and in danger, Robert tries to drag himself away. The
group nearly kills Robert before they remember themselves. When
Robert suggests that they use a real boar in the game next time, Jack replies
that they should use a littlun instead. The
boys laugh, delighted and stirred up by Jack’s audacity. Ralph tries to remind
everyone that they were only playing a game. Simon volunteers to return to the
beach to tell Piggy
and the littluns that the group will not return until
late that night.
Darkness falls, and Ralph proposes that they wait until morning to climb
the mountain because it will be difficult to hunt the monster at night. Jack
challenges Ralph to join the hunt, and Ralph finally agrees to go simply to
regain his position in the eyes of the group. Ralph, Roger,
and Jack start to climb the mountain, and then Ralph and Roger wait somewhere
near the top while Jack climbs alone to the summit. He returns, breathlessly
claiming to have seen the monster. Ralph and Roger climb up to have a look and
see a terrifying specter, a large, shadowy form with the shape of a giant ape,
making a strange flapping sound in the wind. Horrified, the boys hurry down the
mountain to warn the group.
Analysis
The boar hunt and the game the boys play afterward provide stark
reminders of the power of the human instinct toward savagery. Before this point
in the novel, Ralph has been largely baffled about why the other boys were more
concerned with hunting, dancing, bullying and feasting than with building huts,
maintaining the signal fire, and trying to be rescued. But when he joins the boar
hunt in this chapter, Ralph is unable to avoid the instinctive excitement of
the hunt and gets caught up in the other boys’ bloodlust. In this scene, Golding implies that every individual, however strong his
or her instinct toward civilization and order, has an undeniable, innate drive
toward savagery as well. After the hunt, the boys’ reenactment of the chase
provides a further reminder of the inextricable connection between the thrill
of the hunt and the desire for power. Robert, the boy who stands in for the
boar in the reenactment, is nearly killed as the other boys again get caught up
in their excitement and lose sight of the limits of the game in their mad
desire to kill. Afterward, when Jack suggests killing a littlun
in place of a pig, the group laughs. At this point, probably none of
them—except possibly Jack and Roger—would go so far as to actually carry out
such a plan. Nonetheless, the fact that the boys find the possibility exciting
rather than horrifying is rather unsettling.
By this point, the conflict between Ralph and Jack has escalated to a
real struggle for power, as Jack’s brand of violence and savagery almost
completely replaces Ralph’s disciplined community in the boys’ conception of
their lives on the island. Ralph’s exhilaration in the hunt and his
participation in the ritual that nearly kills Robert is, in a sense, a major
victory for Jack, for the experience shakes Ralph’s confidence in his own
instinct toward morality and order. As befits a power struggle in a savage
group, the conflict between Ralph and Jack manifests itself not as a
competition to prove who would be the better leader but instead as a
competition of sheer strength and courage. Just as Ralph boldly climbed the
hill alone to prove his bravery in the previous chapter, Jack goes up the
mountain alone now. It is also significant that Ralph discovers nothing, while
Jack discovers what he thinks is the beast: while Ralph does not believe in the
beast, the beast constitutes a major part of Jack’s picture of life on the island.
Jack increases his leverage within the group by goading Ralph into
acting rashly and unwisely, against his tendency toward levelheadedness—a
manipulation that weakens Ralph’s position in the group. Although Ralph
realizes that it is foolish to hunt the beast at night, he knows that, in a
society that values strength, he cannot risk appearing to be a coward. As a
result, he assents to going up the mountainside at night. Ultimately, Ralph’s
decision to explore the mountain at night costs him the opportunity to prove to
the others that Sam
and Eric did not see the beast: had the boys climbed the mountain in the
daylight as Ralph wished, they would have seen the dead parachutist for what it
was. Because they go at night, however, they see the parachutist distorted by
shadows and believe it to be the beast. In a sense, the degree to which each
boy is prone to see the beast mirrors the degree to which he gives in to his
instinct toward savagery. This connection emphasizes the idea that the beast is
a symbolic manifestation of the boys’ primitive inner instincts.
Chapter
8
“There isn’t anyone to help
you. Only me. And I’m the Beast . . . Fancy thinking
the Beast was something you could hunt and kill!”
(See Important
Quotations Explained)
Summary
The next morning, the news of the monster has the boys in a state of
uproar as they gather on the beach. Piggy,
who was not on the mountain the night before, is baffled by the other boys’
claims to have seen the monster. Jack
seizes the conch shell and blows into it clumsily, calling for an assembly.
Jack tells the others that there is definitely a beast on the mountain and goes
on to claim that Ralph
is a coward who should be removed from his leadership role. The other boys,
however, refuse to vote Ralph out of power. Enraged, Jack
storms away from the group, saying that he is leaving and that anyone who likes
is welcome to join him.
Deeply troubled, Ralph does not know what to do. Piggy, meanwhile, is
thrilled to see Jack go, and Simon
suggests that they all return to the mountain to search for the beast. The
other boys are too afraid to act on his suggestion, however. Ralph slips into a
depression, but Piggy cheers him up with an idea: they should build a new
signal fire, on the beach rather than on the mountain. Piggy’s
idea restores Ralph’s hope that they will be rescued. The boys set to work and
build a new fire, but many of them sneak away into the night to join Jack’s
group. Piggy tries to convince Ralph that they are better off without the
deserters.
Along another stretch of sand, Jack gathers his new tribe and declares himself the chief. In a savage frenzy, the hunters kill a
sow, and Roger
drives his spear forcefully into the sow’s anus. Then the boys leave the sow’s
head on a sharpened stake in the jungle as an offering to the beast. As they
place the head upright in the forest, the black blood drips down the sow’s
teeth, and the boys run away.
As Piggy and Ralph sit in the old camp discussing the deserters, the
hunters from Jack’s tribe descend upon them, shrieking and whooping. The
hunters steal burning sticks from the fire on the beach. Jack tells Ralph’s
followers that they are welcome to come to his feast that night and even to
join his tribe. The hungry boys are tempted by the idea of pig’s meat.
Just before Jack’s tribe raids the beach, Simon slips away from the camp
and returns to the jungle glade where he previously sat marveling at the beauty
of nature. Now, however, he finds the sow’s head impaled on the stake in the
middle of the clearing. Simon sits alone in the clearing, staring with rapt
attention at the impaled pig’s head, which is now swarming with flies. The
sight mesmerizes him, and it even seems as if the head comes to life. The head
speaks to Simon in the voice of the “Lord
of the Flies,” ominously declaring that Simon will never be able to escape
him, for he lies within all human beings. He also promises to have some “fun”
with Simon. Terrified and troubled by the apparition, Simon collapses in a
faint.
Analysis
The excitement the boys felt when Jack suggests killing a littlun in Chapter 7 comes to grotesque fruition in Chapter
8, during the vicious and bloody hunt following
Jack’s rise to power and formation of his new tribe. Jack’s ascent arises
directly from the supposed confirmation of the existence of the beast. Once the
boys, having mistaken the dead parachutist for a monster, come to believe fully
in the existence of the beast, all the remaining power of civilization and
culture on the island diminishes rapidly. In a world where the beast is real,
rules and morals become weak and utterly dispensable. The original democracy Ralph
leads devolves into a cult-like totalitarianism, with Jack as a tyrant and the
beast as both an enemy and a revered god. We see the depth of the boys’ growing
devotion to the idea of the beast in their impalement of the sow’s head on the
stake as an offering to the beast. No longer simply a childish nightmare, the
beast assumes a primal, religious importance in the boys’ lives. Jack uses the
beast ingeniously to rule his savage kingdom, and each important character in Lord of the Flies struggle to come to terms with
the beast. Piggy, who remains steadfastly scientific and rational at this point
in the novel, is simply baffled and disgusted. Ralph, who has seen what he
thinks is the beast, is listless and depressed, unsure of how to reconcile his
civilized ideals with the sight he saw on the mountaintop. But the most complex
reaction of all comes from one of the novel’s most complex characters—Simon.
Simon’s confrontation with the Lord of the Flies—the sow’s head impaled
on a stake in the forest glade—is arguably the most important scene in the
novel, and one that has attracted the most attention from critics. Some critics
have interpreted the scene as a retelling of Jesus’ confrontation with Satan
during his forty days in the wilderness, a story originally told in the Gospels
of the New Testament. Indeed, many critics have described Simon as a Christ
figure, for he has a mystical connection to the environment, possesses a
saintly and selfless disposition, and meets a tragic and sacrificial death.
Others tie the scene into a larger Freudian reading of Lord of the Flies, claiming that its symbols
correspond exactly to the elements of the Freudian unconscious (with Jack as
the id, Ralph as the ego, and Piggy as the superego). Lord of the Flies may indeed support these and a
number of other readings, not necessarily at the exclusion of one another.
Indeed, many differences between Simon and Jesus complicate the
comparison between the two and prevent us from seeing Simon as a
straightforward Christ figure. Simon, unlike Jesus, is not a supernatural
being, and none of the boys could possibly find salvation from the Lord
of the Flies through faith in Simon. Rather, Simon’s terror and fainting
spell indicate the horrific, persuasive power of the instinct for chaos and
savagery that the Lord of the Flies represents. Simon has a deep human insight
in the glade, for he realizes that it is not a real, physical beast that
inspires the hunters’ behavior but rather the barbaric instinct that lies deep
within each of them. Fearing that this instinct lies embedded within himself as well, Simon seems to hear the Lord of the Flies
speaking with him, threatening him with what he fears the most. Unable to stand
the sight any longer, Simon collapses into a very human faint.
In all, Simon is a complex figure who does not fit neatly into the
matrix framed by Jack at the one end and Ralph at the other. Simon is kindhearted
and firmly on the side of order and civilization, but he is also intrigued by
the idea of the beast and feels a deep connection with nature and the
wilderness on the island. Whereas Jack and Roger connect with the wilderness on
a level that plunges them into primal lust and violence, Simon finds it a
source of mystical comfort and joy. Simon’s closeness with nature and his
unwaveringly kind nature throughout the novel make him the only character who
does not feel morality as an artificial imposition of society. Instead, we
sense that Simon’s morality and goodness are a way of life that proceeds
directly and easily from nature. Lord of the Flies
is deeply preoccupied with the problem of fundamental, natural human evil—amid
which Simon is the sole figure of fundamental, natural good. In a wholly
nonreligious way, Simon complicates the philosophical statement the novel makes
about human beings, for he represents a completely separate alternative to the
spectrum between civilization and savagery of which Ralph and Jack are a part.
In the end, Simon is both natural and good in a world where such a combination
seems impossible.
Chapter
9
Summary
Simon
awakens and finds the air dark and humid with an approaching storm. His nose is
bleeding, and he staggers toward the mountain in a daze. He crawls up the hill
and, in the failing light, sees the dead pilot with his flapping parachute.
Watching the parachute rise and fall with the wind, Simon realizes that the
boys have mistaken this harmless object for the deadly beast that has plunged
their entire group into chaos. When Simon sees the corpse of the parachutist,
he begins to vomit. When he is finished, he untangles the parachute lines,
freeing the parachute from the rocks. Anxious to prove to the group that the
beast is not real after all, Simon stumbles toward the distant light of the
fire at Jack’s
feast to tell the other boys what he has seen.
Piggy
and Ralph
go to the feast with the hopes that they will be able to keep some control over
events. At the feast, the boys are laughing and eating the roasted pig. Jack
sits like a king on a throne, his face painted like a savage, languidly issuing
commands, and waited on by boys acting as his servants. After the large meal,
Jack extends an invitation to all of Ralph’s followers to join his tribe. Most
of them accept, despite Ralph’s attempts to dissuade them. As it starts to
rain, Ralph asks Jack how he plans to weather the storm considering he has not
built any shelters. In response, Jack orders his tribe to do its wild hunting
dance.
Chanting and dancing in several separate circles along the beach, the
boys are caught up in a kind of frenzy. Even Ralph and Piggy, swept away by the
excitement, dance on the fringes of the group. The boys again reenact the
hunting of the pig and reach a high pitch of frenzied energy as they chant and
dance. Suddenly, the boys see a shadowy figure creep out of the forest—it is
Simon. In their wild state, however, the boys do not recognize him. Shouting
that he is the beast, the boys descend upon Simon and start to tear him apart
with their bare hands and teeth. Simon tries desperately to explain what has
happened and to remind them of who he is, but he trips and plunges over the
rocks onto the beach. The boys fall on him violently and kill him.
The storm explodes over the island. In the whipping rain, the boys run
for shelter. Howling wind and waves wash Simon’s mangled corpse into the ocean,
where it drifts away, surrounded by glowing fish. At the same time, the wind
blows the body of the parachutist off the side of the mountain and onto the
beach, sending the boys screaming into the darkness.
Analysis
With the brutal, animalistic murder of Simon, the last vestige of
civilized order on the island is stripped away, and brutality and chaos take
over. By this point, the boys in Jack’s camp are all but inhuman savages, and
Ralph’s few remaining allies suffer dwindling spirits and consider joining
Jack. Even Ralph and Piggy themselves get swept up in the
ritual dance around Jack’s banquet fire. The storm that batters the
island after Simon’s death pounds home the catastrophe of the murder and
physically embodies the chaos and anarchy that have overtaken the island.
Significantly, the storm also washes away the bodies of Simon and the
parachutist, eradicating proof that the beast does not exist.
Jack makes the beast into a godlike figure, a kind of totem he uses to
rule and manipulate the members of his tribe. He attributes to the beast both
immortality and the power to change form, making it an enemy to be feared and an
idol to be worshiped. The importance of the figure of the beast in the novel
cannot be overstated, for it gives Jack’s tribe a common enemy (the beast), a
common system of belief (their conviction that the mythical beast exists), a
reason to obey Jack (protection from the beast), and even a developing system
of primitive symbolism and iconography (face paint and the Lord of the Flies).
In a sense, Simon’s murder is an almost inevitable outcome of his
encounter with the Lord
of the Flies in Chapter 8. During the
confrontation in the previous chapter, the Lord of the Flies foreshadows
Simon’s death by promising to have some “fun” with him. Although Simon’s vision
teaches him that the beast exists inside all human beings, his confrontation
with the beast is not complete until he comes face to face with the beast that
exists within the other boys. Indeed, when the boys kill Simon, they are acting
on the savage instinct that the beast represents. Additionally, the manner of
Simon’s death continues the parallels between Simon and Jesus: both die
sacrificial deaths after learning profound truths about human morality. But
Simon’s death differs from Jesus’ in ways that complicate the idea that Simon
is simply a Christ figure. Although Jesus and Simon both die sacrificial
deaths, Jesus was killed for his beliefs, whereas Simon is killed because of
the other boys’ delusions. Jesus died after conveying his message to the world,
whereas Simon dies before he is able to speak to the boys. In the biblical
tradition, Jesus dies to alleviate the burden of mankind’s sin; Simon’s death,
on the other hand, simply intensifies the burden of sin pressing down upon the
island. According to the Bible, Jesus’ death shows others the way to salvation;
Simon’s death exemplifies the power of evil within the human soul.
Chapter
10
Summary
The next morning, Ralph
and Piggy
meet on the beach. They are bruised and sore and feel awkward and deeply
ashamed of their behavior the previous night. Piggy, who is unable to confront
his role in Simon’s
death, attributes the tragedy to mere accident. But Ralph, clutching the conch
desperately and laughing hysterically, insists that they have been participants
in a murder. Piggy whiningly denies the charge. The two are now virtually
alone; everyone except Sam
and Eric and a handful of littluns has joined Jack’s
tribe, which is now headquartered at the Castle Rock, the mountain on the
island.
At the Castle Rock, Jack rules with absolute power. Boys are punished
for no apparent reason. Jack ties up and beats a boy named Wilfred and then
warns the boys against Ralph and his small group, saying that they are a danger
to the tribe. The entire tribe, including Jack, seems to believe that Simon
really was the beast, and that the beast is capable of assuming any disguise.
Jack states that they must continue to guard against the beast, for it is never
truly dead. He says that he and two other hunters, Maurice and Roger,
should raid Ralph’s camp to obtain more fire and that they will hunt again
tomorrow.
The boys at Ralph’s camp drift off to sleep, depressed and losing
interest in the signal fire. Ralph sleeps fitfully, plagued by nightmares. They
are awakened by howling and shrieking and are suddenly attacked by a group of
Jack’s hunters. The hunters badly beat Ralph and his companions, who do not
even know why they were assaulted, for they gladly would have shared the fire
with the other boys. But Piggy knows why, for the hunters have stolen his
glasses, and with them, the power to make fire.
Analysis
In the period of relative calm following Simon’s murder, we see that the
power dynamic on the island has shifted completely to Jack’s camp. The
situation that has been slowly brewing now comes to a full boil: Jack’s power
over the island is complete, and Ralph is left an outcast, subject to Jack’s
whims. As civilization and order have eroded among the boys, so has Ralph’s
power and influence, to the extent that none of the boys protests when Jack
declares him an enemy of the tribe. As Jack’s power reaches its
We learn a great deal about the different boys’ characters through their
varying reactions to Simon’s death. Piggy, who is used to being right because
of his sharp intellect, finds it impossible to accept any guilt for what happened.
Instead, he sets his mind to rationalizing his role in the affair. Ralph
refuses to accept Piggy’s easy rationalization that
Simon’s death was accidental and insists that the death was a murder. Yet the
word “murder,” a term associated with the rational system of law and a
civilized moral code, now seems strangely at odds with the collective madness
of the killing. The foreignness of the word in the context of the savagery on
the island reminds us how far the boys have traveled along the moral spectrum
since the time when they were forced to follow the rules of adults.
Jack, for his part, has become an expert in using the boys’ fear of the
beast to enhance his own power. He claims that Simon really was the beast,
implying that the boys have a better grasp of the truth in their frenzied
bloodlust than in their calmer moments of reflection. This conclusion is not
surprising coming from Jack, who seems almost addicted to that state of
bloodlust and frenzy. Jack’s ability to convince the other boys that the state
of bloodlust is a valid way of interacting with the world erodes their sense of
morality even further and enables Jack to manipulate them even more.
Chapter
11
Summary
The next morning, Ralph
and his few companions try to light the fire in the cold air, but the attempt
is hopeless without Piggy’s glasses. Piggy,
squinting and barely able to see, suggests that Ralph hold a meeting to discuss
their options. Ralph blows the conch shell, and the boys who have not gone to
join Jack’s
tribe assemble on the beach. They decide that their only choice is to travel to
the Castle Rock to make Jack and his followers see reason.
Ralph decides to take the conch shell to the Castle Rock, hoping that it
will remind Jack’s followers of his former authority. Once at Jack’s camp,
however, Ralph’s group encounters armed guards. Ralph blows the conch shell,
but the guards tell them to leave and throw stones at them, aiming to miss.
Suddenly, Jack and a group of hunters emerge from the forest, dragging a dead
pig. Jack and Ralph immediately face off. Jack commands Ralph to leave his
camp, and Ralph demands that Jack return Piggy’s
glasses. Jack attacks Ralph, and they fight. Ralph struggles to make Jack
understand the importance of the signal fire to any hope the boys might have of
ever being rescued, but Jack orders his hunters to capture Sam
and Eric and tie them up. This sends Ralph into a fury, and he lunges at
Jack.
Ralph and Jack fight for a second time. Piggy cries out shrilly,
struggling to make himself heard over the brawl. As
Piggy tries to speak, hoping to remind the group of the importance of rules and
rescue, Roger
shoves a massive rock down the mountainside. Ralph, who hears the rock falling,
dives and dodges it. But the boulder strikes Piggy, shatters the conch shell he
is holding, and knocks him off the mountainside to his death on the rocks
below. Jack throws his spear at Ralph, and the other boys quickly join in.
Ralph escapes into the jungle, and Roger and Jack begin to torture Sam and
Eric, forcing them to submit to Jack’s authority and join his tribe.
Analysis
In chaos that ensues when Ralph’s and Jack’s camps come into direct
conflict, two important symbols in the novel—the conch shell and the Lord
of the Flies—are destroyed. Roger, the character least able to understand
the civilizing impulse, crushes the conch shell as he looses the boulder and
kills Piggy, the character least able to understand the savage impulse. As we
see in the next chapter, Ralph, the boy most closely associated with
civilization and order, destroys the Lord
of the Flies, the governing totem of the dark impulses within each
individual. With Piggy’s death and Sam and Eric’s
forced conversion to Jack’s tribe, Ralph is left alone on the island, doomed to
defeat by the forces of bloodlust and primal chaos.
Appropriately, Ralph’s defeat comes in the form of the hunt, which has
been closely associated with the savage instinct throughout Lord of the Flies. Ironically, although hunting is
necessary to the survival of the group—there is little other food on the island
aside from fruit, which has made many of the boys
sick—it is also what drives them into deadly barbarism. From the beginning of
the novel, the hunters have been the ones who have pioneered the way into the
realm of savagery and violence. Furthermore, the conflict between Ralph and
Jack has often manifested itself as the conflict between the interests of the
hunters and the interests of the rest of the group. In Chapter 3, for instance, the boys argue over whether Jack’s
followers should be allowed to hunt or forced to build huts with Ralph and Simon.
Now that Jack and the forces of savagery have risen to unchallenged prominence
on the island, the hunt has thoroughly won out over the more peaceful
civilizing instinct. Rather than successfully mitigate the power of the hunt
with the rules and structures of civilization, Ralph becomes a victim of the
savage forces the hunt represents—he has literally become the prey.
Chapter
12
Ralph wept for the end of
innocence, the darkness of man’s heart, and the fall through the air of a true,
wise friend called Piggy.
(See Important
Quotations Explained)
Summary
Ralph
hides in the jungle and thinks miserably about the chaos that has overrun the
island. He thinks about the deaths of Simon
and Piggy
and realizes that all vestiges of civilization have been stripped from the
island. He stumbles across the sow’s head, the Lord
of the Flies, now merely a gleaming white skull—as white as the conch
shell, he notes. Angry and disgusted, Ralph knocks the skull to the ground and
takes the stake it was impaled on to use as a weapon against Jack.
That night, Ralph sneaks down to the camp at the Castle Rock and finds Sam
and Eric guarding the entrance. The twins give him food but refuse to join
him. They tell him that Jack plans to send the entire tribe after him the next
day. Ralph hides in a thicket and falls asleep. In the morning, he hears Jack
talking and torturing one of the twins to find out where Ralph is hiding.
Several boys try to break into the thicket by rolling a boulder, but the
thicket is too dense. A group of boys tries to fight their way into the
thicket, but Ralph fends them off. Then Ralph smells smoke and realizes that
Jack has set the jungle on fire in order to smoke him out. Ralph abandons his
hiding place and fights his way past Jack and a group of his hunters. Chased by
a group of body-painted warrior-boys wielding sharp wooden spears, Ralph
plunges frantically through the undergrowth, looking for a place to hide. At
last, he ends up on the beach, where he collapses in exhaustion, his pursuers
close behind.
Suddenly, Ralph looks up to see a naval officer standing over him. The
officer tells the boy that his ship has come to the island after seeing the
blazing fire in the jungle. Jack’s hunters reach the beach and stop in their
tracks upon seeing the officer. The officer matter-of-factly assumes the boys
are up to, as he puts it, “fun and games.” When he learns what has happened on
the island, the officer is reproachful: how could this group of boys, he
asks—and English boys at that—have lost all reverence for the rules of
civilization in so short a time? For his part, Ralph is overwhelmed by the
knowledge that he has been rescued, that he will escape the island after coming
so close to a violent death. He begins to sob, as do the other boys. Moved and
embarrassed, the naval officer turns his back so that the boys may regain their
composure.
Analysis
After Ralph’s tense, exciting stand against the hunters, the ending of Lord of the Flies is rife with irony. Ralph had
thought the signal fire—a symbol of civilization—was the only way to lure
rescuers to the island. Ironically, although it is indeed a fire that lures a
ship to the island, it is not an ordered, controlled signal fire but rather the
haphazard forest fire Jack’s hunters set solely for the purpose of killing
Ralph. As we have seen, Ralph has worked tirelessly to retain the structure of
civilization and maximize the boys’ chances of being rescued. Now, when all he
can do is struggle to stay alive as long as possible, a deus
ex machina (an improbable or unexpected device or
character that suddenly appears to resolve a situation) appears, at the last
possible moment, in the form of the naval officer who brings the boys back to
the world of law, order, and society. Golding’s use
of irony in the last chapter blurs the boundary between civilization and
savagery and implies that the two are more closely connected than the story has
illustrated. Ultimately, the boys’ appalling savagery brings about the rescue
that their coordinated and purposeful efforts were unable to achieve.
Much of the irony at the end of the novel stems from Golding’s
portrayal of the naval officer. Although the naval officer saves Ralph, the
ending of Lord of the Flies still is not
particularly happy, and the moment in which the officer encounters the boys is
not one of untainted joy. The officer says that he is unable to understand how
upstanding British lads could have acted with such poor form. Ironically,
though, this “civilized” officer is himself part of an adult world in which
violence and war go hand in hand with civilization and social order. He reacts
to the savage children with disgust, yet this disgust is tinged with hypocrisy.
Similarly, the children are so shocked by the officer’s presence, and are now
psychologically so far removed from his world, that they do not instantly
celebrate his arrival. Rather, they stand before him baffled and bewildered.
Even Ralph, whose life has literally been saved by the presence of the ship,
weeps tears of grief rather than joy. For Ralph, as for the other boys, nothing
can ever be as it was before coming to the island of the Lord
of the Flies.
Key Facts
Full title
· Lord of the Flies
Author
· William Golding
Type of work
· Novel
Genre
· Allegory;
adventure story; castaway fiction; loss-of-innocence fiction
Language
· English
Time and place written
· Early 1950s;
Date of first publication
· 1954
Publisher
· Faber and Faber
Narrator
· The story is
told by an anonymous third-person narrator who conveys the events of the novel
without commenting on the action or intruding into the story.
Point of View
· The narrator
speaks in the third person, primarily focusing on Ralph’s point of view but
following Jack and Simon in certain episodes. The narrator is omniscient and
gives us access to the characters’ inner thoughts.
Tone
· Dark; violent;
pessimistic; tragic; unsparing
Tense
· Immediate past
Setting (Time)
· Near future
Setting (Place)
· A deserted
tropical island
Protagonist
· Ralph
Major conflict
· Free from the
rules that adult society formerly imposed on them, the boys marooned on the
island struggle with the conflicting human instincts that exist within each of
them—the instinct to work toward civilization and order and the instinct to
descend into savagery, violence, and chaos.
Rising action
· The boys
assemble on the beach. In the election for leader, Ralph defeats Jack, who is
furious when he loses. As the boys explore the island, tension grows between
Jack, who is interested only in hunting, and Ralph, who believes most of the
boys’ efforts should go toward building shelters and maintaining a signal fire.
When rumors surface that there is some sort of beast living on the island, the
boys grow fearful, and the group begins to divide into two camps supporting
Ralph and Jack, respectively. Ultimately, Jack forms a new tribe
altogether, fully immersing himself in the savagery of the hunt.
Climax
· Simon
encounters the Lord of the Flies in the forest glade and realizes that the
beast is not a physical entity but rather something that exists within each boy
on the island. When Simon tries to approach the other boys and convey this
message to them, they fall on him and kill him savagely.
Falling action
· Virtually all
the boys on the island abandon Jack and Piggy and descend further into savagery
and chaos. When the other boys kill Piggy and destroy the conch shell, Ralph
flees from Jack’s tribe and encounters the naval officer on the beach.
Themes
· Civilization
vs. savagery; the loss of innocence; innate human evil
Motifs
· Biblical
parallels; natural beauty; the bullying of the weak by the strong; the outward
trappings of savagery (face paint, spears, totems, chants)
Symbols
· The conch
shell; Piggy’s glasses; the signal fire; the beast;
the Lord of the Flies; Ralph, Piggy, Jack, Simon, and Roger
Foreshadowing
· The rolling of
the boulders off the Castle Rock in Chapter 6 foreshadows Piggy’s death; the Lord of the Flies’s
promise to have some “fun” with Simon foreshadows Simon’s death