The Lord of the Flies

The Lord Of The Flies

By: William Golding

This novel is about an adventure into the back regions of the mind and the part of our brain that is concealed by the ordinary tasks of modern society. It is a struggle between Ralph and Jack, the boys and the Beast, good and evil.

The story starts with a large group of boys crawling on to the beach of a tropical island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. Their plane had been shot down during World War II. Ralph is elected as the leader of the group and Jack decides to be the hunter and provide food for the group. The boys explore the island. They can't believe that they are on their own but their adventuring proves it. While adventuring, Jack's first try at slaying a wild boar fails.

The story is set on an uninhabited island somewhere in the ocean during World War II, " the second global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945 that involved civilian populations on an unprecedented scale"(World War III).

The mood begins light and happy and as the novel progresses and the boys start to battle, it becomes dark and savage. The book is written in a way that the mood can change from chapter to chapter.

Ralph is a tall, blond boy who is elected chief. He is pictured as the leader when he blows the conch shell in the beginning of the story. He is one of the oldest in the group. He is very charismatic and shows obvious common sense. He's diplomatic and a natural leader. He tries to keep civilized order on the island until they can be rescued. He represents human beings' civilizing instinct. Piggy is a short, fat boy that has asthma. His vision is bad, so he wears thick glasses. He is the most intelligent boy on the island. He acts as Ralph's assistant. He represents the scientific and sane side of civilization.

Jack, a red headed, skinny boy is the leader of the choir. He wants to be chief and becomes wild and cruel as the story progresses. Jack is skillful at telling the other boys what they want to hear and actually manipulating them. He represents the dark, savage side of human nature. Simon is a skinny, shy, and silent boy with black hair. The other boys see him as an odd boy because he spends a lot of time alone thinking. Simon is the only natural good individual on the island. For example, he picks fruit for the boys that can't reach, helps Piggy get his glasses when they are knocked off by jack, and actually does the chores and obeys all commands from his superiors. He represents the goodness of human nature. Roger is the cruel boy who messes with the littluns and likes to hurt others. He is more evil than Jack and is his henchman or torturer. Sam and Eric are twins that are always together. They think the same and finish each other's sentences. They so close that the other boys refer to them as one person, Samneric.

In the middle of World War II, a plane evacuating a group of schoolboys from Britain is shot down over a deserted tropical island. Two of the boys, Ralph and Piggy, meet up after getting out of the trench on the island that the plane dug. They discover a conch shell in a pool on the beach, and Piggy realizes it could be used as a horn to call the other boys. When Ralph blows the horn for a while, boys start appearing from all angles of the forest. Once assembled, the boys set about electing a leader and think up a way to be rescued. They choose Ralph as their chief, and Ralph chooses another boy, Jack, to be in charge of his choir who will hunt food for the entire group. 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 glasses. They don't pay fully attention to the fire and the flames quickly surround the forest. A lot of dead wood burns out of control, and one of the youngest boys in the group disappears. They think he might have 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 and Jack, becomes obsessed with hunting. When a ship passes by on the horizon one day, Ralph and Piggy notice that the signal fire has burned out. Furious, Ralph confronts Jack, but he has just come up the hill with his first kill. The hunters start acting out how they chased and killed the pig. Piggy criticizes Jack and gets hit across the face by him. They have a feast in the mountain, which calms things down for a little while. Ralph calls an assembly on the beach. Once down there, Ralph blows the conch shell and talks to the boys and tells them 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 frightened by nightmares 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 realistically, asking where such a monster could possibly hide during the daytime. One of the littluns says that it could hide in the sea. That terrifies the entire group.

While the group is asleep that night, military planes engage in a battle high above the island. The boys 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 huge shape of his parachute and hear the strange flapping noises it makes. They rush down the mountain and report to Ralph that they have seen the beast and it was on top of the mountain. The boys arrange a hunting mission to search and kill the monster. Jack and Ralph, who do not like each other even more than the beginning, travel up the mountain. They see the shape of the parachute from a distance and think that it looks like a giant, deformed ape. They quickly run away. 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 gathers the remaining boys to build a new signal fire on the beach. They start building but before they have finished, most of them have slipped away to join Jack. Jack declares himself the chief of the new tribe of hunters and organizes a hunt and a violent,