Lord of the Flies

“The fat boy waited to be asked his name in turn but this proffer of acquaintance was not made; the fair boy called Ralph smiled vaguely, stood up, and began to make his way once more toward the lagoon. The fat boy hung steadily at his shoulder.” 

In the beginning, Ralph doesn’t care about Piggy. Piggy, however, needs Ralph. He tethers himself to Ralph because he sees Ralph as a leader. Piggy is weak: he is fat and has asthma, which Ralph constantly makes fun of: “Sucks to your ass-mar!” (13). In the early pages of the novel, Ralph isn’t a leader, and he isn’t fair to Piggy. He is delighted that there are no grownups. Later, when he sees that he needs Piggy, he will be kind. In this passage, he does not yet know that he will have to be the one to grow up. He will see the responsibilities of leadership, and when he does, he will consider giving up his ambitions.

“He jumped down from the terrace. The sand was thick over his black shoes and the heat hit him. He became conscious of the weight of clothes, kicked his shoes off fiercely, and ripped off each stocking with its elastic garter in a single movement. Then he leapt back on the terrace, pulled off his shirt, and stood there among the skull-like coconuts with green shadows from the palms and the forest sliding over his skin. He undid the snake-clasp of his belt, lugged off his shorts and pants, and stood there naked, looking at the dazzling beach and the water.” 

Even after only a time on the island, Ralph is changing. He is becoming less civilized and more animal-like. He sheds his clothing and stands naked as an animal. His clothing is a mark of the civilization he has left behind, and already he sheds it, in the same way a snake sheds its skin to become something new. The shadows of the jungle color him green, like the jungle itself, and the skull-like coconuts and snake-clasp of his belt illustrate that inside every civilized boy are animal parts and likenesses.

“He patted the palm trunk softly, and, forced at last to believe in the reality of the island, laughed delightedly again and stood on his head. He turned neatly on to his feet, jumped down to the beach, knelt and swept a double armful of sand into a pile against his chest. Then he sat back and looked at the water with bright, excited eyes.” 

Instead of being scared or worried as Piggy is, Ralph delights in this new world. He pats the trunk of the tree almost as someone would pinch themselves because he does not want to wake from this dream. For him, it is a dream: a world without grownups, without any rules or regulations, where he can do whatever he wants, without anyone stopping him. Ralphsoon learns, however, that they can’t just do whatever they want, not if they are to survive.

“‘I expect we’ll want to know all their names,’ said the fat boy, ‘and make a list. We ought to have a meeting.’

Ralph did not take the hint, so the fat boy was forced to continue.”

The “fat boy,” who will soon be named Piggy, is the voice of order. He wants to make lists and account for everyone. This would be the beginning of government. Ralph, however, is not interested in lists, accounting, or government at this point. He revels in the freedom, as the littluns will, until their fears get the better of them. Piggy also wants Ralph to acknowledge him. He is trying to get Ralph to ask his name, but Ralph is uninterested in knowing it. He will come to rely on Piggy’s intelligence, but he hasn’t learned yet that he needs others—which will be the major change for Ralph in the novel. 

“‘They used to call me Piggy.’

Ralph shrieked with laughter. He jumped up.

‘Piggy! Piggy!’

Piggy clasped his hands in apprehension.

‘I said I didn’t want—’

‘Piggy! Piggy!’” 

Ralph’s true nature is revealed here. He is introduced as “fair” (7), and later he tries to force order and civility, but his true nature is not that different from Jack’s. He delights in Piggy’s unfortunate nickname, ignoring Piggy’s request not to be called that. Ralph is also naming Piggy an animal, but one obviously not as strong as Ralph, as a pig is an animal to be hunted. 

“‘Didn’t you hear what the pilot said? About the atom bomb? They’re all dead.’” 

Piggy’s quote implies that the children on the island are the last remaining people in the world. Humanity has ended itself with war, and these children are the last—the last alive, the last hope for civilization to continue. While some like Piggy use this notion to drive the concept of a civilized island, others revel in the freedom from oppressive order.

“Ralph grasped the idea and hit the shell with air from his diaphragm. Immediately the thing sounded. A deep, harsh note boomed under the palms, spread through the intricacies of the forest, and echoed back from the pink granite of the mountain. Clouds of birds rose from the treetops, and something squealed and ran into the undergrowth.” 

Ralph here uses an ancient, primitive horn to call the others. There are shades of the hunt being sounded here, as well as a reverting back to primal technologies. There is alsothe idea that Ralph will lead them, that he has the power to summon others, and that in the summoning, he can force them to his will. However, the use of the tool is Piggy’s idea. It was his idea to sound the conch, and his idea to call the others. Piggy represents civilization and knowledge, but Ralph has the breath to execute the idea. He is stronger, louder, and more fit.

“This toy of voting was almost as pleasing as the conch. Jack started to protest but the clamor changed from the general wish for a chief to an election by acclaim of Ralph himself. None of the boys could have found good reason for this; what intelligence had been shown was traceable to Piggy, while the most obvious leader was Jack. But there was a stillness about Ralph as he sat that marked him out: there was his size, and attractive appearance; and most obscurely, yet most powerfully, there was the conch. The being that had blown that, had sat waiting for them on the platform with the delicate thing balanced on his knees, was set apart.” 

The act of voting replicates a form of government or civilization. The children eschew the traditional means of choosing a leader.They don’t recognize Piggy’s intelligence or Jack’s leadership abilities, but instead rely on the intangible: the good looks of Ralph, the quiet yet self-assuredness of his stature, and his voice, the primal calling of the conch. They are voting for his animal nature, not what might lead them in traditional government. They are voting for who they see as the strongest among them. 

“The great rock loitered, poised on one toe, decided not to return, moved through the air, fell, struck, turned over, leapt droning through the air, and smashed a deep hole in the canopy of the forest. Echoes and birds flew, white and pink dust floated, the forest further down shook as with the passage of an enraged monster.” 

The boys, right before this passage, claim they are explorers, but here they become destroyers. They push the rock off the cliff for no reason other than to see it fall. They inherently want to see the explosion of rock, the destruction of the forest, the upsetting of animals, and the loud noise of the crash. Figuratively, there is an enraged monster in the forest, and it is their nature. This passage also serves as foreshadowing of the beast inside them, and of the murder of Piggy. 

“‘This belongs to us.’” 

As Ralph, Simon, and Jack climb to the top of the mountain in the center of the island, Ralph immediately lays claim to all he sees. He must name it captured; he must stake his claim to the land. He is, in a way, marking his territory, drawing lines on a map, proclaiming his ownership of everything. Ralph is replicating what humans traditionally do—even in a world where ostensibly no one else is alive after an atom bomb, Ralph feels the need to claim ownership of land, even land where no one else lives. 

“Ralph sat on a fallen trunk, his left side to the sun. On his right were most of the choir; on his left the larger boys who had not known each other before the evacuation; before him small children squatted in the grass.” 

In less than a day, the children are already arranging themselves by size. Ralph, the leader, and the larger boys all have seats among the fallen logs. The larger boys didn’t know each other before, but now they recognize their shared attribute: size, which equals strength. Here, on this island, strength is the greatest attribute, and all of them recognize this without acknowledging it. The smaller boys then are left to squat below Ralph, to look up at him, and to follow his orders because they have no other option.

“‘I agree with Ralph. We’ve got to have rules and obey them. After all, we’re not savages. We’re English, and the English are best at everything. So we’ve got to do the right things.””

Jack here claims that rules and obeying rules is what differentiates them from savages. They’ve just been evacuated from a nuclear war, which means that the rules of the English, whom Jack claims are the best of people, have failed. This only implies that they will fail, with or without rules, because they are inherently savages. All men are savages, by nature and by choice. 

“He wanted to explain how people were never quite what you thought they were.” 

No one is what they seem to be. Piggy isn’t a pig; he is one of the most intelligent children. Ralph isn’t a leader; he is only a boy thrust into a leadership position. Jack isn’t a hunter; he is the former head of a boys’ choir who now carries a spear. The grownups who the boys keep thinking will rescue them could not even rescue themselves from the savagery of their human nature.

“The decrease in size, from Ralph down, was gradual; and though there was a dubious region uninhabited by Simon and Robert and Maurice, nevertheless no one had any difficulty in recognizing the bigguns at one end and littluns at the other.” 

This is another reference to size equaling leadership. Ralph, the biggest, is the leader, whereas all the others are below him. The other boys all recognize size as importance, and they segregate by size: the bigguns are and the littluns. It’s significant that the boys do not distinguish themselves by intelligence, wisdom, charisma, or any other quality. Size is used throughout the novel to characterize the boys: “Henry was a bit of a leader this afternoon, because the other two were Percival and Johnny, the smallest boys on the island” (60). Even among the smaller boys, size equals leadership. 

“Yet there was a space round Henry, perhaps six yards in diameter, into which he dare not throw. 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. Roger’s arm was conditioned by a civilization that knew nothing of him and was in ruins.” 

The boys have started their descent into savagery. Their hair has grown long, which would have been unacceptable for English schoolchildren in that time, they have shed their clothing, and their skin has grown dark under the sun. Even still, the laws they’ve known, the careful raising and adherence to rules instilled in them by their parents and police, hold sway over them. They have not fully descended yet. The last line implies that they will spiral into savagery because all the old laws they knew have been destroyed. The old world has fallen into war and savagery, and soon they will as well. 

“There had grown up tacitly among the bigguns the opinion that Piggy was an outsider, not only by accent, which did not matter, but by fat, and ass-mar, and specs, and a certain disinclination for manual labor.”

Piggy is an outsider because he is weak. His accent is lower-class, but that doesn’t matter here. What matters is strength. Piggy’s eyes are weak, his body is fat—even his breath is weak because of his asthma. He can’t work hard because of his weaknesses, and the bigguns sense it in an animal way.

“So Ralph asserted his chieftainship and could not have chosen a better way if he had thought for days. Against his weapon, so indefinable and so effective, Jack was powerless and raged without knowing why. By the time the pile was built, they were on different sides of a high barrier.”

Jack and his hunters, who are supposed to be minding the fire, let it go out. Ralph, on the beach, sees a ship, but with the fire out, there is no way to signal it. Jack claims he needed the fire-minders to hunt.He has, in effect, turned away from a desire for rescue to a desire to kill. Although originally Ralph was pleased to be in a world away from grownups, he now wants to be rescued. This puts the two of them at odds with one another—one longing for the safety of civilization, the other reveling in the savagery of blood.

“In a moment the platform was full of arguing, gesticulating shadows. To Ralph, seated, this seemed the breaking up of sanity. Fear, beasts, no general agreement that the fire was all-important: and when one tried to get the thing straight the argument sheered off, bringing up fresh, unpleasant matter.” 

Ralph has called a meeting to make sure the rules are being followed, but even in the meeting the boys can’t seem to follow the rules. Jack speaks without the conch. The littluns keep interrupting. They are scared, and their fear causes them to think only of themselves instead of everyone together. Their form of government, like all governments, is breaking down. Left to its own devices, man will break down into savagery, despite his good intentions.  

“Simon became inarticulate in his effort to express mankind’s essential illness.”

Simon has just said, “[M]aybe it’s only us” (89). He’s talking about the fear that has come over them. They are afraid of a beast being on the island, but Simon thinks they are only afraid of themselves. He’s saying that their human nature—their turning toward savagery and away from civilization, is the shapeless beast that they so greatly fear.

“‘We’ll raid them and take fire.’” 

Jack and Ralph’s feud has split them apart. Ralph and Piggy lead the littluns while Jack leads the biguns. Jack’s men have no fire, so he proposes stealing it from Ralph. His descent into savagery is almost complete. He has no qualms about stealing, nor using deceit to accomplish the theft. Since fire symbolizes light, safety, warmth, and a call for rescue, he is casting the littluns into darkness. He is essentially leaving them only with the dreams of beasts that they fear, signaling that the beast is in fact the boys themselves, just as Simon proposed. 

“‘Fancy thinking the Beast was something you could hunt and kill!’ said the head. For a moment or two the forest and all the other dimly appreciated places echoed with the parody of laughter. ‘You knew, didn’t you? I’m part of you? Close, close, close? I’m the reason why it’s no go? Why things are what they are?’” 

Simon is the first to realize that the boys are only afraid of themselves. Now he believes the pig head is talking to him. In reality, he is talking to himself. The irrational part of his mind knows that they’ve raised the beast, so the irrational part of him is telling the rational part of him that he always knew the beast would take over.

“‘I’m frightened. Of us.’” 

The hunters have just killed Simon in the storm, and Piggy is trying to convince Ralph it was an accident. Ralph, however, finally sees what Simon himself saw earlier—that the beast is within them. The beast isman, andit is them. The beast manifests from their fears, greed, and anger, the same thing that happened to the world they left behind. The novel’s social commentary suggests that even children carry the beast inside them.

“‘No. How could we—kill—it?’” 

The literal interpretation of this line is that they didn’t kill the beast. The boys all know that they killed Simon, not the beast. Metaphorically,the line suggests that they know the beast is them, and that they know there’s no way to kill what’s inside them. The way the sentence is structured, the pauses before and after kill, state that they know they can never kill the beast; it can only kill them, by getting inside them and forcing them to act out of fear.