Essay: Lord of the Flies chapter-by-chapter

Lord of the Flies – Summer Reading Assignment 2018
Chapter 1: The Sound of the Shell
Piggy, Ralph, and Jack are all starkly different characters that, although unique, represent common archetypes. Piggy is a short and fat boy with glasses who is sheltered, innocent, and naive. He consistently mentions his aunt and his asthma in reference to anything that was happening at the moment. Piggy seems to be a dependent child who latches himself to an adult, but as there weren’t any on the island, he chose Ralph instead. Even when Ralph runs off, after a while Piggy’s “grunts were behind him” (9). Ralph is 12 years old, is taller than Piggy, and is always described as having fair skin and hair. He doesn’t express it outwardly, but he is more confident and stronger willed than Piggy. Ralph does have an unnecessary mean-streak with Piggy as well, which is especially apparent when he tells him, “better Piggy than Fatty” (25). Jack seems a bit older than Ralph, he has red hair, light blue eyes, freckles, and is the leader of the choir boys. Jack appears to be tough, impulsive, and easily exasperated. His knife that he wielded twice in this chapter is a clear indicator of what he resorts to.
Chapter 2: Fire on the Mountain
The fire is important to everyone because Ralph had explained that they had to “make smoke on top of the mountain” (38) in order to be noticed by any passing ships, and subsequently rescued. The boys probably wouldn’t have found the fire as important if Ralph didn’t make his optimistic comment that “there aren’t any unknown islands left” (37). Ralph assists in the creation of the fire by, of course, coming up with the idea itself and riling up the crowd of boys to get excited enough to collect the wood. Piggy, though he didn’t really help with the wood gathering, did technically lend his glasses to be used to start the fire. Jack also helped, and he did so by ordering the choir sections to maintain the fire and collect wood.
Chapter 3: Huts on the Beach
Simon was the only other person that helped Ralph’s attempt at building shelters for the good of everyone else. Ralph mentions that “all day I’ve been working with Simon. No one else” (50) and sparks an argument between Jack and Ralph about who’s been working harder and what’s more important. Then Simon goes off through the beach and back into another part of the forest where he is interrupted by some of the youngest boys, and he “found for them the fruit they could not reach” (56). At the end of the chapter it seems that Simon finds himself totally alone in the forest. However, instead of acting out of fear, he stays and admires the sights and sounds of the island as the sun starts to set.
Chapter 4: Painted Faces and Long Hair
While Roger watches Henry play with the transparencies, he throws stones at him but “there was a space round Henry… into which he dare not throw (62). I think that Roger, aside from just not wanting to hurt him, felt held back by the old rules of society that were “invisible yet strong” (62). Jack apologizing to Ralph for letting the fire out is another example of the presence of social rules in everyone’s brain. Even though it seems that Jack is more and more willing to ditch those ideologies for hunting, he is not yet completely consumed by feral impulses. I think this is because of Ralph’s leadership (although not entirely strong) and encouragement towards everyone in the group.
Chapter 5: Beast from Water
After thinking for quite some time, Ralph calls a meeting to talk business and “put things straight” (79). Ralph discusses all of the things that the boys promised to do but failed to continue doing, such as storing water and using the “rocks right along the bathing pool” as a bathroom (80). He continues his speech by mentioning the fire and reminds everyone that the fire is the “most important thing on the island” (80).  Ralph comments on how they started off really well, but then people (especially the littluns) were becoming frightened of an unknown beast. This make-shift civilization really started to break down when the conversation of the beast spirals out of control and the meeting eventually stops because Jack starts a chant amongst the boys.
Chapter 6: Beast from Air
Lord of the Flies was written in 1954, almost a decade after WWII. In the night sky, planes were fighting each other, and a dead pilot floated down to the island. When Samneric woke in the morning they saw the dead pilot but mistook it as an avian beast and interpreted the pilot’s parachute as wings. Samneric tell everyone in horror of what they thought happened, but Simon didn’t really believe their story. Simon didn’t think that a beast with claws and teeth could exist that was “not yet fast enough to catch Samneric” (103). Instead, Simon envisions the beast as “the picture of a human at once heroic and sick” (103), and that the real beast was human’s innate cruelness and evilness.
Chapter 7: Shadows and Tall Trees
After the boar escapes, even with Ralph being able to hit it, they get so excited about it that they reenact the hunt, with Robert as the boar and everyone else was “jabbing at Robert who made mock rushes” (114). Even though the game had turned to real hurt, and Robert screaming in pain, the boys all still chanted “Kill him! Kill him!” (114) and continued to jab him. Afterword, the boys reflected on the ritual and that they should have a sacrifice, and Jack joked that they could use a littlun in lieu of a pig. The entire situation feels like it could be foreshadowing more violence, and that the longer the boys went un-rescued, the more they forgot about civilization.
Chapter 8: Gift for the Darkness
The scene where Simon hallucinates the Lord of the Flies speaking to him through the head of the pig is significant because it’s the final nail in the coffin that demonstrates that the beast was never a physical being, and rather inside of the boys the whole time. When the beast says “we’re going to have fun on this island. Understand?” (144) it’s talking about the innate savagery and violence that will occur. The things are the way that they are is because the beast (cruelty and violence) are literally “a part of you [humans]” (143) and that it always has been, except civilization was holding it back. It’s become clear that without civilization, violence, dominance, and barbarity will eventually take control.
Chapter 9: A View to a Death
The symbolism of Ralph and Jack as characters is crystal clear. Ralph is representative of proper society. The conch shell and the fire are both other symbols of order and civilization. Jack is representative of what the beast is; barbarity. Even when Ralph reminds every one of the conch shell’s authority in the newly formed tribe, Jack asks, “what are you going to do about it then?” (151) and continues to turn more people to the other side. When Simon comes bearing the news about the reality of the beast, everyone had already gone into a frenzied mob and “struck, bit, and tore” (153) him to death.
Throughout the book, Piggy was the voice of reason/common sense and the outsider. He is constantly ridiculed for being fat and being cast aside, but Ralph eventually comes around to appreciate that Piggy is indeed smart and capable in chapter 5. Simon, however, represents truth. Rather than giving in to barbarity or suppressing it, he goes up the mountain and confronts it to find the truth. His “conversation” with the Lord of the Flies reveals this as well, as it is a literal circumstance of Simon being confronted with the truth.
Chapter 10: The Shell and the Glasses
After some debate and squabble and many different possible excuses, Ralph and Piggy concluded that they didn’t murder Simon because they were “only on the outside” of the dance circle (157). After that, they reassured Samneric that they “left early” from the feast (158). I don’t think that only one person that was immediately responsible for Simon’s death. It was obviously all of the boys that joined Jack’s tribe and participated in the display of violence and barbarity. However, if it had to be traced to one person, it’s ultimately Jack’s fault for encouraging violence and savagery onto the impressionable boys.
Chapter 11: Castle Rock
Ralph attempts to reestablish order and justice on the island a few different ways. Piggy suggests to Ralph that he should call a meeting with the conch, which is a symbol of civilization, so they could “decide what to do” (169) even though it was only the four of them. Ralph also decides that they wouldn’t wear any paint on their faces, since it was the “liberation into savagery that the concealing paint brought” (172). Ralph’s last attempt of keeping civilization alive was by running away when he was attacked by Jack and his tribe instead of fighting back.
Chapter 12: Cry of the Hunter
The irony of the Naval Officer’s comment is that he, as a civilized person, was expecting them to be more savage than what was become of them, and that he only views the boys’ real war as child’s play, while he is in a war himself.
It doesn’t matter if the story plays out with all boys or all girls or all adults, either way the same amount of drama, conspiracy, and eventual loss of civility would happen all the same. Girls manipulate, compete, and go after each other’s throats just as bad, if not worse, as boys do. However, if this story took place with both boys and girls, the number of casualties and the overall outcome could have been ten times worse. The way that piggy was often alienated just because he had stereotype feminine traits, like not wanting to do physical labor and being round. It’s not difficult to imagine that it would happen to the girls in the same way, and worse when sexual violence and misogyny is added in. The scene where Jack’s tribe hunts down the sow and accidentally shove a spear “up her ass” (196) is more than just the tribe hunting for food, but a demonstration of how they react to power and validity they feel when brutally killing a helpless animal.