William Goldings Lord of the Flies :: Essays Papers

Lord of the FliesIn the midst of a uncivilised war, a plane evacuating a group of English boys from Britain is shot downward over a deserted tropical island. Marooned, the boys set ab unwrap electing a leader and finding a way to be rescued. They choose Ralph as their leader, and Ralph appoints varlet to be the leader of the hunters. Ralph, Jack, and Simon set off on an despatch to explore the island. When they return, Ralph declares that they must light a signal elicit to disembowel the attention of passing ships. The boys begin to do so, using the lens from Piggys spectacles to ignite dead wood, but they are more interested in playing than in paying close attention to their duties, and the fire chop-chop ignites the forest. A large swath of dead wood burns out of control. One of the youngest boys disappears, presumably having burned to death.At first, the boys enjoy their life without grown-ups. They bespatter in the lagoon and play games, though Ralph complains that they s hould be maintaining the signal fire and building huts for shelter. The hunters have trouble catching a pig, but Jack becomes increasingly preoccupied with the act of hunting. One day, a ship passes by on the horizon, and Ralph and Piggy notice, to their horror, that the signal fire has burned out it had been the hunters righteousness to maintain it. Furious, Ralph accosts Jack, but the hunter has just returned with his first kill, and all the boys seem gripped with a strange frenzy, reenacting the chase in a kind of violent dance. When Piggy criticizes him, Jack hits him across the face.Ralph blows the conch shell used to summon the boys and reprimands them in a speech intended to restore order. Yet there is a larger, more insidious problem than keeping the signal fire illumine and overcoming the difficulties of hunting 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 be lieve that there is some single out of beast or monster lurking on the island. At the meeting, the older boys emphasize to convince the others to think rationally if there were a monster, where would it hide during the daytime? One of the littluns suggests that it hides in the sea, a proposition that terrifies the whole group.