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Fiction

Notes The concerns of Ralph and Jack were established in previous chapters: the former focuses on
survival and escape while the latter focuses on hunting and self-gratification. In this chapter
Golding examines the tactics that each uses to assert his authority. Jack uses his bravado to
signify his strength and dominance, and he attempts to diminish Ralph in the eyes of the other
boys by ridiculing him for his supposed cowardice. Ralph, on the other hand, is straightforward
and direct. He challenges Jack’s overblown self-confidence by honestly noting that Jack is
wrongly motivated by hatred.
Golding continues to use imagery and symbolism to trace the boys’ descent into disorder,
violence, and amorality. In particular, Golding suggests in this chapter that the line between
the boys and animals is becoming increasingly blurred. The hunters chant and dance, and one
of the boys again pretend to be a pig while the other boys pretend to kill him. The parallel
between boy and pig in the ritual is a powerful dramatization of the implications of the boys’
giving in to their violent impulses, indicating that the children are no better than animals and
that, like the pig, they too will be sacrificed to fulfill the brutal desires of Jack and his hunters.
Characterization in Chapter Seven also foreshadows the tragic events to come. In particular,
Jack, who is increasingly confident as a hunter and leader, suggests that his violent impulses
are now directed at the other children as well as at the pigs on the island. Jack’s joke that the
group should kill a littluns in place of a pig demonstrates a blatant disregard for human life
and explicitly acknowledges that he appreciates violence for its own sake. His joke also signals
the waning of his conscience as the boys continue to exist in the absence of adult society and
its rules. Jack, who previously needed to prepare himself to kill a pig, indicates that he is now
probably capable of killing people without remorse.
As Ralph faces the challenge of tracking and hunting the beast, physical tasks that are unfamiliar
to him as the political leader of the boys, he demonstrates the dangerous appeal of aggressive
and impulsive behavior such as Jack’s. Golding tracks Ralph’s brief sympathy with Jack’s
mindset to suggest that even the most civilized humans are susceptible to groupthink and the
pressures of the Id, which is inclined towards destruction and self-gratification. The chapter
begins with Ralph expressing disgust over his appearance, which again indicates his natural
disinclination towards savagery. Yet, like Jack, Ralph feels exhilarated during the hunt and
begins to understand the primal appeal of killing pigs. It is Jack’s decision to continue the
hunt in darkness, which Ralph rightly recognizes as ill-informed, that finally reminds Ralph
of the essential foolishness of Jack’s mindset. By showing Ralph’s character as threatened but
not subsumed by Jack’s will, Golding suggests that the human impulse towards savagery,
which is both strong and natural, can nevertheless be overcome by reason and intelligence.
While Golding’s characterization of Jack and his hunters intends to caution the reader about
the destructive impulses that reside inside all humans, it is important to note the historical
biases at work in this depiction of the boys’ hunting rituals. The boys chant and dance around
in circles, whipping themselves up into a “frenzy” that pushes them to the brink of actual
murder. They represent or are becoming “savages,” which in Golding’s time reminded readers
of the native peoples of the Americas and Africa. This stereotype tended to associate these
peoples with a very limited and barbaric culture, failing to appreciate the complex culture that
events such as ritual dances expressed. A more charitable view of Jack’s new warrior culture,
say from an anthropologist’s perspective, would not stress the dehumanization of the war-
dance so much as their natural human reaction to the difficult conditions on the island, a
reaction that after all can produce the meat that the children need.

Nature is also of crucial significance in this chapter. As the boys move farther from the camp
into the unexplored recesses of the forest and mountain areas, they contend with the powerful
forces of the natural world, which is untamed and indifferent to the boys’ concerns. The
emphasis on the indifference of nature in this chapter is significant in several ways. First, it

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