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Fiction

Notes cut-off the pig’s head and leave it on a stick as a gift for the beast at the mountaintop. When
they place the offering upright, blood drips down the sow’s teeth, and they run away. Simon,
from his private space, sees the head, which has flies buzzing around it.

Notes Back on the beach, Ralph worries that the boys will die if they are not rescued
soon. Ralph and Piggy realize that it is Jack who makes everything break apart.

Ralph’s group is startled as the forest suddenly bursts into uproar. The littluns run-off while
Jack approaches, naked except for paint and a belt, his hunters taking burning branches from
the fire. Jack tells Ralph and his group that he and his hunters are living along the beach by
a flat rock, where they hunt and feast and have fun. He invites the boys to join his tribe. When
Jack leaves, Ralph say that he thought Jack was going to take the conch, which Ralph still
considers a symbol of ritual and order. They reassure each other again that the fire is the most
important task at hand. But a boy among them named Bill appears skeptical. He suggests that
they go to the hunters’ feast and tell them that the fire is hard on them. At the top of the
mountain remains the pig’s head, which Simon has dubbed the Lord of the Flies.
Simon believes that the pig’s head speaks to him. He thinks that it is calling him a silly little
boy. The Lord of the Flies tells Simon to run off and play with the others, who think that he
is crazy. Lord of the Flies claims that he is the Beast, and the Beast laughs at the idea that the
Beast is something that could be hunted and killed, for he is within every human being and
thus can never be defeated or escaped from. Terrified and disoriented by this disturbing
vision, Simon falls down and loses consciousness.

Analysis

In this chapter, Golding continues to use his main characters as personifications of various
facets of the human spirit. Piggy remains the lone skeptic among the boys and still unsure of
the presence of the beast, which continues to be the focus of island life for Jack and his
hunters. Even Ralph, succumbing to fear and suspicion, now believes that there is a beast on
the island. Although Ralph is the clear protagonist of the story and the character to whom
Golding affixes the reader’s perspective, he is still susceptible to the childish passions and
irrationality that are, to varying extents, present in the other children. Ralph’s weakness is not
insignificant. While Ralph may be more mature and rational than Jack and his hunters, given
the right circumstances he can submit to the same passions as the other boys, a tendency that
foreshadows the tragic events that unfold in subsequent chapters.

Task How does Ralph describe the beast?

The political subtext of previous chapters becomes more overt in this chapter as Jack explicitly
attempts to overthrow Ralph as chief. Although Ralph successfully defends himself against
Jack’s attack by calling the other boys’ attention to Jack’s shortsightedness and cowardice, Jack
is resolved that he will take control. Jack’s refusal to accept the other boys’ decision serves as
a reminder that Jack is still a child who considers life on the island as a game; he assumes the
position that, if he cannot set the rules of the game, he refuses to play at all. This decision
provokes the subsequent events of the chapter, which focus on Jack’s rejection not only of
Ralph’s authority but of the entire pseudo-democracy on the island that had conferred authority
on Ralph. Jack, realizing that he cannot take authority directly away from Ralph, appoints

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