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Fiction

Notes the animistic religious traditions of native cultures. Their choice of ritual and song, coupled
with Jack’s appearance as an “idol,” indicates the boys’ complete and final rejection of the
civilization of the Home Counties.
In this chapter, Golding also emphasizes Jack’s rise to power and foreshadows the brutal
consequences of his authority. Again, Jack rejects the rules established for the island, telling
Ralph that the conch yields no authority when Ralph attempts to cite precedent. He signifies
his power over his tribe with his painted body and garlands, an image that alludes to Joseph
Conrad’s 1902 novella, Heart of Darkness, in which a boat captain, Marlow, accepts an assignment
to find a defecting government agent, Kurtz, in Africa. In Conrad’s story, Marlow discovers
Kurtz in a remote area of the continent, living with a group of natives who worship him as
their leader and god. In this chapter of Lord of the Flies, Golding draws a deliberate parallel
between Jack and Kurtz in order to emphasize the extent of Jack’s power over the other boys
and to call the reader’s attention to the severity of the tension between Ralph and Jack which,
like the tension between Marlow and Kurtz, is strongly ideological (Marlow and Ralph representing
civilization, and Jack and Kurtz representing savagery). This tension eventually leads to violent
conflict.
Note the increasing importance of the beast to the boys in this chapter, and its centrality to
Jack’s usurping of leadership from Ralph. As Ralph and Piggy discover, Jack and his tribe
have constructed an elaborate mythology around the beast, to which they now attribute many
qualities that were not present in earlier descriptions. They believe that the beast is immortal
and can change shape as it wishes, and they claim that it must be both worshiped and feared.
Around this mythology Jack has established the rules of his society. His boys are united by
their belief in the beast and, above this, their belief in Jack as the one person who can protect
them from the beast. Their ritual dances and chants, as well as Jack’s makeup and adornments,
express their commitment to this mythology, within which the Lord of the Flies functions
totemically.

The Lord of the Flies embodies and expresses the mythology of the beast that unites Jack’s
tribe and is significant in many ways. As an offering to the body of the parachutist on the
mountain, which the boys (excluding Piggy) regard as the beast, it symbolizes Jack’s acknowledgment
of, and deferral to, the evil impulses that reside inside the individual psyche. In previous
chapters, he had vowed to kill the beast; here, Jack attempts to appease it, to gain its favor.
As a totem, an artifact that unites Jack’s tribe (much like the conch served as a totem for
Ralph’s group), the Lord of the Flies symbolizes the solidification of Jack’s group around a
shared set of values and interests which, as we have noted, are self-interested and indulgent.
Finally, as a memento of the hunting of the sow, the Lord of the Flies represents the imposition
of human will over nature, another of Jack’s goals for island life.

Notes The pig’s head reminds the boys of the essential opposition between man and
nature, an opposition Jack views as essentially hostile and one that the boys can
win.

The most important event of the chapter, however, is the murder of Simon by Jack’s tribe.
They are in a trance-like state from their ritual dancing, although this does not excuse them.
The murder continues the parallel between Simon and Jesus established in the previous chapter
by depicting the murder as a sacrifice, akin to Christ’s murder on the cross. Like Jesus, who
was the sole bearer of knowledge of God’s will, it is Simon who alone possesses the truth
about the beast. Also like Christ’s, Simon’s tragedy is governed by the fact that he is misunderstood
or disbelieved by those around him. For example, the other boys believe Simon is crazy, yet

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