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Unit 26: William Golding — Lord of the Flies: Detailed Study of Text-II

ignorance of the brutality that is dominating the island. While the boys in The Coral Island Notes
had carefree, childish adventures, the boys in Golding’s narrative actually descended into
unthinkable depths of violence and cruelty. Through the officer’s naivete as informed by The
Coral Island, Golding again implicitly critiques the idealistic portrayals of children in popular
literature. Still, these unlikely concluding events feel abrupt and unsatisfying after so much
richness in the narrative.

Self Assessment

Multiple Choice Questions:

6. The boys who climb the mountain with Jack to view the beast are ......... .
(a) Ralph and Simon (b) Ralph and Roger
(c) Piggy and Ralph (d) Simon and Piggy
7. Jack gets fire for his group by ......... .
(a) Stealing it from Ralph (b) Using Piggy’s glasses lens
(c) Rubbing two Sticks together (d) None of these

8. The boy whom Jack ties up and beats for an unrevealed crime is ......... .
(a) Maurice (b) Robert
(c) Wilfred (d) Ralph
9. In the eyes of the pig’s head Simon sees ......... .

(a) Victory (b) Cynicism of adult life
(c) Desire for revenge (d) None of these
10. The naval officer sees Jack as a ......... .
(a) Little red-headed boy (b) Painted savage
(c) Natural leader (d) None of these

Another significant aspect of the naval officer’s character is his admonition to the boys that
they are not behaving like proper “British boys,” which recalls Jack’s patriotic claims in Chapter
Two that the British are the best at everything. The officer’s statement symbolically links him
to Jack and underscores the hypocrisy of such a military character. While the officer condemns
the violent play of the boys on the island, he is himself a military figure, engaged in an
ongoing war that itself necessitated the boys’ evacuation from their homeland and (unintentionally)
led to the events on the island. Again, the issue is ambiguous: perhaps the violence among the
boys was not an expression of an unrestrained inner instinct but a reflection of the seemingly
“civilized” culture they were raised in, a culture engaged in an ugly and fatal war. In any case,
the officer echoes Ralph rather than Jack, repeating many of the warnings about rules and
order that Ralph had expressed to the boys throughout the novel. By associating the officer
with both Ralph and Jack, in different ways, Golding calls into question the distinction between
civilization and savagery that he traced with increasing emphasis in the novel’s earlier chapters
and then erased in later chapters.
If the naval officer saves the boys from their self-destruction, he may have come too late. The
final scenes of the novel emphasize the permanent emotional damage that the boys have
inflicted on themselves. With the possible exception of Ralph, the boys are no longer accustomed
to the society from which they came. Golding underscores this fact by presenting Percival as

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