Lord of the Flies

In this scene in Chapter 3 of Lord of The Flies, Ralph and Jack are arguing. Their conflict is indicative of the tension that will continue to mount between them, reflecting the widening gap in...

Roger is an interesting study because he is constrained primarily by fear of punishment for breaking the rules. Once that fear goes away, such as happens on the island, Roger has no inward...

At the beginning of Chapter 10, Ralph tells Piggy that they murdered Simon. Piggy realizes that they savagely killed Simon, but attempts to repress the memory and not speak about it. Ralph takes...

In chapter two, the boys are on the top of the mountain when Ralph declares that they should designate people to maintain the signal fire and states that there should be more rules. Ralph is...

His specs—use them as burning glasses! Though Jack knows full well that Piggy's short-sighted and can't see a thing without his glasses, he doesn't hesitate to grab them in order to use their...

The primary message that Golding is trying to convey throughout Lord of the Flies is that humans are inherently wicked, violent beings and will revert back to their primitive, savage instincts in...

It is never certain whether Jack truly believes in the phantom menace of the beast himself, but he recognizes the power to be wielded in stoking the younger boys' imaginations about the beast's...

Interestingly, Ralph is recognized as not being the most obvious leader of the group from the beginning: None of the boys could have found good reason for this; what intelligence had been shown...

Towards the end of chapter 8, Simon is viciously murdered by the group of boys during a severe tropical storm. After Simon climbs the mountain and discovers that the beast is actually the decaying...

Tensions reach a high point in chapter 7 when it becomes clear that Jack is challenging Ralph's leadership. Jack is starting to do whatever he wants. From the beginning, Jack has resented that...

In William Golding's popular novel Lord of the Flies, Jack and his hunters succeed in killing the pig in chapter 4. Jack does acknowledge the fact that the hunters helped him, but he also makes...

Shortly after the boys assemble on the platform, Ralph says that they should have a chief and Roger suggests that they put it to a vote. Rather than judge the potential candidates for chief on...

The first time the chant is used is in Chapter 4 after the boys kill the first pig: Kill the pig. Cut her throat. Spill her blood. It is repeated at the end of Chapter 4 during the re-enactment...

Piggy's glasses symbolize a connection to civilization and to scientific reasoning that generally erodes through the conflict in the novel. In the first chapter, Ralph asks Piggy about his father,...

The bizarre conversation between Simon and the Lord of the Flies confirms his belief that the Beast isn't a real creature but rather the evil that lurks within each and every one of the boys....

A Christlike character in literature is one who embodies many of the qualities of Jesus Christ, found in the New Testament of the Bible. Jesus Christ was hated by many, though He inflicted harm on...

As chapter 3 opens, Jack is crouched down like a sprinter, carefully observing the environment in hopes of detecting evidence of pig movement. Jack is depicted as an intense, dedicated hunter, who...

Simon is the boy who provides Ralph with emotional encouragement, in the same way Piggy provides him with intellectual support. In this scene in chapter 7, Simon senses that Ralph is worried about...

In Chapter 4, the littluns are given a fairly lengthy description. This first quote shows how the littluns obeyed and respected Ralph as an adult authority figure: They obeyed the summons of the...

The ending of William Golding's Lord of the Flies is dramatic and emotional. The growing suspense of the chapters leading up to this point lead the reader to wonder if Ralph will survive the...

An important quote about Jack being unable to kill the piglet is the following: They knew very well why he hadn’t: because of the enormity of the knife descending and cutting into living flesh;...

While the boys in Lord of the Flies do not resort to cannibalism, one could argue that this is only because there was other food around and because the naval officer rescued them before hunger or...

It just means that Jack and the hunters are going to kill Ralph, cut off his head, and offer it as a sacrifice to the Beast (which is nothing but a dead paratrooper). One sharp end goes into the...

Piggy is depicted as an extremely intelligent, overweight boy who is myopic and must wear glasses to see clearly. Piggy's glasses are significant throughout the novel and symbolically represent...

In chapter 5, Ralph holds an assembly and chastises the boys for not completing necessary tasks or following his directives. After criticizing the boys for their negligence and disobedience, Ralph...

As the action unfolds in Lord of the Flies, we can observe Ralph gradually come to the understanding that, when it comes to establishing a civilization, violence of some kind or another is simply...

In Chapter 2, Ralph mentions that it is important for the boys to build a signal fire so that passing ships will stop to rescue them. The boys agree and enthusiastically collect dry wood, but have...

Roger and Maurice are example of boys with aggressive, and in Roger's case, sadistic, impulses that have been carefully controlled because of social constraints. They obeyed the rules back home,...

Irony is when events unfold in a way opposite of what might be expected. One great irony is that Simon is the one mistaken by the other boys for the beast and killed. This is ironic on multiple...

Towards the end of chapter eight, Simon comes face-to-face with the severed pig's head impaled on a sharpened stick in the middle of his secluded spot in the forest. Simon proceeds to hallucinate...

Simon is the only boy who possesses hidden knowledge of the beast and understands that it is not a tangible creature that can be killed. After Ralph, Jack, and Roger confirm its existence, Simon...

In this unpredictable and harsh environment, Ralph and Piggy have temporarily just had their physical needs met. Jack has just offered them some meat, and they relished the "succulent" nourishment....

At first, the boys, under the direction of Ralph, attempt to light a fire as a signal to passing ships. Here is the description of their attempt from Chapter 2: "On one side the air was cool, but...

The narrator uses the word "scar" repeatedly early in the novel to describe the damage done when the plane carrying the boys crashes on the island. One quote is as follows: Beyond falls and cliffs...

(I'm not sure how our page numbers will line up. I am using the Perigree Book published by the Penguin Company, for reference. It has a green fly resting on a boy in a black uniform on the cover.)...

In Chapter 8, Jack and his hunters graphically murder a sow that is nursing her babies by stabbing a spear up its backside and slitting its throat. This scene is significant throughout the novel...

The word "tenuous" is an apt choice to describe the civilization of the island. Even before the complete collapse at the novel's end, there are a few significant challenges to and failures of the...

As was mentioned in the previous post, Jack initially paints his face as a way to camouflage himself while he is hunting. In Chapter 4, Jack walks out of the forest holding a stick of charcoal and...

The boys arrive on the island in a plane. They are schoolboys who have been evacuated from their homes in Britain in order to get to a place of safety because a nuclear war is in progress. In...

Piggy serves as the symbol of rationality and logic in Lord of the Flies, and it is partially because of his role as this symbol that the bullying against him seems especially pronounced. Though it...

Ralph and Jack disagree about the importance of building shelters and maintaining a signal fire compared to spending the majority of their time hunting pigs throughout the island. Ralph champions...

Ralph first decides that a group of boys needs to watch the fire. This comes immediately after they light the first blaze, in Chapter 2. Ralph says: “We’ve got to have special people for looking...

Golding himself noted that he intentionally created Simon's character to be a Christlike character, which is important in analyzing this quote. At the beginning of chapter 7, Ralph is looking out...

The significance of Simon’s death in Lord of the Flies relates to the fact that the one truly good, truly rational person on the island is now dead. The person who took care of the younger children...

Masks become an important part of Jack's reinvention of himself as leader of a savage, barbaric group. To begin his transformation, Jack comes back from the jungle with two large leaves and shows...

The title of Golding's celebrated novel Lord of the Flies refers to the severed pig's head that Simon interacts with while hallucinating, which symbolically represents the presence of evil on the...