Discussion Topic
The denouement and its effects in Lord of the Flies
Summary:
The denouement in Lord of the Flies occurs when the naval officer arrives, rescuing the boys and abruptly ending their descent into savagery. This sudden rescue forces the boys to confront the atrocities they committed, highlighting the thin veneer of civilization and the inherent darkness in human nature. The contrast between their savagery and the officer's civilized demeanor underscores the novel's central themes.
How does Lord of the Flies end?
Lord of the Flies ends with the rescue of the surviving boys. Jack and his followers, reduced to "savages," have been hunting Ralph, who flees and then turns to fight with a spear sharpened at both ends. However, a huge fire has broken out, consuming the jungle and driving all the boys to the shoreline. The smoke from the fire has alerted a British ship, and a British officer arrives on the beach.
Ralph looks up to see the officer's cap and then his white drill uniform, gun, and gold buttons, all emblems of civilization. The officer, in turn, sees a filthy little boy. The officer mistakes the fighting the boys have been engaged in for a game. He is surprised to find that two of the boys have been killed.
As the novel ends, Ralph realizes it is impossible to convey what has been happening on the island...
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or how far the boys have descended into savagery. Ralph begins to sob as he thinks ofSimon being dead, the island burned up in the fire, and all they have gone through, along with Piggy's death. The other boys begin to sob too as they see Ralph crying. The officers are embarrassed. We learn that
Ralph wept for the end of innocence, the darkness of man’s heart, and the fall through the air of the true, wise friend called Piggy.
Now that they have been saved, we can conclude that the boys will be reintegrated into civilization but not without having been changed by the encounter with darkness within their souls.
How does the novel Lord of the Flies end?
Things look bleak for Ralph as he tries to avoid the murderous boys who are hunting him in the final chapter of Lord of the Flies. He has already been warned by Samneric that the painted hunters will form a line and converge upon Ralph until he is found; a stick with points on both ends await him when he is eventually discovered. Ralph manages to avoid capture, wounding one hunter and stumbling past another until he rolls out of the thicket onto the beach. When he looks up, instead of finding the hunters converging upon him, he sees a naval officer carrying a revolver
looking down at Ralph in wary astonishment. On the beach behind him was a cutter, her bows hauled up and held by two ratings. In the stern-sheets another rating held a sub-machine gun.
"Fun and games," said the officer.
Ralph was saved from certain death, and the horrors of life on the island had come to an end. The boys were rescued at last, but
the officer... was moved and a little embarrassed. He turned away to give them time to pull themselves together; and waited, allowing his eyes to rest on the trim cruiser in the distance.
How does the denouement in Lord of the Flies affect the reader?
The denouement of the novel occurs right after Ralph is rescued by the British Navy. The British naval officer rebukes the boys and says he would have thought they would do better. In retrospect, it is obvious that the rescue team is unaware of the evil in mankind, of which they are very much a part. The British ship is searching for downed aircraft and instead finds a group of boys who have deteriorated into a bunch of savages. The irony is that the entire world has also deteriorated into another war. The difference this time is that the war involves nuclear weapons and the rescued boys will be returned to that world. Therefore, the boys' rescue may only be temporary because they may soon be killed in a nuclear blast. When the officer says he thinks the boys can do better, the irony is that the whole world should have done a better job of settling their differences so the war would never have had to happen and the boys would never have had to experience the horrors of on the tropical island.
What story does William Golding allude to at the end of Lord of the Flies?
At the end of William Golding's Lord of the Flies, the naval commander who has come to effect a rescue sees a group of boys on this tropical island and assumes they have been having fun. Ralph tries to explain but can only stutter a few words, failing to explain the horrible decline of civilization they have undergone on this island. Finally the officer says, “I know. Jolly good show. Like the Coral Island.”
This reference is to a book by R.M. Ballantyne entitled The Coral Island: A Tale of the Pacific Ocean. The boys in this book have similar names to some of the characters in Lord of the Flies (Jack and Ralph), and the boys have many adventures on the island. What happens on this island, of course, starts as an adventure but quickly becomes a fight for survival.
This reference in chapter twelve is the second reference to Ballantyne's book in Golding's novel. The first happens in chapter two, when the older boys are trying to convince the younger boys that, even though they are not likely to be rescued any time soon, they will have a great adventure, like those found in the books Treasure Island and The Coral Island. Obviously the younger boys were right not to believe such promises.
Is the denouement of Lord of the Flies realistic?
Yes. I think the denouement pulls an amazing trick. The reader has completely accepted Ralph, Jack and the boys as adults: you forget how young they are. And the way the ending makes its impact is by shifting the narrative focus - no longer do we see things through the boys' eyes, but the camera pulls back and puts an adult in. We realise - horribly - that these atrocities have been committed by little boys.
Here's the moment it happens:
Then he [Ralph] was down, rolling over and over in the warm sand, crouching with arm to ward off, trying to cry for mercy.
He staggered to his feet, tensed for more terrors, and looked up at a huge peaked cap.
The naval officer also locates the boys back in a civilisation at war, and "in ruins": he even has a "sub machine gun" on board his ship. It reminds us that these boys' violence is located within a world which is very violent at an adult level. And these boys are the product of something.
Golding hammers home how small they are:
Dumbly, Ralph shook his head. He turned a halfpace on the sand. A semicircle of little boys, their bodies streaked with colored clay, sharp sticks in their hands, were standing on the beach making no noise at all.
[...]
Ralph nodded. The officer inspected the little scarecrow in front of him. The kid needed a bath, a haircut, a nose-wipe and a good deal of ointment.
These are little, little boys. And at the end of the novel, with them all in tears, Ralph cries for the "end of innocence", and "the darkness of man's heart". It is a return to reality, a horrible realisation that this is not a symbolic novel but a naturalistic presentation of young boys creating hell for themselves. It's a harrowing denouement.