out to be counter-productive and sets up the first major crisis of leadership Ralph experiences.

The meeting starts out with Ralph forcefully laying down rules about labor, cleanliness, and keeping the fire going. About these things Ralph allows no discussion, and he squelches any laughter or opposition. However, by the time the topic of fear comes up, "what sunlight reached them was level," in other words, it is nearly sunset. This is the worst possible time of day to begin talking about fear, to the littluns especially. As Piggy is giving his big speech denying the validity of fear, "the sun had gone as if the light had been turned off."

Now, in the dark, a littlun comes forward and describes his recent nightmare and something he saw moving in the trees. That turns out to have been Simon, but then Percival comes forward. He begins to cry, and his sorrow is contagious, spreading to other littluns. Finally, Percival suggests the beast comes up from the sea, and "in a moment the platform was full of arguing, gesticulating shadows."

Then the subject of ghosts is brought up. Ralph states, "We ought to have left all this for daylight." The wind picks up, adding to the eerie atmosphere. Ralph admits he was wrong "to call this assembly so late," but instead of postponing the discussion until the morning, he takes a vote on ghosts, asking the question the worst possible way. Ralph has to strain into the darkness to see that many hands are raised in response to, "Who thinks there may be ghosts?"

Jack uses the cover of darkness to empower his rebellion against Ralph and the rules. In the bright sunshine, when things were more reasonable and controlled, he may not have dared opposing Ralph so directly, but with the children shuddering in fear and Ralph not providing proper leadership, Jack cries, "Bullocks to the rules!" and leads all the boys but Ralph, Piggy, and Simon away in a "discursive and random scatter."

This leads Ralph to lose confidence, and he laments, "I ought to give up being chief. Hear 'em." The entire meeting may have turned out much differently if it had been held in daylight. The darkness allowed the boys' fear to run amok and encouraged Jack to rebel against the rules and Ralph.

There are two particularly difficult times of day on the island according to chapter three of Lord of the Flies by William Golding: midday and night. The mornings, however, are full of pleasantness for the boys.

They accepted the pleasures of morning, the bright sun, the whelming sea and sweet air, as a time when play was good and life so full that hope was not necessary and therefore forgotten.

This carefree time does not last long, though, and when the sun is overhead everything changes. The light makes the shadows fall differently and the bright colors of the morning change; the heat becomes oppressive and the boys usually retire somewhere in the shade for a nap.

Strange things happened at midday. The glittering sea rose up, moved apart in planes of blatant impossibility; the coral reef and the few stunted palms that clung to the more elevated parts would float up into the sky, would quiver, be plucked apart, run like raindrops on a wire or be repeated as in an odd succession of mirrors. Sometimes land loomed where there was no land and flicked out like a bubble as the children watched. Piggy discounted all this learnedly as a “mirage”; and since no boy could reach even the reef over the stretch of water where the snapping sharks waited, they grew accustomed to these mysteries and ignored them, just as they ignored the miraculous, throbbing stars. At midday the illusions merged into the sky and there the sun gazed down like an angry eye.

During their quiet time in the shade, the boys would suffer from some kind of hallucinations, undoubtedly caused (at least in large part) by the heat and their deficient diets. They do not sleep well at night, either, which may be a contributing factor to these daytime illusions. 

Then, at the end of the afternoon; the mirage subsided and the horizon became level and blue and clipped as the sun declined. That was another time of comparative coolness but menaced by the coming of the dark.

The nights are the worst for all of the boys. From almost the first night, the littluns and even the older boys have been suffering from nightmares which cause them to be restless and even scream in their sleep.

When the sun sank, darkness dropped on the island like an extinguisher and soon the shelters were full of restlessness, under the remote stars.

For now there is at least part of the day which is untouched by nightmares and fears; however, a time is coming when the boys will all be plagued with fears--and worse--at all times of the day.