FREE ESSAY ON LORD OF THE FLIES

LORD OF THE FLIES

Dominique Tappy 6F - 9th April 2000
Trace the development of the deterioration of the relationship between Ralph and Jack
Both characters whom I will be focusing on and contrasting in this essay come from the
same book; it is the William Golding's Lord of the Flies. 
The book was the first work of fiction of Golding's, written in 1954. It is an unusually
and carefully constructed fable that was, in Golding's words, 'an attempt to trace the
defects of society back to the defects of human nature'The novel shows a group of English
boys on a Pacific island, where civilisation reverts to savagery . The book deals with
the conflict between humanity's inner barbarism on one side, and the civilising influence
of reason on the other.
Each of the two characters I have chosen to contrast and compare is presented in the
novel as the most influential representative of each of the two sides. Jack, the chief of
the hunters, representing the hidden human passion and almost animal cruelty, and Ralph,
with Piggy and a few other children, who represents human common sense.
When the reader enters the book, they find the whole group of the boys on a small island
after they had been evacuated from their hometown and after their plane had crashed
leaving them on the island with no grown-ups.
At the beginning of the book the position of Jack and Ralph is more or less equal. They
are both well-conditioned boys of school age, who find themselves on a lonely island with
some other boys of various age, but not older than themselves. They share similar
opinions about their situation and its solution. They both want to be rescued and taken
home. They both realise that there are a lot of things they must do to survive on the
island until all of them get rescued. And lastly, they both are dominant types, but yet
at the beginning of the novel they both acknowledge each other's authority and behave to
each other in a friendly way.
At the return Ralph found himself alone on a limb with Jack and they grinned at each
other, sharing this burden. Once more, admit the breeze, the shouting, the slanting
sunlight on the high mountain, was shed that glamour, that strange invisible light of
friendship, adventure, and content.
- Almost too heavy.
Jack grinned back.
- Not for the two of us.
Together, joined in effort by the burden, they staggered up the last step of the
mountain.
Together, they chanted One!
The first, although hidden conflict between Ralph and Jack, the conflict between the two
sides, arises when Ralph is elected or appointed as the chief, the one who decides
things. The reader feels that Jack's vanity has been hit by the loss.
Ralph counted.
- I'm the chief then.
The circle of boys broke into applause. Even the choir applauded; and the freckles on
Jack's face disappeared under a mortification.
Even then the relationship and attitudes of the two boys remain almost the same. They
both agree on the need of fire, on the need of shelters and on the need of meat.
Nonetheless, one can feel that after Ralph had been elected for the chief, the Jack's
side of reason and Ralph's common sense start separating from each other.
At first Jack and his hunters do what they are asked to, but as time goes on, they start
to participate in different activities and neglect those needed for the sake of the boys'
salvation.
Ralph spoke.
- You let the fire out.
Jack checked, vaguely irritated by this irrelevance but too happy to let it worry him.
- We can light the fire again. You should have been with us, Ralph. We had a smashing
time. The twins got knocked over...
- We hit the pig...
- ...I fell on the top...
- I cut his throat, said Jack, proudly...
In Golding's novel the fire, as many other things, has a symbolic function. For Ralph and
his followers, the only way how to get rescued is to keep the fire burning. Therefore
Ralph tries to enforce the superiority of the fire on other things. When the fire, the
symbol of sense, goes out, it is because Jack and his hunters get carried away by their
hunting passion, which more and more dulls their natural human sense. They let the fire
out right when a ship passes by; this moment emphasises the significance of the fire and
the abysmal difference between human common sense and minds influenced and dulled by
eagerness; in this case it is their eagerness for hunting.
From this moment on, the divergence of Jack and his hunters from Ralph's and also
reader's reason is becoming more and more obvious. Ralph and Jack begin to compete, their
attitudes to each other change. The tension between the two is rising. Jack objects to
doing things that Ralph tells the whole group of the boys to do as well as he objects to
Ralph's being the chief.
Ralph leapt to his feet.
- Jack! Jack! You haven't got the conch! Let him speak.
Jack's face swam near him.
- And you shut up! Who are you anyway? Sitting there, telling people what to do. You
can't hunt, you can't sing...
- I'm chief. I was chosen.
- Why should choosing make any difference? Just giving orders that don't make any
sense...
- Piggy's got the conch.
- That's right- favour Piggy as you always do...
- Jack!
Jack's voice sounded in bitter mimicry.
- Jack! Jack!
- The rules! shouted Ralph, you're breaking the rules!
- Who cares?
Ralph summoned his wits.
- Because the rules are the only thing we've got!
But Jack was shouting against him .
- Bollocks to the rules! We're strong-we hunt! If there's a beast, we'll hunt it down!
We'll close it and beat and beat and beat...!
Jack also protests to using the conch; another symbol of common sense on the island.
- I got the conch!
- Conch! Conch! shouted Jack, we don't need the conch any more.
The conflict between the two of them, also caused by different views on the existence of
a beast, culminate when Jack decides to separate from Ralph. At this moment, Jack and the
hunters, lose the last contact with Ralph and Piggy's common sense and voluntarily
succumb to their own hunting desires.
Now there are the two very different groups of boys, with Ralph and Jack as their chief
representatives. None of the groups profits from the separation, but only Ralph and Piggy
realise it. Ralph's group is not big enough to keep the signal fire going, and Jack and
the hunters do not have Piggy's glasses (another important symbol in this novel) to make
their own fire. Here, however, the Jack's fire is not a signal one, the hunters need fire
so that they can cook their meat.
The island, which has a special function in the novel, it creates a different and distant
world for the boys, is now a place of struggle between human reason and minds
uncontrollably carried away by its own desires. Jack feels strong. He has got his
hunters; they all hunt. On the other hand Ralph, with a couple of his followers, has lost
his power, or rather impact on the others; he feels that things are going in a wrong way.
The chances of their rescue decreases as the fire burns out; Piggy's glasses were stolen
by Jack and his boys, and Piggy, who turns out to be a smart and reasonable boy, cannot
see without them; this fact is also symbolically related to the change of power on the
island.
When Simon is killed just as he runs out of the forest where he had a talk with the pig's
head on the stick, which is the Lord of the Flies, it is Ralph and Piggy who only realise
what has been done. When Piggy is killed, Ralph is helpless and desperate. He is alone
and it seems that Ralph's common sense has entirely been defeated. Ralph tries to conceal
himself so that Jack and the hunters cannot find him. Now the whole island is mastered by
the hunters' cruelty. Fortunately for Ralph, the rescue-party arrives on time and all the
boys who remains on the island get rescued. Had it not been the fire that spread on the
island, the boys would probably have never been rescued. Here the importance of fire as a
symbol of sense is consummated.
The fire reached the coco-nut palms by the beach and swallowed them noisily. A flame,
seemingly detached, swung like an acrobat and licked up the palm heads on the platform.
The sky was black.
The officer grinned cheerfully at Ralph.
- We saw your smoke. What have you been doing? Having a war or something? Ralph nodded.
However, there is no all-justifying End of the book: none of the characters takes any
responsibility for their wrong-doings and the rescue-party, which takes the boys off
their island comes from a world in which regression has occurred on a gigantic scale- the
scale of atomic war.
The reader feels that at the very beginning of the novel Ralph and Jack are almost the
same schoolboys and, in a way, the same personalities. But at the very end, they are
completely different. The parts that are between the beginning and the end of the book
are carefully developed stages that gradually deepen the differences between Ralph and
Jack. Ralph and his common sense stays almost the same throughout the book, it is Jack
and his hunters who change. The reader finds out about the differences between the two by
experiencing the situations and conflicts that arise between Ralph and Jack as they
struggle for power. The differences are greater and the tension rising as the book goes
on, until the plot hits its unjustifying end.
In this book Golding succeeds in giving convincing form to that which exists deep in our
self-awareness. By the skill of his writing, he takes the reader step by step along the
same regressive route as that traversed by the boys on the island... Our first reactions
are those of 'civilised' people. But as the story continues, we find ourselves being
caught up in the thrill of the hunt and the exhilaration of slaughter and blood and the
whole elemental feeling of the island and the sea... The backing of Golding's thesis
comes not from the imaginary events on the island but from the reality of the reader's
response to them. Our minds turn to the outrages of our century - the slaughter of the
first war, the concentration camps and atom-bombs of the second - and we realise that
Golding has compelled us to acknowledge that there is in each of us a hidden recess which
horrifyingly declares our complicity in torture and murder...