CASEBOOK EDITION
TEXT, NOTES & CRITICISM
William Golding's
LORD OF THE FLIES
edited by
James R. Baker
Arthur P. Ziegler, Jr.
A PERIGEE BOOK
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and
incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or
are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons,
living or dead, business establishments, events or locales
is entirely coincidental.
A Perigee Book
Published by The Berkley Publishing Group
A division of Penguin Putnam Inc.
375 Hudson Street
New York, New York 10014
Copyright (c) 1954 by William Golding
Purdue Interview copyright (c) 1964 by James Keating &
William Golding
All rights reserved. This book, or parts thereof,
may not be reproduced in any form without permission.
Published simultaneously in Canada by General Publishing Co.
Limited, Toronto.
ISBN 0-399-50643-8
First Perigee edition: September 1988
Fourteen previous printings by G. P. Putnam's Sons
The Penguin Putnam Inc. World Wide Web site address is
http://www.penguinputnam.com
Printed in the United States of America
22 23 24 25 26 27 28
Acknowledgments
A casebook edition of any work of literature is necessarily the result
of work and good will by numerous people. We are deeply indebted to the
writers who contributed the original materials contained in this volume.
We also wish to thank the authors, editors, and publishers who so
kindly granted permissions for use of the previously published materials
collected in this volume. Full acknowledgment for their valuable aid is
printed in the headnote for each of the articles as well as original sources
of publication.
The editors gratefully acknowledge the special courtesies of William
Golding, J. T. C. Golding, Frank Kermode, Donald R. Spangler, Bruce P.
Woodford, A. C. Willers and James Keating. The Introduction to this book
originally appeared in the Arizona Quarterly. It is reprinted here (revised)
by permission of the editor, Albert F. Gegenheimer.
For her expert aid in preparing the manuscript, our thanks to Mrs. Paul
V. Anderson, and our special gratitude to Miss Helen Davidson, who not only
performed routine secretarial duties but offered advice and kept spirits
buoyant with her penetrating wit.
J.R.B.
A.P.Z., Jr.
Contents
Arthur P. Ziegler, Jr.
Foreword
ix
James R. Baker
Introduction
xiii
William Golding
Lord of the Flies
1
James Keating-William Golding
Purdue Interview
189
Frank Kermode-William Golding
The Meaning of It All
197
Frank Kermode
The Novels of William Golding
203
E. M. Forster
An Introduction to "Lord of the Flies"
207
Donald R. Spangler
Simon
211
Carl Niemeyer
The Coral Island Revisited
217
J. T. C. Golding
A World of Violence and Small Boys
225
John Peter
The Fables of William Golding
229
Ian Gregor & Mark Kinkead-Weekes
An Introduction to "Lord of the Flies"
235
William R. Mueller
An Old Story Well Told
245
Thomas M. Coskren
Is Golding Calvinistic?
253
Claire Rosenfield
Men of a Smaller Growth
261
E. L. Epstein
Notes on "Lord of the Flies"
277
Time
Lord of the Campus
283
A Checklist of Publications
Relevant to "Lord of the Flies'
287
Foreword
ARTHUR P. ZIEGLER, JR.
It is most astonishing and lamentable that a book as widely read and
frequently used in the classroom as William Gelding's Lord of the Flies has
received so little analytical attention from the critics. True, it has not
been neglected; this volume attests to that. But despite the profusion of
essays by a number of well-known and worthy critics, few close analyses of
Golding's technique can be found among them, few explications of the
workings of the novel will be discovered.
Indeed, despite a running controversy over the meaning of the novel,
critical articles fall largely into a pattern of plot summary and applause
for the arrangement of the novel's materials followed by observations on
Golding's view of human nature, often embellished with the critic's response
to that view.
There are exceptions - they will be found among the essays in this book
- like Claire Rosenfield's psychological study of meaning, Carl Niemeyer's
comparative study of the novel and its antipathetic predecessor The Coral
Island, Donald R. Spangler's penetrating study of the function of Simon, and
William Mueller's discussion of the use of the various hunts.
Further explorations are needed in many areas, however, among them a
careful scrutiny of the opening descriptions of Ralph and Jack in Chapter
One. It is useful, but perhaps not very subtle, to point out that the former
is immediately declared the "fair boy," that he, like the angel Gabriel,
sounds a horn that announces good news - that of survival - that Jack with
his angular frame, black cloak and cap, and red hair is Lucifer-like.
More Biblical parallels must be developed - the paradisiacal setting,
the symbolic nakedness or near nakedness of all the boys except Jack and his
followers - but most especially needed is a study that explains items that
do not comply with the original Biblical pattern but that perhaps serve as
tip-offs to the theme and the ironies that Golding employs without fully
delineating until the last page, for instance the "response" of the paradise
to the boys- first from the heat, then a bird with an echoed "witch-like
cry," then the entangling creepers (more like the Eden of Milton than
Genesis)-together with the important information that Ralph, not Jack, has a
snake-clasp belt, that Jack wears a golden badge. We have implications very
early that Golding's view is not simple, traditionally Christian, or
predictable in spite of the title, that it is a complex rebuttal to the
ever-present faith in man's potential for regeneration and redemption. Here
is a fruitful area of research: do all these elements of the novel, some
seemingly inconsistent, even extraneous, operate in unified support of
theme?
Symbolism is one of the most puzzling aspects of this book. The names
of the four major characters are a perplexing illustration. Simon, the
mystic of the group, has a name clearly linked with an Apostle of Christ,
the one, strange to say, who denied Him three times. (Simon does deny the
objective existence of the beast, but is this a parallel?) Jack also has
such a name, since his first name is a nickname for John, the announcer of
Christ, also a follower of Christ, arid his last name is Merridew, an echo
at least of Mary. Ralph's name, oddly enough, is unrelated to the New
Testament and in fact is said to be akin to the Anglo-Saxon Raedwulf,
"wolf-council." Piggy's nickname appears even more incongruous because it is
Simon rather than Piggy who is slain as a substitute pig. The only instance
in which a name seems incontestably appropriate is that of Roger, where
etymology directs us to the Anglo-Saxon Hrothgar, "spear-fame." 1
In The Coral Island the three protagonists are named Jack, Ralph, and
Peterkin Gay. Golding claims that he changed the latter name to Simon to
emphasize his priestly qualities2-implying some intention on his
part to make at least one name symbolic-while another critic insists that
Peterkin is altered not to Simon but to Piggy.3 But that is
beside the point. The central question is, "To what extent do the names
function symbolically?" Do we just select Simon and Roger and, because
inconvenient, forget the others? Or is there another more subtle solution?
1.Golding's recorded interest in Anglo-Saxon makes it unlikely that he
should be unaware of this etymology. See E. L. Epstein, "Notes on Lord of
the Flies" below, p. 277.
We are also mystified by the relationship between Lord of the Flies and
The Coral Island. Before undertaking a study of Golding's book, must one
study Ballantyne's? To what degree do details in the former depend upon the
latter, and, more confusing, to what degree do both books contain the same
details because of similarity of setting?
No one has produced a full-scale synthesis of the symbols of the novel
either, nor has anyone prepared a fully adequate study of characterization.
Ralph himself is an enigma. Does he represent the idealist and Piggy the
pragmatist? Or the reverse? Why are Piggy and Jack foes from the start, but
Ralph and Jack friends for a considerable length of time? Is it important
that Ralph disdains Piggy for so long? Why does Ralph the leader have such
difficulties controlling the littluns even though they instantly recognize
him as chief rather than Jack? Why doesn't Ralph establish a closer bond
with Simon? Why does Golding-have Ralph enjoy drawing blood? As one examines
the novel closely, he may find himself confronted with a highly ambiguous
protagonist, and for what purpose? Do these complications help or hinder the
operation of the novel? These are vital matters in evaluating it.
One could add to this list of needed studies indefinitely: a detailed
look at the use of war and fighting (they are important from the first page
to the last), a discussion of the relationship of nature descriptions and
events, a look at the historical predecessors of the mountain, and how they
bear on the novel (Calvary, Sinai, Ararat, Olympus, to name a few
possibilities), the cause of the evil (Is it really "original sin"?), and so
on.
2.Frank Kermode and William Golding, "The Meaning of It All," Books and
Bookmen, 5 (October 1959) p. 10. See below in this volume p. 199. Note
Golding's statement that the novel was worked out "very carefully in every
possible way."
3.Carl Niemeyer, "The Coral Island Revisited," College English, 22
(January 1961), p. 242. See below in this volume, p. 219.
Yet in spite of the gaps in the criticism, some commendable studies
have been undertaken, and we have tried to assemble the most useful of them
in this book. Supplementing them are two interviews with Golding in which he
discusses both his own conception of the novel and related
matters.4
Through our arrangement of and notes to the articles, we have tried to
reflect the intricate texture of the novel as illustrated by the critics and
to point up areas of perplexity and disagreement. The bibliography at the
close of the volume indicates possibilities for further reading and study.
4. The reader, of course, will wish to weigh any artist's view in the
light of the continuing critical dialogue surrounding the "intentional
fallacy." Frank Kermode calls Golding's views in question in "The Novels of
William Golding," International Literary Annual, p. 19. See p. 206 below.Introduction1
JAMES R. BAKER
Lord of the Flies offers a variation upon the ever-popular tale of
island adventure, and it holds all of the excitements common to that long
tradition. Golding's castaways are faced with the usual struggle for
survival, the terrors of isolation, and a desperate out finally successful
effort to signal a passing ship which will return them to the world they
have lost. This time, however, the story is told against the background of
an atomic war. A plane carrying some English boys, aged six to twelve, from
the center of conflict is shot down by the enemy and the youths are left
without adult company on an unpopulated Pacific island. The environment in
which they find themselves actually presents no serious challenge: the
island is a paradise of flowers and fruit, fresh water flows from the
mountain, and the climate is gentle. In spite of these unusual natural
advantages, the children fail miserably and the adventure ends in a reversal
of their (and the reader's) expectations. Within a short time the rule of
reason is overthrown and the survivors regress to savagery.
During the first days on the island there is little forewarning of this
eventual collapse of order. The boys are delighted with the prospect of some
real fun before the adults come to fetch them. With innocent enthusiasm they
recall the storybook romances they have read and now expect to enjoy in
reality. Among these is The Coral Island, Robert Michael Ballantyne's
heavily moralistic idyll of castaway boys, written in 1858 yet still, in our
atomic age, a popular adolescent classic in England. In Ballantyne's tale
everything comes off in exemplary style. For Ralph, Jack, and Peterkin (his
charming young imperialists), mastery of the natural environment is an
elementary exercise in Anglo-Saxon ingenuity. The fierce pirates who invade
the island are defeated by sheer moral force, and the tribe of cannibalistic
savages is easily converted and reformed by the example of Christian conduct
afforded them. The Cord Island is again mentioned by the naval officer who
comes to rescue Golding's boys from the nightmare they have created, and so
the adventure of these enfants terribles is ironically juxtaposed with the
spectacular success of the Victorian darlings.2 The effect is to
hold before us two radically different pictures of human nature and society.
Ballantyne, no less than Golding, is a fabulist 3 who asks us to
believe that the evolution of affairs on his coral island models or reflects
the adult world, a world in which men are unfailingly reasonable,
cooperative, loving and lovable. We are hardly prepared to accept these
optimistic exaggerations, though Ballantyne's story suggests essentially the
same flattering image of civilized man found in so many familiar island
fables. In choosing to parody and invert this image Golding posits a reality
the tradition has generally denied.
1. Copyright 1964 by James R. Baker.
The character of this reality is to be seen in the final episode of
Lord of the Flies. When the cruiser appears offshore, the boy Ralph is the
one remaining advocate of reason, but he has no more status than the wild
pigs of the forest and is being hunted down for the kill. Shocked by their
filth, their disorder, and the revelation that there have been real
casualties, the officer (with appropriate fatherly indignation) expresses
his disappointment in this "pack of British boys." There is no basis for his
surprise, for life on the island has only imitated the larger tragedy in
which the adults of the outside world attempted to govern themselves
reasonably but ended in the same game of hunt and kill. Thus, according to
Golding, the aim of the narrative is "to trace the defects of society back
to the defects of human nature"; the moral illustrated is that "the shape of
society must depend on the ethical nature of the individual and not on any
political system however apparently logical or respectable."4 And
since the lost children are the inheritors of the same defects of nature
which doomed their fathers, the tragedy on the island is bound to repeat the
actual pattern of human history.
2.A longer discussion of Golding's use of Ballantyne appears in Carl
Niemeyer's "The Coral Island Revisited." See pp. 217-223 in this volume.
3.See John Peter's "The Fables of William Golding" on pp. 229-234 of
this volume. A less simplistic view is offered by Ian Gregor and Mark
Kinkead-Weekes in their Introduction to Faber's School Edition of Lord of
the Flies reprinted on pp. 235-243 in this volume.
The central fact in that pattern is one which we, like the fatuous
naval officer, are virtually incapable of perceiving: first, because it is
one that constitutes an affront to our ego; second, because it controverts
the carefully and elaborately rationalized record of history which sustains
the ego of "rational" man. The fact is that regardless of the intelligence
we possess-an intelligence which drives us in a tireless effort to impose an
order upon our affairs-we are defeated with monotonous regularity by our own
irrationality. "History," said Joyce's Dedalus, is a nightmare from which I
am trying to awake." 5 But we do not awake. Though we constantly
make a heroic attempt to rise to a level ethically superior to nature, our
own nature, again and again we suffer a fall-brought low by some outburst of
madness because of the limiting defects inherent in our species.
If there is any literary precedent for the image of man contained in
Gelding's fable, it is obviously not to be found within the framework of a
tradition that embraces Robinson Crusoe and Swiss Family
Robinson6 and includes also those island episodes in Conrad's
novels in which the self-defeating skepticism of a Heyst or a Decoud serves
only to illustrate the value of illusions.7 All of these offer
some version of the rationalist orthodoxy we so readily accept, even though
the text may not be so boldly simple as Ballantyne's sermon for innocent
Victorians. Quite removed from this tradition, which Golding invariably
satirizes, is the directly acknowledged influence of classical Creek
literature. Within this designation, though Golding's critics have ignored
it, is an obvious admiration for Euripides.8 Among the plays of
Euripides it is, The Bacchae that Golding, like Mamillius of The Brass
Butterfly, knows by heart The tragedy is a bitter allegory on the
degeneration of society, and it contains the basic parable which informs so
much of Golding's work. Most of all, Lord of the Flies, for here the point
of view is similar to that of the aging Euripides after he was driven into
exile from Athens. Before his departure the tragedian brought down upon
himself the mockery and disfavor of a mediocre regime like the one which
later condemned Socrates. The Bacchae, however, is more than an expression
of disillusionment with the failing democracy. Its aim is precisely what
Golding has declared to be his own: "to trace the defects of society back to
the defects of human nature," and so account for the failure of reason and
the inevitable, blind ritual-hunt in which we seek to kill the "beast"
within our own being.
4. Quoted by E. L. Epstein in his "Notes on Lord of the Flies." See
below, p. 277.
5. Ulysses (New York: The Modem Library, 1961), p.34.
6.See Golding's remarks on these novels and Treasure Island in his
review called "Islands," Spectator, 204 (June 10, 1960), 844-46.
7.Thus far, attempts to compare Golding and Conrad have been
unsuccessful. See Golding's remarks on Conrad (and Richard Hughes's High
Wind in Jamaica) in the interview by James Keating on p. 194 in this volume.
See also William R. Mueller's essay, p. 251.The Bacchae is based on a legend of Dionysus wherein the god (a son of
Zeus and the mortal Semele, daughter of Cadmus) descends upon Thebes in
great wrath, determined to take revenge upon the young king, Pentheus, who
has denied him recognition and prohibited his worship. Dionysus wins as
devotees the daughters of Cadmus and through his power of enchantment
decrees that Agave, mother of Pentheus, shall lead the band in frenzied
celebrations. Pentheus bluntly opposes the god and tries by every means to
preserve order against the rising tide of madness in his kingdom. The folly
of his proud resistance' is shown in the defeat of all that Pentheus
represents: the bacchantes trample on his edicts and in wild marches through
the land wreck everything in their path. Thus prepared for his vengeance,
Dionysus casts a spell over Pentheus. With his judgment weakened and his
identity obscured in the dress of a woman, the defeated prince sets out to
spy upon the orgies. In the excitement of their rituals the bacchantes live
in illusion, and all that falls in their way undergoes a metamorphosis which
brings it into accord with the natural images of their worship. When
Pentheus is seen he is taken for a lion9 and, led by Agave, the
blind victims of the god tear him limb from limb. The final humiliation of
those who deny the godhead is to render them conscious of their crimes and
to cast them out from their homeland as guilt-stricken exiles and wanderers
upon the earth.
8.On several occasions Golding has stated that he has read deeply in
Greek literature and history during the past twenty years.
For most modern readers the chief obstacle in the way of proper
understanding of The Bacchae, and therefore Golding's use of it, is the
popular notion that Dionysus is nothing more than a charming god of wine.
This image descends from "the Alexandrines, and above all the Romans- with
their tidy functionalism and their cheerful obtuseness in all matters of the
spirit-who departmentalized Dionysus as 'jolly Bacchus' . . . with his
riotous crew of nymphs and satyrs. As such he was taken over from the Romans
by Renaissance painters and poets; and it was they in turn who shaped the
image in which the modern world pictures him." In reality the god was more
important and "much more dangerous": he was "the principle of animal life .
. . the hunted and the hunter-the unrestrained potency which man envies in
the beasts and seeks to assimilate." Thus the intention and chief effect of
the bacchanal was "to liberate the instinctive life in man from the bondage
imposed upon it by reason and social custom. ..." In his play Euripides also
suggests "a further effect, a merging of the individual consciousness in a
group consciousness' so that the participant is "at one not only with the
Master of Life but his fellow-worshipers . . . and with the life of the
earth."10 Dionysus was worshiped in various animal incarnations
(snake, bull, lion, boar), whatever form was appropriate to place; and all
of these were incarnations of the impulses he evoked in his worshipers. In
The Bacchae a leader of the bacchanal summons him with the incantation, "O
God, Beast, Mystery, come!" 11 Agave's attack upon the lion" (her
own son) conforms to the codes of Dionysic ritual: like other gods, this one
is slain and devoured, his devotees sustained by his flesh and blood. The
terrible error of the bacchantes is a punishment brought upon the land by
the lord of beasts: "To resist Dionysus is to repress the elemental in one's
own nature; the punishment is the sudden collapse of the inward dykes when
the elemental breaks through perforce and civilization
vanishes."129. In Ovid's Metamorphoses the bacchantes see Pentheus in the form of a
boar.
10. E. R. Dodds, Euripides Bacchae, Second Edition (Oxford: The
Clarendon Press, 1960), p. xii and p. xx. Dodds also finds evidence that
some Dionysian rites called for human sacrifice.
11. From the verse translation by Gilbert Murray.
This same humiliation falls upon the innocents of Lord of the Flies. In
their childish pride they attempt to impose an order or pattern upon the
vital chaos of their own nature, and so they commit the error and "sin" of
Pentheus, the "man of many sorrows." The penalties, as in the play, are
bloodshed, guilt, utter defeat of reason. Finally, they stand before the
officer, "a semicircle of little boys, their bodies streaked with colored
clay, sharp sticks in their hands."13 Facing that purblind
commander (with his revolver and peaked cap), Ralph cries "for the end of
innocence, the darkness of man's heart" (186-87); and the tribe of vicious
hunters joins him in spontaneous choral lament But even Ralph could not
trace the arc of their descent, could not explain why it's no go, why things
are as they are; for in the course of events he was at times among the
hunters, one of them, and he grieves in part for the appalling ambiguities
he has discovered in his own nature. He remembers those strange, interims of
blindness and despair when a "shutter" clicked down over his mind and left
him at the mercy of his own dark heart. In Ralph's experience, then, the
essence of the fable is spelled out: he suffers the dialectic we must all
endure, and his failure to resolve it as we would wish demonstrates the
limitations which have always plagued the species.
In the first hours on the island Ralph sports untroubled in the
twilight of childhood and innocence, but after he sounds the conch he must
confront the forces he has summoned to the granite platform beside the sunny
lagoon. During that first assembly he seems to arbitrate with the grace of a
young god (his natural bearing is dignified, princely) and, for the time
being, a balance is maintained. The difficulties begin with the
dream-revelation of the child distinguished by the birthmark. The boy tells
of a snakelike monster prowling the woods by night, and at this moment the
seed of fear is planted. Out of it will grow the mythic beast destined to
become lord of the island. Rumors of his presence grow. There is a plague of
haunting dreams-the first symptom of the irrational fear which is "mankind's
essential illness."
12.Dodds, p.xvi
13. Lord of the Flies, p. 185. All quotations are taken from the
edition contained in this volume. Subsequent page references will appear in
parentheses.
In the chapter called "Beast from Water" the parliamentary debate
becomes a blatant allegory in which each spokesman caricatures the position
he defends. Piggy (the voice of reason) leads with the statement that life
is scientific," adds the usual Utopian promises ("when the war's over
they'll be traveling to Mars and back"), and his assurance that such things
will come to pass if only we control the senseless conflicts that impede
progress. He is met with laughter and jeers (the crude multitude), and at
this juncture a littlun interrupts to declare that the beast (ubiquitous
evil) comes out of the sea. Maurice interjects to voice the doubt which
curses them all: "I don't believe in the beast of course. As Piggy says,
life's scientific, but we don't know, do we? Not certainly . . ." (81). Then
Simon (the inarticulate seer) rises to utter the truth in garbled,
ineffective phrases: there is a beast, but "it's only us." As always, his
saving words are misunderstood, and the prophet shrinks away in confusion.
Amid speculation that he means some kind of ghost, there is a silent show of
hands for ghosts as Piggy breaks in with angry rhetorical questions: "What
are we? Humans? Or animals? Or savages?" (84). Taking his cue, Jack
(savagery in excelsis) leaps to his feet and leads all but the "three blind
mice" (Ralph, Piggy, Simon) into a mad jig of release down the darkening
beach. The parliamentarians naively contrast their failure with the supposed
efficiency of adults, and Ralph, in despair, asks for a sign from that
ruined world.
In "Beast from Air" the sign, a dead man in a parachute, is sent down
from the grownups, and the collapse foreshadowed in the allegorical
parliament comes on with surprising speed. Ralph himself looks into the face
of the enthroned tyrant on the mountain, and from that moment his young
intelligence is crippled by fear. He confirms the reality of the beast and
his confession of weakness insures Jack's spectacular rise to power. Yet the
ease with which Jack establishes his Dionysian order is hardly
unaccountable. In its very first appearance the black-caped choir, vaguely
evil in its military esprit, emerged ominously from a mirage and marched
down upon the minority forces assembled on the platform. Except for Simon,
pressed into service and out of step with the common rhythm, the choir is
composed of servitors bound by the ritual and mystery of group
consciousness. They share in that communion, and there is no real
"conversion" or transfer of allegiance from good to evil when the chorus,
ostensibly Christian, becomes the tribe of hunters. The lord they serve
inhabits their own being. If they turn with relief from the burdens of the
platform, it is because they cannot transcend the limitations of their own
nature. Even the parliamentary pool of intelligence must fail in the attempt
to explain all that manifests itself in our turbulent hearts, and the
assertion that life is ordered, "scientific," often appears mere bravado. It
embodies tile sin of pride and, inevitably, evokes in some form the great
god it has denied.
It is Simon who witnesses his coming and hears his words of wrath. In
the thick undergrowth of the forest the boy discovers a refuge from the war
of words. His shelter of leaves is a place of contemplation, a sequestered
temple, scented and lighted by the white flowers of the night-blooming
candlenut tree, where, in secret, he meditates on the lucid but somehow
over-simple logic of Piggy and Ralph and the venal emotion of Jack's
challenges: There, in the infernal glare of the afternoon sun, he sees the
killing of the sow by the hunters and the erection of the pig's head on the
sharpened stick. These acts signify not only the release from the blood
taboo but also obeisance to the mystery and god who has come to be lord of
the island-world. In the hours of one powerfully symbolic afternoon Simon
sees the perennial fall which is the central reality of our history: me
defeat of reason and the release of Dionysian madness in souls wounded by
fear.
Awed by the hideousness of the dripping head (an image of the hunter's
own nature) the apprentice bacchantes suddenly run away, but Simon's gaze is
"held by that ancient, inescapable recognition" (128)-an incarnation of the
beast or devil bom again and again out of the human heart. Before he loses
consciousness the epileptic visionary "hears" the truth which is
inaccessible to the illusion-bound rationalist and the unconscious or
irrational man alike: " 'Fancy thinking the Beast was something you could
hunt and kill!' said the head. For a moment or two the forest and all the
other dimly appreciated places echoed with the parody of laughter. 'You
knew, didn't you? I'm part of you? Close, close, close! I'm the reason why
it's no go? Why things are as they are?' " (133). When Simon recovers from
this trauma of revelation he finds on the mountain top that the "beast" is
only a man. Like the pig itself, the dead man in the chute is fly-blown,
corrupt, an obscene image of the evil that has triumphed in the adult world
as well. Tenderly, the boy releases the lines so that the body can descend
to earth, but the fallen man does not die. After Simon's death, when the
truth is once more lost, the figure rises, moves over the terrified tribe on
the beach, and finally out to sea -a tyrannous ghost (history itself) which
haunts and curses every social order.
In his martyrdom Simon meets the fate of all saints. The truth he
brings would set us free from the repetitious nightmare of history, but we
are, by nature, incapable of receiving that truth. Demented by fears our
intelligence cannot control, we are at once "heroic and sick" (96),
ingenious and ingenuous at the same time. Inevitably we gather in tribal
union to hunt the molesting "beast," and always the intolerable frustration
of the hunt ends as it must: within the enchanted circle formed by the
searchers, the beast materializes in the only form he can possibly assume,
the very image of his creator; and once he is visible, projected (once the
hunted has become the hunter), the circle closes in an agony of relief.
Simon, call him prophet, seer or saint, is blessed and cursed by those
intuitions which threaten the ritual of the tribe. In whatever culture the
saint appears, he is doomed by his unique insights. There is a vital, if
obvious, irony to be observed in the fact that the lost children of
Golding's fable are of Christian heritage, but when they blindly kill their
savior they re-enact an ancient tragedy, universal because it has its true
source in the defects of the species.
The beast, too, is as old as his maker and has assumed many names,
though of course his character must remain quite consistent The particular
beast who speaks to Simon is much like his namesake, Beelzebub. A prince of
demons of Assyrian or Hebrew descent, but later appropriated by Christians,
he is a lord of the flies, an idol for unclean beings. He is what all devils
are: an embodiment of the lusts and cruelties which possess his worshipers
and of peculiar power among the Philistines, the unenlightened, fearful
herd. He shares some kinship with Dionysus, for his powers and effects are
much the same. In The Bacchae Dionysus is shown "as the source of ecstasies
and disasters, as the enemy of intellect and the defense of man against his
isolation, as a power that can make him feel like a god while acting like a
beast. ..." As such, he is "a god whom all can recognize." 14
Nor is it difficult to recognize the island on which Golding's
innocents are set down as a natural paradise, an un-corrupted Eden offering
all the lush abundance of the primal earth. But it is lost with the first
rumors of the "snake-thing," because he is the ancient, inescapable presence
who insures a repetition of the fall. If this fall from grace is indeed the
"perennial myth" that Golding explores in all his work,15 it does
not seem that he has found in Genesis a metaphor capable of illuminating the
full range of his theme. In The Bacchae Golding the classicist found another
version of the fall of man, and it is clearly more useful to him than its
Biblical counterpart. For one thing, it makes it possible to avoid the
comparatively narrow moral connotations most of us are inclined to read into
the warfare between Satan (unqualifiedly evil) and God (unqualifiedly good).
Satan is a fallen angel seeking vengeance on the godhead, and we therefore
think of him as an autonomous entity, a being in his own right and prince of
his own domain. Dionysus, on the other hand, is a son of God (Zeus) and thus
a manifestation or agent of the godhead or mystery with whom man seeks
communion, or, perverse in his pride, denies at his own peril. To resist
Dionysus is to resist nature itself, and this attempt to transcend the laws
of creation brings down upon us the punishment of the god. Further, the
ritual-hunt of The Bacchae provides something else not found in the Biblical
account. The hunt on Golding's island emerges spontaneously out of childish
play, but it comes to serve as a key to psychology underlying human conflict
and, of course, an effective symbol for the bloody game we have played
throughout our history. This is not to say that Biblical metaphor is
unimportant in Lord of the Flies, or in the later works, but it forms only a
part of the larger mythic frame in which Golding sees the nature and destiny
of man.
14. R. P. Winnington-Ingram, Euripides and Dionysus: An Interpretation
of the Bacchae (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1948), pp.
9-10.
15. See Ian Gregor and Mark Kinkead-Weekes, "The Strange Case of Mr.
Golding and his Critics," Twentieth Century. 167 (February, 1960), 118.
Unfortunately, the critics have concentrated all too much on Golding's
debt to Christian sources, with the result that he is popularly regarded as
a rigid Christian moralist Yet the fact is that he does not reject one
orthodoxy only to fall into another. The emphasis of his critics has
obscured Gold-ing's fundamental realism and made it difficult to recognize
that he satirizes the Christian as well as the rationalist point of view. In
Lord of the Flies, for example, the much discussed last chapter offers none
of the traditional comforts. A fable, by virtue of its far-reaching
suggestions, touches upon a dimension that most fiction does not-the
dimension of prophecy. With the appearance of the naval officer it is no
longer possible to accept the evolution of the island society as an isolated
failure. The events we have witnessed constitute a picture of realities
which obtain in the world at large. There, too, a legendary beast has
emerged from the dark wood, come from the sea, or fallen from the sky; and
men have gathered for the communion of the hunt. In retrospect, the entire
fable suggests a grim parallel with the prophecies of the Biblical
Apocalypse. According to that vision the weary repetition of human failure
is assured by the birth of new devils for each generation of men. The first
demon, who fathers all the others, falls from the heavens; the second is
summoned from the sea to make war upon the saints and overcome them; the
third, emerging from the earth itself, induces man to make and worship an
image of the beast. It also decrees that this image "should both speak and
cause that as many as should not worship" the beast should be killed. Each
devil in turn lords over the earth for an era, and then the long nightmare
of history is broken by the second coming and the divine millennium. In Lord
of the Flies (note some of the chapter tides) we see much the same sequence,
but it occurs in a highly accelerated evolution. The parallel ends, however,
with the irony of Golding's climactic revelation. The childish hope of
rescue perishes as the beast-man comes to the shore, for he bears in his
nature the bitter promise that things will remain as they are, and as they
have been since his first appearance ages and ages ago.
The rebirth of evil is made certain by the fatal defects inherent in
human nature, and the haunted island we occupy must always be a fortress on
which enchanted hunters pursue the beast. There is no rescue. The making of
history and the making of myth are finally the selfsame process-an old
process in which the soul makes its own place, its own reality.
In spite of its rich and varied metaphor Lord of the Flies is not a
bookish fable, and Golding has warned that he will concede little or nothing
to The Golden Bough.16 There are real dangers in ignoring this
disclaimer. To do so obscures the contemporary relevance of his art and its
experiential sources. During the period of World War II he observed first
hand the expenditure of human ingenuity in the old ritual of war. As the
illusions of his early rationalism and humanism fell away, new images
emerged, and, as for Simon, a picture of "a human at once heroic and sick"
formed in his mind. When the war ended, Golding was ready to write (as he
had not been before), and it was natural to find in the traditions he knew
the metaphors which could define the continuity of the soul's flaws. In one
sense, the "fable" was already written. One had but to trace over the words
upon the scroll17 and so collaborate with history.
16.See Golding's reply to Professor Kermode in "The Meaning of It All,"
p. 199 in this volume.
17.In a letter to me (September, 1962) Professor Frank Kermode recalls
Golding's remark to the effect that he was "tracing words already on the
paper" during the writing of Lord of the Flies.
LORD OF THE FLIES
a novel by
WILLIAM GOLDING
Contents
1. The Sound of the Shell
5
2. Fire on the Mountain
28
3. Huts on the Beach
43
4. Painted Faces and Long Hair
53
5. Beast from Water
70
6. Beast from Air
88
7. Shadows and Tall Trees
101
8. Gift for the Darkness
115
9. A View to a Death
134
10. The Shell and the Glasses
143
11. Castle Rock
156
12. Cry of the Hunters
165
Notes
188
For my mother and father
CHAPTER ONE
The Sound of the Shell
The boy with fair hair lowered himself down the last few feet of rock
and began to pick his way toward the lagoon. Though he had taken off his
school sweater and trailed it now from one hand, his grey shirt stuck to him
and his hair was plastered to his forehead. All round him the long scar
smashed into the jungle was a bath of heat. He was clambering heavily among
the creepers and broken trunks when a bird, a vision of red and yellow,
flashed upwards with a witch-like cry; and this cry was echoed by another.
"Hi!" it said. "Wait a minute!"
The undergrowth at the side of the scar was shaken and a multitude of
raindrops fell pattering.
"Wait a minute," the voice said. ' I got caught up."
The fair boy stopped and jerked his stockings with an automatic gesture
that made the jungle seem for a moment like the Home Counties.
The voice spoke again.
"I can't hardly move with all these creeper things."
The owner of the voice came backing out of the undergrowth so that
twigs scratched on a greasy wind-breaker. The naked crooks of his knees were
plump, caught and scratched by thorns. He bent down, removed the thorns
carefully, and turned round. He was shorter than the fair boy and very fat.
He came forward, searching out safe lodgments for his feet, and then looked
up through thick spectacles.
"Where's the man with the megaphone?"
The fair boy shook his head.
"This is an island. At least I think it's an island. That's a reef out
in the sea. Perhaps there aren't any grownups anywhere."
The fat boy looked startled.
'There was that pilot. But he wasn't in the passenger cabin, he was up
in front."
The fair boy was peering at the reef through screwed-up eyes.
"All them other lads," the fat boy went on. "Some of them must have got
out. They must have, mustn't they?"
The fair boy began to pick his way as casually as possible toward the
water. He tried to be offhand and not too obviously uninterested, but the
fat boy hurried after him.
"Aren't there any grownups at all?"
"I don't think so."
The fair boy said this solemnly; but then the delight of a realized
ambition overcame him. In the middle of the scar he stood on his head and
grinned at the reversed fat boy.
"No grownups!"
The fat boy thought for a moment.
"That pilot."
The fair boy allowed his feet to come down and sat on the steamy earth.
"He must have flown off after he dropped us. He couldn't land here. Not
in a plane with wheels."
"We was attacked!"
"He'll be back all right."
The fat boy shook his head.
"When we was coming down I looked through one of them windows. I saw
the other part of the plane. There were flames coming out of it."
He looked up and down the scar.
"And this is what the cabin done."
The fair boy reached out and touched the jagged end of a trunk. For a
moment he looked interested.
"What happened to it?" he asked. "Where's it got to now?"
"That storm dragged it out to sea. It wasn't half dangerous with all
them tree trunks falling. There must have been some kids still in it."
He hesitated for a moment, then spoke again.
"What's your name?"
"Ralph."
The fat boy waited to be asked his name in turn but this proffer of
acquaintance was not made; the fair boy called Ralph smiled vaguely, stood
up, and began to make las way once more toward the lagoon. The fat boy hung
steadily at his shoulder.
"I expect there's a lot more of us scattered about. You haven't seen
any others, have you?"
Ralph shook his head and increased his speed. Then he tripped over a
branch and came down with a crash.
The fat boy stood by him, breathing hard.
"My auntie told me not to run," he explained, "on account of my
asthma."
"Ass-mar?"
"That's right. Can't catch me breath. I was the only boy in our school
what had asthma," said the fat boy with a touch of pride. "And I've been
wearing specs since I was three."
He took off his glasses and held them out to Ralph, blinking and
smiling, and then started to wipe them against his grubby wind-breaker. An
expression of pain and inward concentration altered the pale contours of his
face. He smeared the sweat from his cheeks and quickly adjusted the
spectacles on his nose.
"Them fruit."
He glanced round the scar.
"Them fruit," he said, "I expect-"
He put on his glasses, waded away from Ralph, and crouched down among
the tangled foliage.
"Ill be out again in just a minute-"
Ralph disentangled himself cautiously and stole away through the
branches. In a few seconds the fat boy's grunts were behind him and he was
hurrying toward the screen that still lay between him and the lagoon. He
climbed over a broken trunk and was out of the jungle.
The shore was fledged with palm trees. These stood or leaned or
reclined against the light and their green feathers were a hundred feet up
in the air. The ground beneath them was a bank covered with coarse grass,
torn everywhere by the upheavals of fallen trees, scattered with decaying
coconuts and palm saplings. Behind this was the darkness of the forest
proper and the open space of the scar. Ralph stood, one hand against a grey
trunk, and screwed up his eyes against the shimmering water. Out there,
perhaps a mile away, the white surf flinked on a coral reef, and beyond that
the open sea was dark blue. Within the irregular arc of coral the lagoon was
still as a mountain lake-blue of all shades and shadowy green and purple.
The beach between the palm terrace and the water was a thin stick, endless
apparently, for to Ralph's left the perspectives of palm and beach and water
drew to a point at infinity; and always, almost visible, was the heat.
He jumped down from the terrace. The sand was thick over his black
shoes and the heat hit him. He became conscious of the weight of clothes,
kicked his shoes off fiercely and ripped off each stocking with its elastic
garter in a single movement Then he leapt back on the terrace, pulled off
his shirt, and stood there among the skull-like coconuts with green shadows
from the palms and the forest sliding over his skin. He undid the
snake-clasp of his belt, lugged off his shorts and pants, and stood there
naked, looking at the dazzling beach and the water.
He was old enough, twelve years and a few months, to have lost the
prominent tummy of childhood; and not yet old enough for adolescence to have
made him awkward. You could see now that he might make a boxer, as far as
width and heaviness of shoulders went, but there was a mildness about his
mouth and eyes that proclaimed no devil. He patted the palm trunk softly,
and, forced at last to believe in the reality of the island, laughed
delightedly again and stood on his head. He turned neatly on to his feet,
jumped down to the beach, knelt and swept a double armful of sand into a
pile against his chest. Then he sat back and looked at the water with
bright, excited eyes.
"Ralph-"
The fat boy lowered himself over the terrace and sat down carefully,
using the edge as a seat.
"I'm sorry I been such a time. Them fruit-"
He wiped his glasses and adjusted them on his button nose. The frame
had made a deep, pink "V" on the bridge. He looked critically at Ralph's
golden body and then down at his own clothes. He laid a hand on the end of a
zipper that extended down his chest.
"My auntie-"
Then he opened the zipper with decision and pulled the whole
wind-breaker over his head.
"There!"
Ralph looked at him sidelong and said nothing.
"I expect we'll want to know all their names," said the fat boy, "and
make a list. We ought to have a meeting."
Ralph did not take the hint so the fat boy was forced to continue.
"I don't care what they call me," he said confidentially, "so long as
they don't call me what they used to call me at school.'
Ralph was faintly interested.
"What was that?"
The fat boy glanced over his shoulder, then leaned toward Ralph.
He whispered.
"They used to call me 'Piggy.' "
Ralph shrieked with laughter. He jumped up.
"Piggy! Piggy!"
"Ralph-please!"
Piggy clasped his hands in apprehension.
"I said I didn't want-"
"Piggy! Piggy!"
Ralph danced out into the hot air of the beach and then returned as a
fighter-plane, with wings swept back, and machine-gunned Piggy.
"Sche-aa-ow!"
He dived in the sand at Piggy's feet and lay there laughing.
"Piggy!"
Piggy grinned reluctantly, pleased despite himself at even this much
recognition.
"So long as you don't tell the others-"
Ralph giggled into the sand. The expression of pain and concentration
returned to Piggy's face.
"Half a sec'."
He hastened back into the forest. Ralph stood up and trotted along to
the right.
Here the beach was interrupted abruptly by the square motif of the
landscape; a great platform of pink granite thrust up uncompromisingly
through forest and terrace and sand and lagoon to make a raised jetty four
feet high. The top of this was covered with a thin layer of soil and coarse
grass and shaded with young palm trees. There was not enough soil for them
to grow to any height and when they reached perhaps twenty feet they fell
and dried, forming a criss-cross pattern of trunks, very convenient to sit
on. The palms that still stood made a green roof, covered on the underside
with a quivering tangle of reflections from the lagoon. Ralph hauled himself
onto this platform, noted the coolness and shade, shut one eye, ana decided
that the shadows on his body were really green. He picked his way to the
seaward edge of the platform and stood looking down into the water. It was
clear to the bottom and bright with the efflorescence of tropical weed and
coral. A school of tiny, glittering fish flicked hither and thither. Ralph
spoke to himself, sounding the bass strings of delight.
"Whizzoh!"
Beyond the platform there was more enchantment. Some act of God-a
typhoon perhaps, or the storm that had accompanied his own arrival-had
banked sand inside the lagoon so that there was a long, deep pool in the
beach with a high ledge of pink granite at the further end. Ralph had been
deceived before now by the specious appearance of depth in a beach pool and
he approached this one preparing to be disappointed. But the island ran true
to form and the incredible pool, which clearly was only invaded by the sea
at high tide, was so deep at one end as to be dark green. Ralph inspected
the whole thirty yards carefully and then plunged in. The water was warmer
than his blood and he might have been swimming in a huge bath.
Piggy appeared again, sat on the rocky ledge, and watched Ralph's green
and white body enviously.
"You can't half swim."
"Piggy."
Piggy took off his shoes and socks, ranged them carefully on the ledge,
and tested the water with one toe.
"It's hot!"
"What did you expect?"
"I didn't expect nothing. My auntie-"
"Sucks to your auntie!"
Ralph did a surface dive and swam under water with his eyes open; the
sandy edge of the pool loomed up like a hillside. He turned over, holding
his nose, and a golden light danced and shattered just over his face. Piggy
was looking determined and began to take off his shorts. Presently he was
palely and fatly naked. He tiptoed down the sandy side of the pool, and sat
there up to his neck in water smiling proudly at Ralph.
"Aren't you going to swim?"
Piggy shook his head.
"I can't swim. I wasn't allowed. My asthma-"
"Sucks to your ass-mar!"
Piggy bore this with a sort of humble patience.
"You can't half swim well."
Ralph paddled backwards down the slope, immersed his mouth and blew a
jet of water into the air. Then he lifted his chin and spoke.
"I could swim when I was five. Daddy taught me. He's a commander in the
Navy. When he gets leave hell come and rescue us. What's your father?"
Piggy flushed suddenly.
"My dad's dead," he said quickly, "and my mum-"
He took off his glasses and looked vainly for something with which to
clean them.
"I used to live with my auntie. She kept a candy store. I used to get
ever so many candies. As many as I liked. When'll your dad rescue us?"
"Soon as he can."
Piggy rose dripping from the water and stood naked, cleaning his
glasses with a sock. The only sound that reached them now through the heat
of the morning was the long, grinding roar of the breakers on the reef.
"How does he know we're here?"
Ralph lolled in the water. Sleep enveloped him like the swathing
mirages that were wrestling with the brilliance of the lagoon.
"How does he know we're here?"
Because, thought Ralph, because, because. The roar from the reef became
very distant.
"They'd tell him at the airport."
Piggy shook his head, put on his flashing glasses and looked down at
Ralph.
"Not them. Didn't you hear what the pilot said? About the atom bomb?
They're all dead."
Ralph pulled himself out of the water, stood facing Piggy, and
considered this unusual problem.
Piggy persisted.
"This an island, isn't it?"
"I climbed a rock," said Ralph slowly, "and I think this is an island."
"They're all dead," said Piggy, "an' this is an island. Nobody don't
know we're here. Your dad don't know, nobody don t know-"
His lips quivered and the spectacles were dimmed with mist.
"We may stay here till we die."
With that word the heat seemed to increase till it became a threatening
weight and the lagoon attacked them with a blinding effulgence.
"Get my clothes," muttered Ralph. "Along there."
He trotted through the sand, enduring the sun's enmity, crossed the
platform and found his scattered clothes. To put on a grey shirt once more
was strangely pleasing. Then he climbed the edge of the platform and sat in
the green shade on a convenient trunk. Piggy hauled himself up, carrying
most of his clothes under his arms. Then he sat carefully on a fallen trunk
near the little cliff that fronted the lagoon; and the tangled reflections
quivered over him.
Presently he spoke.
"We got to find the others. We got to do something."
Ralph said nothing. Here was a coral island. Protected from the sun,
ignoring Piggy's ill-omened talk, he dreamed pleasantly.
Piggy insisted.
"How many of us are there?"
Ralph came forward and stood by Piggy.
"I don't know."
Here and there, little breezes crept over the polished waters beneath
the haze of heat. When these breezes reached the platform the palm fronds
would whisper, so that spots of blurred sunlight slid over their bodies or
moved like bright, winged things in the shade.
Piggy looked up at Ralph. All the shadows on Ralph's face were
reversed; green above, bright below from the lagoon. A blur of sunlight was
crawling across his hair.
"We got to do something."
Ralph looked through him. Here at last was the imagined out never fully
realized place leaping into real life. Ralph's lips parted in a delighted
smile and Piggy, taking this smile to himself as a mark of recognition,
laughed with pleasure.
"If ft really is an island-"
"What's that?"
Ralph had stopped smiling and was pointing into the lagoon. Something
creamy lay among the ferny weeds.
"A stone."
"No. A shell"
Suddenly Piggy was a-bubble with decorous excitement
"S'right. It's a shell! I seen one like that before. On someone's back
wall A conch he called it. He used to blow it and then his mum would come.
It's ever so valuable-"
Near to Ralph's elbow a palm sapling leaned out over the lagoon.
Indeed, the weight was already pulling a lump from the poor soil and soon it
would fall. He tore out the stem and began to poke about in the water, while
the brilliant fish flicked away on this side and that. Piggy leaned
dangerously.
"Careful! You'll break it-"
"Shut up."
Ralph spoke absently. The shell was interesting and pretty and a worthy
plaything; but the vivid phantoms of his day-dream still interposed between
him and Piggy, who in this context was an irrelevance. The palm sapling,
bending, pushed the shell across the weeds. Ralph used one hand as a fulcrum
and pressed down with the other till the shell rose, dripping, and Piggy
could make a grab.
Now the shell was no longer a thing seen but not to be touched, Ralph
too became excited. Piggy babbled:
"-a conch; ever so expensive. I bet if you wanted to buy one, you'd
have to pay pounds and pounds and pounds -he had it on his garden wall, and
my auntie-"
Ralph took the shell from Piggy and a little water ran down his arm. In
color the shell was deep cream, touched here and there with fading pink.
Between the point, worn away into a little hole, and the pink lips of the
mouth, lay eighteen inches of shell with a slight spiral twist and covered
with a delicate, embossed pattern. Ralph shook sand out of the deep tube.
"-mooed like a cow," he said. "He had some white stones too, an' a bird
cage with a green parrot. He didn't blow the white stones, of course, an` he
said-"
Piggy paused for breath and stroked the glistening thing that lay in
Ralph's hands.
"Ralph!"
Ralph looked up.
"We can use this to call the others. Have a meeting. They'll come when
they hear us-"
He beamed at Ralph.
"That was what you meant, didn't you? That's why you got the conch out
of the water?''
Ralph pushed back his fair hair.
"How did your friend blow the conch?"
"He kind of spat," said Piggy. "My auntie wouldn't let me blow on
account of my asthma. He said you blew from down here." Piggy laid a hand on
his jutting abdomen. "You try, Ralph. You'll call the others."
Doubtfully, Ralph laid the small end of the shell against his mouth and
blew. There came a rushing sound from its mouth but nothing more. Ralph
wiped the salt water off his lips and tried again, but the shell remained
silent.
"He kind of spat."
Ralph pursed his lips and squirted air into the shell, which emitted a
low, farting noise. This amused both boys so much that Ralph went on
squirting for some minutes, between bouts of laughter.
"He blew from down here."
Ralph grasped the idea and hit the shell with air from his diaphragm.
Immediately the thing sounded. A deep, harsh note boomed under the palms,
spread through the intricacies of the forest and echoed back from the pink
granite of the mountain. Clouds of birds rose from the tree-tops, and
something squealed and ran in the undergrowth.
Ralph took the shell away from his lips.
"Gosh!"
His ordinary voice sounded like a whisper after the harsh note of the
conch. He laid the conch against his lips, took a deep breath and blew once
more. The note Doomed again: and then at his firmer pressure, the note,
fluking up an octave, became a strident blare more penetrating than before.
Piggy was shouting something, his face pleased, his glasses flashing. The
birds cried, small animals scuttered. Ralph's breath failed; the note
dropped the octave, became a low wubber, was a rush of air.
The conch was silent, a gleaming tusk; Ralph's face was dark with
breathlessness and the air over the island was full of bird-clamor and
echoes ringing.
"I bet you can hear that for miles."
Ralph found his breath and blew a series of short blasts.
Piggy exclaimed: "There's one!"
A child had appeared among the palms, about a hundred yards along the
beach. He was a boy of perhaps six years, sturdy and fair, his clothes torn,
his face covered with a sticky mess of fruit. His trousers had been lowered
for an obvious purpose and had only been pulled back half-way. He jumped off
the palm terrace into the sand and his trousers fell about his ankles; he
stepped out. of them and trotted to the platform. Piggy helped him up.
Meanwhile Ralph continued to blow till voices shouted in the forest The
small boy squatted in front of Ralph, looking up brightly and vertically. As
he received the reassurance of something purposeful being done he began to
look satisfied, and his only clean digit, a pink thumb, slid into his mouth.
Piggy leaned down to him.
"What's yer name?"
"Johnny."
Piggy muttered the name to himself and then shouted it to Ralph, who
was not interested because he was still blowing. His face was dark with the
violent pleasure of making this stupendous noise, and his heart was making
the stretched shirt shake. The shouting in the forest was nearer.
Signs of life were visible now on the beach. The sand, trembling
beneath the heat haze, concealed many figures in its miles of length; boys
were making their way toward the platform through the hot, dumb sand. Three
small children, no older than Johnny, appeared from startlingly dose at hand
where they had been gorging fruit in the forest A dark little boy, not much
younger than Piggy, parted a tangle of undergrowth, walked on to the
platform, and smiled cheerfully at everybody. More and more of them came.
Taking their cue from the innocent Johnny, they sat down on the fallen palm
trunks and waited. Ralph continued to blow short, penetrating blasts. Piggy
moved among the crowd, asking names and frowning to remember them. The
children gave him the same simple obedience that they had given to the men
with megaphones. Some were naked and carrying their clothes; others
half-naked, or more or less dressed, in school uniforms, grey, blue, fawn,
jacketed or jerseyed. There were badges, mottoes even, stripes of color in
stockings and pullovers. Their heads clustered above the trunks in the green
shade; heads brown, fair, black, chestnut, sandy, mouse-colored; heads
muttering, whispering, heads full of eyes that watched Ralph and speculated.
Something was being done.
The children who came along the beach, singly or in twos, leapt into
visibility when they crossed the line from heat haze to nearer sand. Here,
the eye was first attracted to a black, bat-like creature that danced on the
sand, and only later perceived the body above it. The bat was the child's
shadow, shrunk by the vertical sun to a patch between the hurrying feet.
Even while he blew, Ralph noticed the last pair of bodies that reached the
platform above a fluttering patch of Hack. The two boys, bullet-headed and
with hair like tow, flung themselves down and lay grinning and panting at
Ralph like dogs. They were twins, and the eye was shocked and incredulous at
such cheery duplication. They breathed together, they grinned together, they
were chunky and vital. They raised wet lips at Ralph, for they seemed
provided with not quite enough skin, so that their profiles were blurred and
their mouths pulled open. Piggy bent his flashing glasses to them and could
be heard between the blasts, repeating their names.
"Sam, Eric, Sam, Eric."
Then he got muddled; the twins shook their heads and pointed at each
other and the crowd laughed.
At last Ralph ceased to blow and sat there, the conch trailing from one
hand, his head bowed on his knees. As the echoes died away so did the
laughter, and there was silence.
Within the diamond haze of the beach something dark was fumbling along.
Ralph saw it first, and watched till the intentness of his gaze drew all
eyes that way. Then the creature stepped from mirage on to clear sand, and
they saw that the darkness was not all shadows but mostly clothing. The
creature was a party of boys, marching approximately in step in two parallel
lines and dressed in strangely eccentric clothing. Shorts, shirts, and
different garments they carried in their hands; but each boy wore a square
black cap with a silver badge on it. Their bodies, from throat to ankle,
were hidden by black cloaks which bore a long silver cross on the left
breast and each neck was finished off with a hambone frill. The heat of the
tropics, the descent, the search for food, and now this sweaty march along
the blazing beach had given them the complexions of newly washed plums. The
boy who controlled them was dressed in the same way though his cap badge was
golden. When his party was about ten yards from the platform he shouted an
order and they halted, gasping, sweating, swaying in the fierce light. The
boy himself came forward, vaulted on to the platform with his cloak flying,
and peered into what to him was almost complete darkness.
"Where's the man with the trumpet?"
Ralph, sensing his sun-blindness, answered him.
"There's no man with a trumpet. Only me."
The boy came close and peered down at Ralph, screwing up his face as he
did so. What he saw of the fair-haired boy with the creamy shell on his
knees did not seem to satisfy him. He turned quickly, his black cloak
circling.
"Isn't there a ship, then?"
Inside the floating cloak he was tall, thin, and bony: and his hair was
red beneath the black cap. His face was crumpled and freckled, and ugly
without silliness. Out of. this face stared two light blue eyes, frustrated
now, and turning, or ready to turn, to anger.
"Isn't there a man here?" Ralph spoke to his back.
"No. We're having a meeting. Come and join in."
The group of cloaked boys began to scatter from close line. The tall
boy shouted at them.
"Choir! Stand still!"
Wearily obedient, the choir huddled into line and stood there swaying
in the sun. None the less, some began to protest faintly.
"But, Merridew. Please, Merridew . . . can't we?"
Then one of the boys flopped on his face in the sand and the line broke
up. They heaved the fallen boy to the platform and let him be. Merridew, his
eyes staring, made the best of a bad job.
"All right then. Sit down. Let him alone." "But Merridew."
"He's always throwing a faint," said Merridew. "He did in Gib.; and
Addis; and at matins over the precentor."
This last piece of shop brought sniggers from the choir, who perched
like black birds on the criss-cross trunks and examined Ralph with interest.
Piggy asked no names. He was intimidated by this uniformed superiority and
the offhand authority in Merridew's voice. He shrank to the other side of
Ralph and busied himself with his glasses.
Merridew turned to Ralph.
"Aren't there any grownups?"
"No."
Merridew sat down on a trunk and looked round the circle.
"Then well have to look after ourselves."
Secure on the other side of Ralph, Piggy spoke timidly.
"That's why Ralph made a meeting. So as we can decide what to do. We've
heard names. That's Johnny. Those two -they're twins, Sam 'n Eric. Which is
Eric-? You? No -you're Sam-"
"I'm Sam-"
"'n I'm Eric."
"We'd better all have names," said Ralph, "so I'm Ralph."
"We got most names," said Piggy. "Got 'em just now."
"Kids' names," said Merridew. Why should I be Jack? I'm Merridew."
Ralph turned to him quickly. This was the voice of one who knew his own
mind.
"Then," went on Piggy, "that boy-I forget-"
"You're talking too much," said Jack Merridew. "Shut up, Fatty."
Laughter arose.
"He s not Fatty," cried Ralph, "his real name's Piggy!"
"Piggy!" "Piggy!"
"Oh, Piggy!"
A storm of laughter arose and even the tiniest child joined in. For the
moment the boys were a closed circuit of sympathy with Piggy outside: he
went very pink, bowed his head and cleaned his glasses again.
Finally the laughter died away and the naming continued. There was
Maurice, next in size among the choir boys to Jack, but broad and grinning
all the time. There was a slight, furtive boy whom no one knew, who kept to
himself with an inner intensity of avoidance and secrecy. He muttered that
his name was Roger and was silent again. Bill, Robert, Harold, Henry; the
choir boy who had fainted sat up against a palm trunk, smiled pallidly at
Ralph and said that his name was Simon.
Jack spoke.
"We've got to decide about being rescued."
There was a buzz. One of the small boys, Henry, said that he wanted to
go home.
"Shut up," said Ralph absently. He lifted the conch. "Seems to me we
ought to have a chief to decide things."
"A chief! A chief!"
"I ought to be chief," said Jack with simple arrogance, "because I'm
chapter chorister and head boy. I can sing C sharp."
Another buzz.
"Well then," said Jack, "I-"
He hesitated. The dark boy, Roger, stirred at last and spoke up.
"Let's have a vote."
"Yes!"
"Vote for chief!"
"Let's vote-"
This toy of voting was almost as pleasing as the conch. Jack started to
protest but the clamor changed from the general wish for a chief to an
election by acclaim of Ralph himself. None of the boys could have found good
reason for this; what intelligence had been shown was traceable to Piggy
while the most obvious leader was Jack. But there was a stillness about
Ralph as he sat that marked him out: there was his size, and attractive
appearance; and most obscurely, yet most powerfully, there was the conch.
The being that had blown that, had sat waiting for them on the platform with
the delicate thing balanced on his knees, was set apart.
"Him with the shell." "Ralph! Ralph!"
"Let him be chief with the trumpet-thing."
Ralph raised a hand for silence.
"All right. Who wants Jack for chief?"
With dreary obedience the choir raised their hands.
"Who wants me?"
Every hand outside the choir except Piggy's was raised immediately.
Then Piggy, too, raised his hand grudgingly into the air. Ralph counted.
"I'm chief then." The circle of boys broke into applause. Even the choir
applauded; and the freckles on Jack's face disappeared under a blush of
mortification. He started up, then changed his mind and sat down again while
the air rang. Ralph looked at him, eager to offer something.
"The choir belongs to you, of course."
"They could be the army-"
"Or hunters-"
"They could be-"
The suffusion drained away from Jack's face. Ralph waved again for
silence.
"Jack's in charge of the choir. They can be-what do you want them to
be?"
"Hunters."
Jack and Ralph smiled at each other with shy liking. The rest began to
talk eagerly.
Jack stood up.
"A11 right, choir. Take off your togs."
As if released from class, the choir boys stood up, chattered, piled
their black cloaks on the grass. Jack laid his on the trunk by Ralph. His
grey shorts were sticking to him with sweat. Ralph glanced at them
admiringly, and when Jack saw his glance he explained.
"I tried to get over that hill to see if there was water all round. But
your shell called us."
Ralph smiled and held up the conch for silence.
"Listen, everybody. I've got to have time to think things out I can't
decide what to do straight off. If this isn't an island we might be rescued
straight away. So we've got to decide if this is an island. Everybody must
stay round here and wait and not go away. Three of us-if we take more we'd
get all mixed, and lose each other-three of us will go on an expedition and
find out. I`ll go, and Jack, and, and...."
He looked round the circle of eager faces. There was no lack of boys to
choose from.
"And Simon."
The boys round Simon giggled, and he stood up, laughing a little. Now
that the pallor of his faint was over, he was a skinny, vivid little boy,
with a glance coming up from under a hut of straight hair that hung down,
black and coarse.
He nodded at Ralph.
"I'll come."
"And I-"
Jack snatched from behind him a sizable sheath-knife and clouted it
into a trunk. The buzz rose and died away.
Piggy stirred. "I'll come."
Ralph turned to him. "You're no good on a job like this."
"All the same-"
"We don't want you," said Jack, flatly.
"Three's enough."
Piggy's glasses flashed.
"I was with him when he found the conch. I was with him before anyone
else was."
Jack and the others paid no attention. There was a general dispersal.
Ralph, Jack and Simon jumped off the platform and walked along the sand past
the bathing pool. Piggy hung bumbling behind them.
"If Simon walks in the middle of us," said Ralph, "then we could talk
over his head."
The three of them fell into step. This meant that every now and then
Simon had to do a double shuffle to eaten up with the others. Presently
Ralph stopped and turned back to Piggy.
"Look."
Jack and Simon pretended to notice nothing. They walked on.
"You can't come."
Piggy's glasses were misted again-this time with humiliation.
"You told 'em. After what I said."
His face flushed, his mouth trembled. "After I said I didn't want-"
"What on earth are you talking about?"
"About being called Piggy. I said I didn't care as long as they didn't
call me Piggy; an' I said not to tell and then you went an' said straight
out-"
Stillness descended on them. Ralph, looking with more understanding at
Piggy, saw that he was hurt and crushed. He hovered between the two courses
of apology or further insult.
"Better Piggy than Fatty," he said at last, with the directness of
genuine leadership, "and anyway, I'm sorry if you feel like that. Now go
back, Piggy, and take names. That's your job. So long."
He turned and raced after the other two. Piggy stood and the rose of
indignation faded slowly from his cheeks. He went back to the platform.
The three boys walked briskly on the sand. The tide was low and there
was a strip of weed-strewn beach that was almost as firm as a road. A land
of glamour was spread over them and the scene and they were conscious of the
glamour and made happy by it. They turned to each other, laughing excitedly,
talking, not listening. The air was bright Ralph, faced by the task of
translating all this into an explanation, stood on his head and fell over.
When they had done laughing, Simon stroked Ralph's arm shyly; and they had
to laugh again.
"Come on," said Jack presently, "we're explorers."
"We'll go to the end of the island," said Ralph, "and look round the
corner."
"If it is an island-"
Now, toward the end of the afternoon, the mirages were settling a
little. They found the end of the island, quite distinct, and not magicked
out of shape or sense. There was a jumble of the usual squareness, with one
great block sitting out in the lagoon. Sea birds were nesting there.
"Like icing," said Ralph, "on a pink cake.'
"We shan't see round this corner," said Jack, "because there isn't one.
Only a slow curve-and you can see, the rocks get worse-"
Ralph shaded his eyes and followed the jagged outline of the crags up
toward the mountain. This part of the beach was nearer the mountain than any
other that they had seen.
"We'll try climbing the mountain from here," he said. "I should think
this is the easiest way. There's less of that jungly stuff; and more pink
rock. Come on."
The three boys began to scramble up. Some unknown force had wrenched
and shattered these cubes so that they lay askew, often piled diminishingly
on each other. The most usual feature of the rock was a pink cliff
surmounted by a skewed block; and that again surmounted, and that again,
till the pinkness became a stack of balanced rock projecting through the
looped fantasy of the forest creepers. Where the pink cliffs rose out of the
ground there were often narrow tracks winding upwards. They could edge along
them, deep in the plant world, their faces to the rock.
"What made this track?"
Jack paused, wiping the sweat from his face. Ralph stood by him,
breathless.
"Men?"
Jack shook his head.
"Animals."
Ralph peered into the darkness under the trees. The forest minutely
vibrated.
"Come on."
The difficulty was not the steep ascent round the shoulders of rock,
but the occasional plunges through the undergrowth to get to the next path.
Here the roots and stems of creepers were in such tangles that the boys had
to thread through them like pliant needles. Their only guide, apart from the
brown ground and occasional flashes of fight through the foliage, was the
tendency of slope: whether this hole, laced as it was with the cables of
creeper, stood higher than that.
Somehow, they moved up.
Immured in these tangles, at perhaps their most difficult moment, Ralph
turned with shining eyes to the others.
"Wacco."
"Wizard."
"Smashing."
The cause of their pleasure was not obvious. All three were hot, dirty
and exhausted. Ralph was badly scratched. The creepers were as thick as
their thighs and left little but tunnels for further penetration. Ralph
shouted experimentally and they listened to the muted echoes.
"This is real exploring," said Jack. "I bet nobody's been here before."
"We ought to draw a map," said Ralph, "only we haven't any paper."
"We could make scratches on bark," said Simon, "and rub black stuff
in."
Again came the solemn communion of shining eyes in the gloom.
"Wacco."
"Wizard."
There was no place for standing on one's head. This time Ralph
expressed the intensity of his emotion by pretending to Knock Simon down;
and soon they were a happy, heaving pile in the under-dusk.
When they had fallen apart Ralph spoke first.
"Got to get on."
The pink granite of the next cliff was further back from the creepers
and trees so that they could trot up the path. This again led into more open
forest so that they had a glimpse of the spread sea. With openness came the
sun; it dried the sweat that had soaked their clothes in the dark, damp
heat. At last the way to the top looked like a scramble over pink rock, with
no more plunging through darkness. The boys chose their way through defiles
and over heaps of sharp stone.
"Look! Look!"
High over this end of the island, the shattered rocks lifted up their
stacks and chimneys. This one, against which Jack leaned, moved with a
grating sound