Tuesday, 30 October 2012

3rd Quarter, Lord of the Flies


“Lord of the Flies”
  3rd quarter
(Chapter 7 – Chapter 9)

It had teeth and big black eyes” –Ralph.

Synopsis
 The kids continued their search for the beast leaving Piggy and the littluns back at the beach. Ralph begins thinking and feeling homesickness. He imagined to himself how things were before they came to the island. We can see that he really misses his old life. A boar is soon spotted by the kids and they pursued it, but unfortunately it escapes. In frustration of the boar getting away, the kids make Robert the “pig” and start pulling and grabbing at him. Later on, Simon offers himself to go back to the beach to check out how Piggy was doing. As night comes the boys get afraid. Only Ralph, Roger and Jack continued to the mountain and see the beast.
Ralph and his group returns to the beach. Ralph tells Piggy about the beast and how big and ferocious it was “it had teeth and big black eyes”. The tension between Ralph and Jack increases and Ralph calls his hunters “boys with sticks” so Jack gets mad and creates a revolt to remove Ralph from being the chief. No one supports Jack so he decides to leave the group and instead invites everyone to join him to his new society. Roger, Bill, Maurice and others follow Jack after a moment. Ralph, feeling like he is losing the group’s control, asks Piggy for advice. Piggy suggests the idea of making fire down the beach so like that they don’t have to confront the beast. Meanwhile, Jack and his hunters slay a sow and Jack put its head on a stick and jam it in the ground as a “gift for the beast”. Jack invites Ralph and his group to attend to his party to eat meat. Meanwhile, Simon sits down near the decapitated sow and waits for the beast to come out. While waiting, the flies that were surrounding the sow’s head start surrounding him too. Then suddenly the head starts talking to him. He confronts the Lord of the Flies. Meanwhile at the beach after eating some meat, Ralph tries to call an assembly with the conch, even though he is mocked and laughed at. It starts raining and Jack starts a dancing ritual with the boys. They start singing “kill the beast!”, “spill his blood!”, “cut his throat!”  Even Ralph and Piggy had joined them; the kids had lost all civilized manners. Simon suddenly appears and tries to explain to the boys that there is no beast. However, the boys mistaken him for the beast and end up killing him.

Characters Introduced
There are no new characters introduced this time.


Point of view
 The narrator speaks in third person. This kind of narrator is omniscient (seeing and knowing everything) and gives us access to the deep thoughts of the characters. This gives the reader a better perspective of what is going on in the novel.

Setting
 The setting of the story is a deserted island with no adults and no civilization.

Writer's style
 William Golding uses symbolism, though not so many metaphors, compares this situation to civilization's problems of that time (1940 – 1950) and looks within human natural behavior. 

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