LOTF - Chapter Twelve

Lord of the Flies
Chapter 12 – Cry of the Hunters
“The End of Painted Faces”
Perspective: Ralph

The water dances and sparkles beneath my as I hang over the head of the naval officer’s ship. I cannot recall the last time I felt so at ease, though the other boys seem more shocked than relaxed, and some of them even seem disappointed. Whenever I pass by one of them, I feel their eyes boring holes in my back and it makes my heart speed up. I feel anxious being three feet away from someone who wanted to kill me.
At night I dream about the island. Once again I find myself hiding in the dense thicket by Castle Rock. A boulder crashes through the bushes from above, sending twigs and leaves flying everywhere. I cough as thick smoke burns my throat and I shove my way through the bushes. I catch a glimpse of painted faces as I sprint towards the shady trees and keep on running, branches whipping and scraping my arms and legs. My heart pumps and I feel like it is in my throat, choking me. I can even feel the piece of meat Sam gave me churn in my stomach. I hear an ululation close behind and the image of Roger with a spear pointed at both ends infiltrates my mind and find myself looking into his black eyes, blackness that spread until it blinds me and I see Piggy and Simon, mangled and dead.
I wake up in cold, hard sweat and check my surrounding to make sure that I am not on the dreadful island. I am so thankful for the naval officer I had knocked into, right as the group of savages came out of the island with spears gripped tight in their hands and prepared to run me through. I know he was disappointed, though. I saw the astonishment in his eyes when I told him about Simon and Piggy. I told him that I was the leader, and the first impression that he had about me was that I let two people die. I will never let myself forget about Piggy and Simon, the smartest and kindest people I knew.
Both Piggy and Simon died while we were on this island, and even after Sam and Eric were tortured to join Jack’s tribe they still risked themselves to warn me. This island was the most horrible thing I could wish upon anybody, and I hope that it will cease into nonexistence so that no one will ever have to live through the same thing that Piggy, Simon, Sam, Eric, and I did.

LOTF - Chapter Eleven

Lord of the Flies
Chapter 11 - Castle Rock

Question Answers

1. Piggy tells Ralph to blow the conch and later he tells the littluns at the meeting that his glasses were stolen.

2. Piggy says he will tell Jack to give back his glasses because "what's right is right". He also wants to bring the conch not only to show Jacks group what he doesn't have, but also as a talisman against them.

3. Ralph wants their appearance to be clean and neat like they were before the plane crash.

4. Roger is positioned to be the look-out so he challenges the boys when they approach Castle Rock.

5. Jack had been hunting and when he appeared he had a pig behind him.

6. Ralph calls Jack a thief, which then provokes the fight.

7. After the cessation in the fight, Jack tells the savages to tie them up.

8. Roger, who is on top of Castle Rock, is throwing rocks down at Piggy and, unlike before, he is purposefully trying to hit Piggy.



Strong Body Paragraph
Piggy's Murder

In Chapter 11 Piggy was brutally murdered, and I believe that Roger is to blame for his death. William Golding says that, "The intention of a charge was forming among them". When this was happening below, Roger was above them with the rock in his possession and he chose to release the boulder because he felt left out from the group. After that William Golding says that, "Roger, with a sense of delirious abandonment, leaned all of his weight on the lever." The lever triggered the boulder to fall and hit Piggy. This proves that Roger decided to release the rock onto Piggy, therefore killing him. Although Jack says that he himself meant to do that, Roger was really the one who compromised to lean on the lever which set the rock in motion and hit Piggy. To conclude my point about who really cause the murder of Piggy, I say, once again, that it was Roger's fault. Roger truculently decided to release the rock witch killed Piggy. He was controlled by savagery but he also was acting on pure human nature because the rock was also triggered because Roger felt left out from the group.

LOTF - Chapter Ten

Lord of the Flies
Chapter 10 - The Shell and the Glasses
"The Afterthought"
Perspective: Simon

I remember. They came upon me with lust in their cold, impervious eyes. Their gaze was saturated with repulsion and hatred. Fingers reached, teeth grinded. A chant hummed in the background. Then Ralph’s and Piggy’s faces in the mob. I shouted to them, they needed to know about the dead man. But then, the fall. The pain came and enveloped my body and I thought that there could be no worse pain than the one that paralyzed me. But I was wrong. There was still the boys, determined to kill the beast. They threw themselves on me and all I could do was lay on the damp, grainy sand and let them tea me apart.


I never gave much consideration to how I would die, but when I did picture my death, it was in a train crash, or by the means of a fatal disease. Being tortured and killed by people I knew, and might even consider friends, never came to mind. Now I watch what happens on the island. I hover above the deceiving place in all it’s picturesque beauty like a bird and see everything and anything, but no one seems to see me.

I heard Ralph and Piggy talking about the night I died, and for a moment I felt revulsion in the pit of my stomach towards them. They were covered in translucent, purple bruises – evidence that they participated in the savagery of Jack’s wild dance. They were cautious of admitting that they partook in the bloody event, and insisted that they left early to Sam and Eric, who as well seemed to have convinced themselves that they held no part in it.

Jack was the opposite. He had adjusted himself to being chief and acted like a king, ordering other boys around and sitting apart from the rest of the boys he had recruited in a cave near Castle Rock. He is a very different leader than Ralph. Ralph never beat up littluns, but a littlun called Wilfred lay on the cold, hard, rock floor, whimpering.
He held a meeting like the ones Ralph had held many times before, but it was on much darker topics. Unlike Ralph, Piggy, Sam, and Eric, Jack openly admitted that he took part in what he thought was injuring the beast, but was really my murder. He told the boys there that the beast was in disguise, so he must not have been completely blinded as to not recognize me. Even though Jack believed that he hurt the beast that was disguised as me, if I had killed anything that even slightly looked like a human being, I would be entirely guilt ridden. It shows how much Jack and all the other boys are controlled by the repulsive, theological beast: mankind’s essential illness. It lies in everyone, waiting for a chance to unleash its full potential. It has been in the minds of some of these boys to long, I am afraid that they will never be purged in these conditions.

Jack also planned to steal the coveted fire from Ralph’s tribe. I witnessed three boys creep up to the site of Ralph’s tribe on bare feet. Their faces were painted charcoal black to blend in with the threatening feeling of the night. They realized straight away that there was no fire by the absence of the flickering embers. They proceeded to the shelters, trying to make as little noise as possible, but occasionally a crack of a twig or the crunch of the sand slipped through. I heard a rustling inside one of the shelters as someone woke up. They whispered something to each other so softly that I could not hear and one of them called out, “ Piggy, Piggy. Piggy, come outside. I want you, Piggy.” There was more noise inside the shelter and the three boys advanced to it. “Piggy, where are you, Piggy?” There was thrashing inside the shelter and the boys crept into it. Sounds of attack drifted from the shelter and there was more thrashing noises. Eventually, the three boys from Jacks tribe ran out, uninjured. Something that one of the boys was holding glinted in the moonlight and I looked closer. He was clutching Piggy’s glasses. I literally groaned, but then Ralph and Sam and Eric came out, dragging Piggy out behind them. My breath stuck in my throat. Was he…? But they started talking their illumination made me realize two things: Piggy was not dead and they had been beating themselves up. I groaned.

If only I could have stayed on the island and told Ralph and Piggy about the dead man, everything could be different. I could have helped extinguish the beast from their souls and I could have helped Jack’s tribe realize there was no beast, so they wouldn’t kill anyone. There are so many things I could have done to help them that it makes me barmy. If only…

LOTF - Chapter Nine

Question Answers

1. Simon gets a bloody nose when he is sleeping but the flies still prefer the dead pig head and the pig's guts.
2. He decides to go to the mountainside where the dead aviator is.
3. Simon untangles the parachute lines from the rocks.
4. Piggy suggests that they should go to the party.
5. The awkward presence is accepted because Piggy gets burned and so everyone laughs and makes fun of him, easing the tension between them.
6. Jack says Ralph doesn't have the conch with him and so it doesn't count or matter.
7. The weather became rainy and windy towards the end of the party.
8. They chant, "Kill the beast! Cut his throat! Spill his blood!"
9. Simon comes out of the jungle and tries to tell the rest of the boys that the beast on top of the mountain is just a dead aviator.



Strong Body Paragraph
Simon's Death

I accuse the beast for causing Simon's death, but really I blame evil in general because the beast is "mankind's essential illness", which is evil. The beast had crept into the minds of the boys a long time ago and it finally unleashed it's true capacity. In Chapter Five, Simon sheds light onto the subject. "What's the dirtiest thing there is?", he asks at the meeting, trying to get the boys to understand what he thinks is the beast and what finally killed him. While the boys chanted and danced around Simon, William Golding says that "Simon was crying out something about a dead man on a hill". Simon was trying to get the message across to the boys, the message that he was trying to explain four chapters ago. If there was no beast or no evil on the island, Simon wouldn't have died trying to tell the boys and the boys wouldn't have been possesed by evil. Another reason evil is the cause of Simon's death is that the boys were blinded by the evil and did not realize that the thing that they were up against was Simon. In the very last part of the dance when they kill Simon, William Golding starts to call Simon the beast in the text. He was making that part of the chapter in the boy's point of view of what Simon was. To conclude my point about what really caused Simon's murder, I belive that evil iin general is what killed Simon because Simon believes that the beast is mankind's essential illness: evil.

LOTF - Chapter Eight

Lord of the Flies

Chapter 8 - Gift for the Darkness

I chose the second scene as the most grotesque and disturbing part of Chapter Eight because it is so far the most repulsive behavior from the boys on the island. It shows that the boys have become truly savage and wild since their plane crashed on the island and left them stranded.

In this chapter, Jack decides to kill a pig and have a feast to try and recruit the people left in Ralph’s group to his tribe. He also said to prevent the beast from bothering them he will make a sacrifice. He and the boys who chose him over Ralph go off to hunt for the pigs and once they found a trail, they follow it and it leads them to a large herd of wild pigs. The boys slowly crept up until a thin screen of underbrush separated them from the hot, bloated pigs. Jack gave the signal and a shower of spears rained down upon the sow they were after, a nursing female, the largest in the group. Two spears took their mark and punctured the pig’s hide, while another caught a piglet that stumbled into the waves. The large pig staggered upright and ran off through the forest. The boys chase after her for an extensive amount of time but are not delayed by tracking her down, as a bloody trail followed her. Finally they reach a quiet and beautiful are where butterflies dance in the humid air. The pig collapsed on the woven mat of creepers and the boys launched themselves upon her, stabbing wherever they could. Roger ran around them and tried to find a place where he could stick his spear, and when he did he leaned all of his weight on it so it slowly inched forward while the pig screamed in pain. At last, when Jack sliced her throat, the sow’s sufferings cease and she crumpled beneath them. The boys, breathing hard from their demoniac performance get off the pig and start laughing because Roger realized that where he stabbed the pig was right up her butt. Jack paunched the pig and when he was through, he cut of the head and asked for a spear from one of the boys. He stuck the pig head on the spear and said out loud, “This head is for the beast. It’s a gift”, and they all scampered off.

This scene was the most disgusting scene in the book because it is in every way horrific. It was gory and bloody, but it was also cruel and malicious. After Jack and the boys launch their spears at the pig once and followed it until it collapses, they needn’t had to jump on the pig and torture it until it died. If they had just waited for a moment, the pig would have probably died on it’s own. They tormented the pig because they were savage from being on the island. Their minds have become so twisted that they torture the pig, but it is to an extent that they aren’t killing each other. They even started laughing because they realized that Roger stuck his spear up her butt, and so basically they are laughing because they are torturing the pig. Another way this scene is the most repulsive is that when Jack’s group is torturing the pig, it all happens in Simon’s chapel when Simon is present. Simon is the purest one on the island but because the pig finally gave in to the heat and the pain precisely where he was hiding and meditating he had to witness the tormenting of the pig. That is truly horrible because Simon is good and someone like that should not be allowed to observe such a dreadful event. Finally, Simon’s chapel is very beautiful and it is disturbing that the pig had to be tortured and killed in a gorgeous place like that.

I feel that William Golding wanted this chapter to demonstrate the extreme brutality and evil of human nature. He portrayed it very well and I hope that it is one message that people will understand.

LOTF Perspective Writing - Chapter Seven

Lord of the Flies
Chapter 7 - Shadows and Tall Trees
"The Flapping Beastie"
Perspective: Jack

I was so close!!! I could have gotten the boar but Ralph got in the way and it got away from me. Ralph was so conceded about the shot he made at the pig. It barely even grazed it! “I got the pig! You should have seen it!” he said. But then we got started in a fantastic game. Robert was the pig and we all pretended like we were hunting him. All of our dirty, briny bodies circled around him as he squealed like a pig in terror. It was marvelous and so realistic. We even used spears! After the game was done I was exhausted, like I just played a weary game of rugger. Then I sagely thought that we could have a ritual game at night, with fire and drums. We could have someone dress up as a pig, but it would be better to have a real pig because then we could kill it! I said to the boys that we could use a littlun instead of a real pig. I was so funny that everyone laughed really hard! After that Simon said something about us all turning savage, but no one listened.

Later on Roger, Ralph and I set off to the top of the mountain to look for the beast because everyone else was too scared to they went back. But then Ralph and even Roger got to scared so they waited while I went up to the mountain. As I reached the top, I heard an odd flapping sound. I admit that I was a bit curious so I crept behind a rock and peered over it. A large, shadowy form went up and down. I was so petrified with fear that I didn’t say a word as I ran imperviously back down the mountain to Ralph and Roger. When I go there, they wanted to see it for themselves so they went back up the mountain. I stayed in the back and after they saw it they went running back down like I did.

It was so frightening, but if I admit that I am scared as well, my plan to make myself look better than Ralph won’t work. Ralph is the only thing in the way of being chief and if we both seem like frightened little boys homesick for their mothers the rest of the boys will always choose Ralph. I liked Ralph better at the beginning. He had a certain bravado about him that was fun to be around, but now he is all about rescue and he is no fun on the island. I suppose if the boars tusk didn’t cut my arm he would have been fun on the hunt, but that is over and so he has had his chance.