CH. 12: Cry of the Hunters (by Tommy)

Lord of the Flies: Chapter 12 Analysis

 Jack’s new tribe is established at the Castle Rock. The Castle Rock has a warlike connotation; the word castle makes us think of war and fortresses, and the word rock brings the ideas of cold and hard to the reader. The spot was also chosen by Jack to be a fortress as the name might suggest. This tells us that Jack and his new society have returned to civilization in a sense, but a lower form of it. Instead of being a society based upon debate and knowledge, Jack has established a militaristic state. Jack’s new tribe can be compared to ancient Sparta. In Sparta young boys were trained to be warriors. Knowledge was not valued in Sparta, only war. In Jack’s tribe the boys are trained to be hunters, and this makes them very similar to warriors. Jack’s tribe also does not value knowledge, only hunting and killing. Sparta was a very hard and strict place to live and therefore the new tribe would probably be under the same circumstances. These hard conditions are symbolized by the “Rock” part of the name “Castle Rock”. This is a polar opposite of Ralph and Piggy’s society where survival and being rescued were the top priorities. After Samneric is captured Ralph is the only one left who is arguably civilized. When he tries to talk to Samneric they initially tell him to go away out of fear of Jack and Roger. They tell him that Jack was going to hunt him down the following day. In Jacks efforts to kill Ralph, he sets the entire island on fire. In an ironic twist this fire is seen by a naval captain who comes to the island and saves Ralph. The ending of the book is ironic because The fire that Ralph set up to get them rescued in the beginning of the book represented a civil society with rules and a base of a government, but the fire that saved the children was one that was created by an internal bloodlust and evil intent that Jack and Roger represented.

Chapter 11: Castle Rock

In Castle Rock, the 11th chapter in Lord of the Flies by William Golding, a few key events take place that help lead the reader toward the end of the story. In the opening scene of the chapter, we see that Piggy, Ralph, and Samneric (Sam and Eric) are the only people remaining on the island who are not either dead or savages. In the previous chapter, the four boys had been attacked by Jack and the savages. Unfortunately, the larger group pounded the four boys into next week and also managed to steal Piggy's broken glasses. The only glimmer of hope left for them at this point is the conch, which Piggy holds on to dearly. But, without the glasses, there can be no fire- nothing to signal any nearby boats. Piggy, feeling as defeated as Ralph (who still remained unable to get a fire started), says, "Course it's not use, Ralph. Now we got no fire."
(169) After some discussion on the matter, Piggy, Ralph, and Samneric choose to go to Jack and the savages to tell them off for the bad deeds they'd committed, and to ask for Piggy's stolen glasses back. On their journey there, they manage to spot something in the distance. "Sam touched [Ralph]'s arm. 'Smoke.' There was a tiny smudge of smoke wavering into the air on the other side of the rock."(174) Soon after, Ralph and his friends are spotted by one of the savages. He then blows the conch and brings all of the savages together for what he called "an assembly". After this, we are informed of the presence of Roger- "High above, Roger took his hands off the lever and leaned out to see what was going on."(175) Next, Roger throws a stone down between the twins to get their attention. We can see a sort of unusual change within Roger.. "Some source of power began to pulse in Roger's body."(175) After Ralph questions the savages as to the whereabouts of Jack, Jack comes out of the forest flanked by two hunters. After yelling at each other for a while regarding Jack's thievery, Jack and Ralph clash weapons, but soon give up the ordeal. Suddenly, Samneric are taken and tied up by the savages. After more yelling, the "climax of the chapter" occurs. Roger, high above, prepares to push a massive boulder down on to the unknowing group. Roger, "with a sense of delirious abandonment, leaned all of his weight on the lever." Unfortunately, Piggy happened to be right under the falling stone- "the conch exploded into a thousand white fragments and ceased to exist... Piggy fell forty feet and landed on his back across the square red rock in the sea." Ralph's only choice at this point is to run away- leaving Samneric to be tortured by Roger. This climactic occurence near the end of the chapter can be connected to a real-life experiment which went on only forty or so years ago- The Milgram Experiment. In this experiment, an innocent person would be taken in to a mysterious room by a scientist. The scientist would then claim that the panel in front of the innocent person from the street (we'll call him bob) delivered shocks to somebody in a different room (we'll call them 'the actor' because this person in the different room was actually an actor and was not really recieving these shocks). Bob would ask the actor a question, and if the actor answered incorrectly, Bob would shock the actor, starting with 15 volts and going all of the way up to 400 volts. The apparent idea of the experiment was to prove whether or not pain helped people to learn better. But, in reality, it was to see how far people would go delivering shocks to a person they could not see before they stopped and walked away. Unfortunately, statistics showed more than half of the people who were experimented on went to 400 volts on the panel, just because a scientist told them to. Other variations on the experiment showed that much fewer people went all of the way to 400 volts when they saw the effect of the electric shocks on the person they were shocking. To connect the book with this experiment, we can see that Roger was able to "go all the way"- kill Piggy- by pushing the boulder down on to him. Since Roger was very high above Piggy and could not see the person he was about to kill, it was very likely this was what allowed him to do it. So, chapter 11's book-changing event is the death of Piggy- whose real name we never really found out!

Chapter 11: Castle Rock

In the beginning of this chapter, Samneric (Sam and Eric), Ralph, and Piggy are attempting to start a fire, but are unable to because of the loss of Piggy's glasses. Ralph then calls a meeting, with the intention to force Jack to give back Piggy's glasses.

When the boys arrived, Ralph blew the conch, which ordered a meeting. They discovered that there were guards protecting the tribe, who threw rocks at them and told them to leave. When Jack and his hunters appeared, they were holding a dead pig and told the boys to leave. The pig represented the devil from within that Simon discovered earlier. Jack holding the pig represents that Jack completely converted to the devil's side. Ralph did not listen and demanded Piggy's glasses from him, trying to advocate the importance of building a fire and trying to get rescued. In response, Jack attacked Ralph which led to a fight between the two of them. Jack showed a complete lack of rationale during this situation, because he became too wrapped up in the reality of the island to see the outside world as a reality. While they were fighting, Piggy attempted to help them remember reason with words, but failed to get them to listen.

Jack then ordered the hunters to tie up Samneric, who were two of the few boys who did not fall under the authority of evil.

While the two were fighting, Roger pushed a large rock over the mountain, similarly to how he threw pebbles at a small boy closer to the beginning of the book. When Roger threw the stones at the small boy, this was probably foreshadowing to this instance. Ralph fortunately heard the large rock rolling and managed to avoid it, but Piggy was hit by the rock and was killed. Along with the death of Piggy was the shattering of the conch shell.

Ralph took off into the woods, while Samneric were tortured into the submission of Jack's tribe.

This chapter is the finalized the defeat of society on the island. Piggy represented logic and the conch represented society, both of which were destroyed.

The book tries to convey that evil defeats good. Logic (Piggy) and Society (the conch) were destroyed, and good intentions (Ralph) were isolated. Meanwhile evil (Jack) had power and control.

Chapter 10: The Shell and the Glasses

As the tenth chapter of William Golding’s Lord of the Flies begins, it is the morning after Simon’s death during the savage dance. Simon had been mistaken for the beast and, in a frenzied excitement, many of the children on the island participate in stabbing him to death. Both Simon and the other physical manifestation of the beast (the dead pilot) are washed away from the island during a terrible storm, leaving no trace of the beast and opening the island up to complete anarchy at the hands of Jack and his tribe. The first lines of The Shell and the Glasses find Piggy reuniting with Ralph the morning after the death of Simon. Both are visibly battered; Piggy’s glasses have one lens shattered and it is hard for him to see anything clearly, and Ralph seems to be even worse off: “One eye was a slit in his puffy cheek and a great scab had formed on his right knee” (155). The first thing that Ralph asks Piggy is whether they are the only two people on the island not part of Jack’s tribe. It is obvious by his question that Ralph no longer maintains any pretense of authority on the island, and Jack is completely in control. The depressing idea here is that chaos and tyranny have triumphed over democracy and civilization. Golding is stating that he believes that, when a conflict arises between good and evil (in simplest terms), evil will emerge victorious. Only Samneric and a few littluns remain with Ralph. Ralph quietly brings up the subject of Simon, and the two of them sit in gloomy silence for a while. Ralph asks Piggy what to do and Piggy suggests calling an assembly. Ralph’s response to this is a bitter laugh- the idea that he can still control the rest of the kids is ludicrous to him. When Ralph says that Simon was murdered, Piggy is angry: “‘You stop it!’ said Piggy, shrilly” (156). Piggy refuses to accept that he had a hand in Simon’s death and says that the death was just a misunderstanding. He blames anything that he can think of for what happened. “It was dark. There was that -- that bloody dance. There was lightning and thunder and rain. We was scared!” This describes how the boys have gone beyond the point of fun and games. They are no longer boys playing on the island but a bunch of savages. Piggy is the most intelligent person on the island, but he is also the one who is least willing (next to the deceased Simon) to accept the “Lord of the Flies” (symbolic of the devil within each and every man) as a part of himself. Ralph is shocked by the death but unwilling to say that the death was just an accident. He knows that it was murder, though the heightened environment of the island makes it hard to attribute the death to one cause. Piggy is desperate to pin Ralph back up as a poster boy for order, so he convinces Ralph to not reveal to Samneric the true scale of their involvement. Samneric seem to have reached a similar agreement and both pairs say that they left before the dance. However, everyone knows that they were all participants in the death: “The air was heavy with unspoken knowledge… Memory of the dance that none of them had attended shook all four boys convulsively” (158). Golding wants readers to worry about the remainder of Ralph and his group, because they cannot even admit that the darkness (‘the beast’) exists within them, let alone fight against it and defeat it. With this failed deception, the scene switches to the sadistic Roger (who seems less upset about the events of the previous evening) reaching Jack’s new lair on Castle Rock. Jack has now completely become a tyrant, defending his territory with potentially deadly traps and ruling through fear. He has recently tied up and beaten a young boy named Wilfred for seemingly no reason. Roger is fascinated by this and considers what other abuses of authority might be in store for the group. Jack has chalked the events of the night before up to a successful fight against the beast. Jack is careful to point out that the beast is still alive, so he can continue to use fear of the beast as a tool with which he can manipulate the children into following his orders. Jack is flustered when someone asks him a practical question about lighting a fire but quickly recovers himself and schemes to steal fire from Ralph’s group during the night. This thievery shows just how far into darkness Jack and his followers have fallen. They do not even consider asking for fire. Stealing is the only option. The irony of the group’s fear of the beast is that they murdered the only person who could have successfully explained the intangibility of the beast to them in a dance to ward off the beast. Also, the beast has already infiltrated their camp and no number of dances can repel it. They are being led towards utter savagery by the beast that has corrupted Jack. The scene switches to Ralph’s group making a fire with Piggy’s specs. They admit that the fire is as much as for the group’s overall benefit as for their own personal comfort. As they wearily tend to the fire, they realize just how terrified they are of the other group. Samneric remark that it would be better to be captured by enemies of England than by Jack. They are all depressed and losing faith in the signal fire. Even Ralph has been on the island so long that he has nearly forgotten the purpose of the signal fire. It has become a mechanical duty instead of something he personally feels is vital. Piggy, the one least accepting of man’s savage nature, reminds them of rescue and life outside the prison of the island. As night falls, Ralph feels as if he is losing a battle that he must not lose. He is beginning to understand just how pointless his quest to maintain order is. They fall asleep but no one sleeps soundly and all of them have bad dreams. In the middle of the night, Piggy shakes Ralph awake because Jack and two of his tribe are outside are howling for Piggy. Ralph tries to stop Piggy from responding, but his asthma attack forces him out into the open where he is jumped. Jack and his group savagely beat Ralph, Piggy and Samneric. Jack, who has convinced his followers that they are right to kill those who are not part of Jack’s group, has brought about this descent into complete mayhem. In the madness, Ralph is attacked and hysterically punches a nameless savage. He lets go of civilization for a moment and nearly kills the kid. This is a shocking reminder of how close everyone is to becoming as evil as Jack. As Jack’s savages depart, they wonder why they were attacked. From things that Ralph and Eric say, it is evident that they were actually fighting each other while the savages were attacking Piggy. Sam was “mixed up with [himself] in a corner” (167). In darkness, nothing is certain, nothing is clear. This is the lesson that the group learns: darkness clouds logic and reduces man to his most basic primal instincts out of fear of what lurks in the unknown. They realize that the conch was left untouched: the reason why the shell is part of the title is because it is one symbol of society that has been cast aside. The power of the shell is severely diminished. The glasses, the other symbol of society, have been taken by Jack to make fire. At this point in the book, there is no going back and no hope for rescue. The group is left in darkness, irrevocably stranded on an island, doomed to the savage instinct. It seems evident that nothing can happen now that can save the group from themselves. Lord of the Flies is very similar to The Catcher in the Rye by J.D Salinger because in both books, the protagonist is experiencing the end of innocence and is confronted with the evil and corruption of the outside world. Ralph misses his old life at home in civilization and is fighting a losing battle against Jack and evil. Holden Caulfield misses the innocence of childhood and doesn’t want his younger sister to grow up, while he is trying not to “become a prostitute” (sell out) to society like his older brother did in his eyes. In modern media, there also examples of the blurred line between good and evil. In The Dark Knight, Harvey Dent is a good man determined to eliminate crime from Gotham City (“The night is always darkest right before the dawn”). He is corrupted by the evil on the street and becomes just as evil and twisted as what he was fighting against originally. This is just like what Golding is saying will happen to Ralph if he stays on the island with Jack and the savages too long. The Shell and the Glasses overall symbolizes man’s fall into darkness and, during the chapter, the characters pass the point of no return. There is nowhere to go from here but down.

Lord of Flies Chapter 10 by Sam Forman

Chapter Ten begins in the morning after the murdering of Simon. The people are confused and many are in denial of the previous night unreal, crazy dance. During the event of the dance the tribe had mistaken Simon as the Beast and in all of the excitement, almost all of the people helped in stabbing Simon to death. At the beginning of the chapter Ralph and Piggy are discussing the past night and what had happened. The continued on denying what had happened the night before and said they left early where in fact both of them intervene in the dance event and the killing of Simon. Through the discussion between them as Ralph brings up the death of Simon Piggy can't bring himself up to accepting it and Ralph knew it had happened and justified it as a crazy event. Later, Piggy finds himself talking about the frenzied dance with SamnEric and what had happened, with oblivious action they said they left early, and Piggy said the same thing. In Chapter 10, Jack is becoming a crueler ruler and could be almost classified as a dictator, for no apparent reason Jack tied up a littun' named Wilfred and beaten him. Ralph used deception (not inception) with his tribe and told his confused and unsure followers that they had beaten but not killed the beast the night before. He stated that the "beast" had come in secretly and killed one of the tribe members the night before. Ralph's tribe was making a decision to let the fire continue, but decided to let it go out in the night and collect wood instead. Meanwhile, Jack is definitely showing more signs of evil, and creates a plan to steal Piggy's glasses, the power of fire and the slight disablement of Piggy. Jack was not always an evil person, and at the beginning of the story he was the choir boy who could sing High C and now he is a savage, and has been transformed under the influence of the situation and environment. Similar to earlier in the story, once Maurice stomps on Henry's sandcastle, Roger go as does he same. This is an important idea in the story, and as Phillip Zimbaro said, "It is not the bad apples in the good barrel, it the good apples in the bad barrel." The situation is causing them to act like that, and they were not bad kids to start.

Chapter 9: A View to a Death (by Joelle)

Simon, slightly discombobulated, wakes up and heads toward the hill. On his way up he sees the dead pilot with his waving parachute. Simon comes to the realization that everyone had misinterpreted this as the vicious beast. Seeing this he becomes nauseous and begins to vomit. After gathering himself, he takes the parachute out of the tree. Being so excited that he discovered the beast was fake he goes straight towards Jack’s feast. Ralph and Piggy go to the feast in the hopes that they will be able to control over some of the events. Everyone is laughing and enjoying the pig. Jack sits as of a king on a throne, his face painted like a savage, and being waited on by other boys as if his servants. Again Jack invites people from Ralph’s side to join his tribe, most of them accept. As it starts to rain, Ralph notices Jack has no shelter, and informs Jack. Now aware, Jack orders his tribe to perform its wild hunting dance. Piggy, Ralph and the rest of the boys get caught up in this frenzy. The boys again reenact the hunting of the pig and reach a high pitched of frenzied energy as they chant and dance. Simon starts creeping out of the forest, but the boys being in a different state of mind mistake him for the beast. All the boys descend upon Simon and begin to tear him apart with their bare hands and teeth. Simon tries desperately to explain what has happened and to remind them of who he is, but he trips and plunges over the rocks onto the beach. The boys fall on him violently and kill him. With the storm going on, his body drifts away into the ocean while the dead pilots corpse lands on the beach, sending the boys screaming into the darkness.

Chapter 9: A View to a Death

In chapter 9 of Lord of the Flies, "A View to a Death", a tragedy occurs at the end. However, there were many events leading up to it.
The chapter starts with Simon who has just waken up from passing out (after seeing the Lord of the Flies in a hallucination in the previous chapter). He gets up and decides to go up the mountain to prove to the others that the beast is not real. When he arrives at the top of the mountain, he sees the dead pilot attached to the parachute, rising and falling in the wind. Simon realizes that all along, the others have thought that the dead pilot had been the beast, so he frees the parachute and runs down toward the fire where the others are having a feast.
Meanwhile, Ralph and Piggy head toward Jack's tribe where he has invited everyone to his feast. Most people accept his invitation, and they all laugh and enjoy the cooked pig. Ralph and Piggy hope that they can persuade the others that they all have to keep order.
Soon after the dinner, it starts to rain. Ralph challenges Jack, asking him how he will keep the fire going and how his tribe will be able to build shelters against a storm. In response, Jack tells everyone to start dancing and chanting.
As the energy of the dance builds up, the boys get more excited. Even Ralph and Piggy get caught up in the chant, and they both participate in it. The island gets darker and stormier, and suddenly, the boys see a dark, shadowy figure. Little do they know that it is Simon.
Unfortunately, the boys think that Simon is the beast. As a result, all of them, including Ralph and Piggy, dance and chant around him. Simon desperately tries to tell the boys that the beast is not real and that it is just him, but his attempt fails. Ultimately, the boys descend upon him and violently kill him.
In the end, the boys, thinking that they just finished killing the beast, run for shelter from the storm. Simon's corpse drifts out into the sea.
This chapter displays that social order and civilization on the island no longer exists, now that Simon has been brutally killed by the boys. The fact that even Ralph and Piggy participated in Simon's murder shows this more clearly. Now that Jack's tribe is full of savages, Ralph and Piggy's hopes of control and order are gone, only having very few people on their side, some considering joining Jack.
In conclusion, the significance of this chapter is made clear- Simon's death symbolizes the last straw of civilization on the island. And everything following his tragic death just foreshadows even further barbaric, uncivilized behavior to come.