Lord Of The Flies Sparknotes

Lord of the Flies by William Golding starts off with a group of schoolboys that have crash landed on an uninhabited island. The protagonist, Ralph, is the first one who blows into the conch shell bringing all the boys to the beach. The antagonist of the story, Jack, proposes there should be a leader and Ralph is elected. Ralph decides there should be a signal fire to alert passing ships, but jacks wants to hunt for the wild pigs on the island so Ralph lets them hunt if the maintain the fire. Ralph was set on maintaining the fire and building huts for shelter. Most of the boys played instead of being productive and the fire eventually got out of hand in turn scorching the forest killing one of the “littluns”. The hunters come back with a pig one day and spark an unknown kind of frenzy among the boys.
one night there is an overhead battle with a parachutist coming down dead and getting tangled on a cliff.
Samneric discover the dead parachutist one night and presume it as a beast that some of the boys were having nightmares about. Jack and Ralph set on a hunting expedition to kill the beast they see the strange silhouette of the dead man and then go back to camp. Then Jack accuses Ralph an unfit leader and takes the hunters and makes a new camp. The hunters gruesomely kill a sow and put its head on a steak which Simon finds. Simon looks at in a trance and it tells him there is no beast which he tries to relay the information to the rest of the group but they think he is the beast and kill him in an enraged frenzy. The group of hunters now against Ralph and Piggy and hunting them down, Piggy is killed by Roger who crushed him and the symbolic conch with a boulder. The hunters set the forest ablaze to flush out Ralph onto the beach. There Ralph is thinking he is going to die but when he looks up he finds a naval
officer.
I think that Lord of the flies is going to [going to what? not clear] when Simon “spoke” to the pigs head. The pig head had said “There isn’t anyone to help you. Only me. And I’m the Beast. . . You knew, didn’t you? I’m part of you?”. The title shows that in the story the beast wasn’t a thing they could find and kill but it was in every persons mind and soul. Each and every person on that island got in touch with their “inner beast”. They showed it by becoming savages and killing pigs that made them into bloodthirsty maniacs. The theme was that everybody can be a primitive being but everyone controls it with rules, law enforcement, and governments. This book shows that civilization is actually civil because we have someone telling us to do so, once that person is gone, everything changes. page citation for the quoted material?
In the beginning of the story Ralph was a normal kid that was enjoying being a kid without supervision. The story starts with him jumping into the water naked with piggy on the beach. He seems like an easy going kid with nice hair and fair skin. He then does what a usual young boy does and gives piggy his old name when told not to. He was then elected a leader and had to change rapidly for the welfare of a group of children. He shows his former immaturity when he mocks piggy with his old name as shown by this quote "’so long as they don't call me what they used to call me in school.’Ralph was faintly interested...’They used to call me Piggy!’” Ralph then told the other boys this name. Ralph wasn’t as mature, and didn’t have the mindset of a leader in the beginning of this book, there were incidents that had to happen to change. page citation for the quoted material?
As the story goes on Ralph begins to grow up into a strong leader that cares about the other children. He shows this by having the drive to build huts and having a signal fire. He also matures by compromising with Jack by letting him hunt as long as they keep the fire going. Ralph shows he has grown into a leadership role by saying "We've got to have rules and obey them. After all, we're not savages.”. Throughout the story Ralph makes decisions to help the group but most of the time the other boys being led by jack turn against him and try to kill him for being smart about things. page citation for the quoted material?
One of Golding’s messages from the book is that without civilization we would all be primeval sort of savages that have no rule or order. The theme is that we can’t blame the bad in the world on nothing but ourselves. The generations of children would appreciate this book because it show them the other side of things. The story of kids with no order appeals to kids because they want to see how things would be with no parents or rules. The author of this book intended to show the younger generations that we need order in this world, because without it we just have chaos.