Lord Of Flies

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Chapter 1

Summary

In the midst of a war, a transport plane carrying a group of English boys is shot down over the ocean. It crashes in a thick jungle on a deserted island. Scattered by the wreck, the surviving boys lose each other. The pilot is nowhere to be found. Wandering down from the jungle to the water, one of the older boys, Ralph, meets Piggy, a chubby, intellectual boy, on the beach. Ralph and Piggy look around the beach, wondering what has become of the other boys from the plane. They discover a large white conch shell; Piggy realizes that it could be used as a kind of makeshift trumpet. He convinces Ralph to blow it to find the other boys. Summoned by the blast of sound from the shell, boys begin straggling onto the beach. The oldest among them are around twelve; the youngest are only five. Among the group is a boys' choir, dressed in black gowns and led by an older boy named Jack. They march to the beach in two parallel lines. The boys taunt Piggy, mocking his appearance and his nickname. Jack snaps at them to stand at attention.

The boys decide to elect a leader. The choirboys vote for Jack, but all the other boys vote for Ralph. Ralph wins the vote, although Jack clearly wants the position. To placate Jack, Ralph asks the choir to serve as the hunters for the band of boys and asks Jack to lead them. Mindful of the need to explore their new environment, the boys choose Ralph, Jack, and a choir member named Simon to explore the island, ignoring Piggy's whining requests to be picked. The three explorers leave the meeting place and set off across the island.

The boys feel exhilarated by the prospect of exploring the island and feel a bond forming between them as they play together in the jungle. Eventually they reach the end of the jungle, where high, sharp rocks jut toward steep mountains. The boys climb up the side of one of the steep hills. From the peak, they can see that they are on an island with no signs of civilization; the view is stunning, and Ralph feels as though they have discovered their own land. As they travel back toward the beach, they find a wild pig caught in a tangle of vines. Jack, the newly appointed hunter, draws his knife and steps in to kill it, but he hesitates, unable to bring himself to do it. The pig frees itself and runs away, and Jack vows that the next time he will not flinch from the deed. The three boys make the long trek through the dense jungle, eventually emerging near the group of boys waiting for them on the beach.

Analysis

Lord of the Flies dramatizes the conflict between the civilizing instinct and the barbarizing instinct that exists in all human beings. Every artistic choice that Golding makes in the novel is designed to emphasize the struggle between the ordering elements of society, which include morality, order, law, and culture, and the chaotic elements of humanity's savage animal instincts, which include anarchy, bloodlust, the desire for power, amorality, selfishness, and violence. His dramatic technique is to show the rise and swift fall of an isolated, impromptu civilization, which is torn to pieces by the savage instincts of the people who comprise it. In this first chapter, Golding establishes the parameters within which this civilization will function.

To begin with, it will be populated solely with boys, the group of young English boys shot down over the wild jungle island on which the action is set. Golding's choice to make his characters boys is significant: the young boys are only half formed, perched between culture and savagery in such a way as to embody the novel's thematic conflict. Golding's assumption throughout the novel is that the constraints of morality and society are learned rather than innate, that the human tendency to obey rules, behave peacefully, and follow orders is imposed by a system of power and control and is not in itself a fundamental part of human nature. Young boys are a fitting illustration of this premise, as they exist in a constant state of tension with regard to the rules and regulations they are expected to follow. Left on their own, they often behave with instinctive cruelty and violence. By making his civilization a product of preadolescent boys' social instincts, Golding endangers it from the beginning.

In Chapter 1, the boys, still unsure of how to behave with no adult presence to control their behavior, largely stick to the learned behaviors of civilization and order, attempting to re-create the structures of society on their deserted island: they elect a leader, establish a division of labor, and set about systematically exploring the island. But even at this early stage, the danger posed to their civilization by their innate instincts is visible in their taunting of Piggy and in Jack's ferocious desire to be elected leader of the boys.

One of Golding's main techniques for presenting his dramatic conflict involves the use of symbols. Lord of the Flies is a highly symbolic novel, and many of its symbols are readily interpreted. In this chapter, for instance, the bespectacled Piggy is used to represent the scientific and intellectual aspects of civilization, as he thinks critically about the conch shell and determines a productive use for it--summoning the other boys to the beach. Other symbols that appear later in the book are more complex and open to multiple interpretations.

Chapter 1 introduces one of the most important symbols in the novel: the conch shell. The conch shell represents law, order, and political legitimacy, as it grants its holder the right to speak and summons the boys to democratic assemblies. Later in the book, this natural object will be sharply contrasted with another--the sinister pig's head known as the Lord of the Flies, which will come to symbolize primordial chaos and terror.

Chapter 2

Summary

When the explorers return, Ralph blows the conch shell, summoning the boys to another meeting on the beach. Ralph tells the group that there are no adults on the island, but that if they remain calm and orderly, they will eventually be rescued. He says that there is a great deal of edible fruit on the island, and that if they work together, they will be able to survive. Jack reminds Ralph of the pig they found trapped in the jungle creepers, and Ralph agrees that they will need hunters to kill animals for meat. For now, Ralph says, it is important that they live by a set of rules, an idea with which Jack agrees enthusiastically.