CHAPTER 10. THE SHELL AND THE GLASSES
The next morning, Ralph and Piggy meet on the
beach. They are bruised and sore and feel awkward and deeply ashamed of their
behavior the previous night. Piggy, who is unable to confront his role in
Simon’s death, attributes the tragedy to mere accident. But Ralph, clutching
the conch desperately and laughing hysterically, insists that they have been
participants in a murder. Piggy whiningly denies the charge. The two are now
virtually alone; everyone except Sam and Eric and a handful of littluns has
joined Jack’s tribe, which is now headquartered at the Castle Rock, the
mountain on the island.
At the Castle Rock, Jack rules with absolute
power. Boys are punished for no apparent reason. Jack ties up and beats a boy
named Wilfred and then warns the boys against Ralph and his small group, saying
that they are a danger to the tribe. The entire tribe, including Jack, seems to
believe that Simon really was the beast, and that the beast is capable of
assuming any disguise. Jack states that they must continue to guard against the
beast, for it is never truly dead. He says that he and two other hunters, Maurice
and Roger, should raid Ralph’s camp to obtain more fire and that they will hunt
again tomorrow.
The boys at Ralph’s camp drift off to sleep,
depressed and losing interest in the signal fire. Ralph sleeps fitfully,
plagued by nightmares. They are awakened by howling and shrieking and are
suddenly attacked by a group of Jack’s hunters. The hunters badly beat Ralph
and his companions, who do not even know why they were assaulted, for they
gladly would have shared the fire with the other boys. But Piggy knows why, for
the hunters have stolen his glasses, and with them, the power to make fire.
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CHAPTER 11. CASTLE ROCK
The next morning, Ralph and his few companions
try to light the fire in the cold air, but the attempt is hopeless without
Piggy’s glasses. Piggy, squinting and barely able to see, suggests that Ralph
hold a meeting to discuss their options. Ralph blows the conch shell, and the
boys who have not gone to join Jack’s tribe assemble on the beach. They decide
that their only choice is to travel to the Castle Rock to make Jack and his
followers see reason.
Ralph decides to take the conch shell to the
Castle Rock, hoping that it will remind Jack’s followers of his former
authority. Once at Jack’s camp, however, Ralph’s group encounters armed guards.
Ralph blows the conch shell, but the guards tell them to leave and throw stones
at them, aiming to miss. Suddenly, Jack and a group of hunters emerge from the
forest, dragging a dead pig. Jack and Ralph immediately face off. Jack commands
Ralph to leave his camp, and Ralph demands that Jack return Piggy’s glasses.
Jack attacks Ralph, and they fight. Ralph struggles to make Jack understand the
importance of the signal fire to any hope the boys might have of ever being
rescued, but Jack orders his hunters to capture Sam and Eric and tie them up.
This sends Ralph into a fury, and he lunges at Jack.
Ralph and Jack fight for a second time. Piggy
cries out shrilly, struggling to make himself heard over the brawl. As Piggy
tries to speak, hoping to remind the group of the importance of rules and
rescue, Roger shoves a massive rock down the mountainside. Ralph, who hears the
rock falling, dives and dodges it. But the boulder strikes Piggy, shatters the
conch shell he is holding, and knocks him off the mountainside to his death on
the rocks below. Jack throws his spear at Ralph, and the other boys quickly
join in. Ralph escapes into the jungle, and Roger and Jack begin to torture Sam
and Eric, forcing them to submit to Jack’s authority and join his tribe.
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CHAPTER 12. CRY OF THE HUNTERS
Ralph hides in the jungle and thinks miserably
about the chaos that has overrun the island. He thinks about the deaths of Simon
and Piggy and realizes that all vestiges of civilization have been stripped
from the island. He stumbles across the sow’s head, the Lord of the Flies, now
merely a gleaming white skull—as white as the conch shell, he notes. Angry and
disgusted, Ralph knocks the skull to the ground and takes the stake it was
impaled on to use as a weapon against Jack.
That night, Ralph sneaks down to the camp at
the Castle Rock and finds Sam and Eric guarding the entrance. The twins give
him food but refuse to join him. They tell him that Jack plans to send the
entire tribe after him the next day. Ralph hides in a thicket and falls asleep.
In the morning, he hears Jack talking and torturing one of the twins to find
out where Ralph is hiding. Several boys try to break into the thicket by
rolling a boulder, but the thicket is too dense. A group of boys tries to fight
their way into the thicket, but Ralph fends them off. Then Ralph smells smoke
and realizes that Jack has set the jungle on fire in order to smoke him out.
Ralph abandons his hiding place and fights his way past Jack and a group of his
hunters. Chased by a group of body-painted warrior-boys wielding sharp wooden
spears, Ralph plunges frantically through the undergrowth, looking for a place
to hide. At last, he ends up on the beach, where he collapses in exhaustion,
his pursuers close behind.
Suddenly, Ralph looks up to see a naval officer
standing over him. The officer tells the boy that his ship has come to the
island after seeing the blazing fire in the jungle. Jack’s hunters reach the
beach and stop in their tracks upon seeing the officer. The officer
matter-of-factly assumes the boys are up to, as he puts it, “fun and games.”
When he learns what has happened on the island, the officer is reproachful: how
could this group of boys, he asks—and English boys at that—have lost all
reverence for the rules of civilization in so short a time? For his part, Ralph
is overwhelmed by the knowledge that he has been rescued, that he will escape
the island after coming so close to a violent death. He begins to sob, as do
the other boys. Moved and embarrassed, the naval officer turns his back so that
the boys may regain their composure.
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