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David Kang
Jane Kim
John Choi
Jun Do
Sumin Kang
Tanner Midkiff

Q6 - The Mood

The mood of this novel is very negative. The novel is serious overall, and not much joy or positive feelings can be discovered within the entire novel.

I would say that the mood is depressing, gloomy, desolate, cruel, and so on.

What a dark story.

Starting off from many boys being stranded on an island, we are immediately swept off to the point where a boy has gone missing after a forest fire. From the beginning of the story nothing seems very bright.

Next thing we know, Jack is starting to feel some kind of ecstasy in his hunting, and Ralph is having a very unsuccessful time in building huts along with Simon and the others. Jack and Ralph have something somewhat like a conflict, and Jack shows the first signs of potential violence. The story is getting darker by the page.

After that, we have the infamous incident where Jack leaves the fire to go out while a ship passes by just so that he can kill a pig. Jack and Ralph are having some major frictions going on now. Also, it seems like the hunters are starting to like the taste of bloodspill. Am I the only one who is finding this creepy?

Later on in the story, one of the little boys says that he saw a beast come out of the water. The boys dismiss this statement, but still it makes an impression on them, leaving them uneasy. By the terror of a beast, the group is cracking apart: Jack and Ralph are getting more and more distance between themselves, with the boys each following either one of them. I can't say that this is a happy sight.

Continued from the beast chat from above, the twins claim to see a beast during their night watch: which in fact was a dead man in a parachute. Ralph and Jack lead the boys to the mountain where the twins glimpsed the beast, and their struggle for power becomes more and more evident. Eventually, they go up and see what they think is a beast, which is actually the dead body and his parachute casting distorted shadows. The boys excape and run to the camp. Evrything seems to be going downhill.

Soon enough after the encounter with the so called beast, Jack claims Ralph is unworthy of leader. However, nobody vote Ralph off chief, so Jack stomps away to another side of the island. Other boys follow Jack soon, and Ralph become depressed. Afterwards, Jack's tribe kill a sow, and stick its head upright on a stick. It seems like things are getting pretty ugly now. Later, Jack invites Ralph's group to a feast, and Simon confronts the head of the sow that now swarms with flies. Simon sees an apparition, which is called the Lord of the Flies, and soon he faints.

Later on, Simon awakens and goes to the mountain. There, he frees the body of the dead man in the parachute and he goes back towards Jack's group to tell them the truth of the imaginary beast. Ralph and Piggy have joined the feast. Then, the weather is getting harsh. The boys are getting nervous about the beast again, when Simon appears. However, nobody recognizes him, and poor Simon is murdered by the boys...

I'm stopping the summary here. The story is very gloomy and dark up to this point in the story, and it gets more gruesome and tragic as the story develops the climax. By the resolution, the mood is overwhelmingly dark and desperate. I can't help but say that more than being saddened by this mood, I feel disgusted. I just have to say that this story is so realistic, it makes you feel depressed by the end.

Q5 - A Different Ending

What would have happened if the navy officer had not come to rescue Ralph?

What kind of disaster would have occured if the stranded boys were never noticed, and nobody ever found them?

Had the officer not come along, Ralph would have been unable to escape a terrible fate. As the twins had said to Ralph, Jack had sharpened a stick at both ends: the exact act he had done after killing the sow that later became the Lord of the Flies for a short period of time. This act shows that Jack intended to do the same thing he had done to the sow to Ralph: killing, cutting off the head, and sticking it on the stick. Ralph had been lucky enough to escape the doomed death, but what if he had not been so lucky? What if rescue had never come? The outcome would have been much worse.

If no adults were able to intervene with the affairs of the island at all for the rest of time, then the story would have turned out different. Very different.

First of all, Ralph would have been killed sooner or later. With over twenty boys who wielded spears that could kill pigs as his enemies, Ralph's death would have been inevitable. One person is certainly no match for so many dangerous people. Then, when Ralph was killed, Jack would have Ralph's head just like the sow's: hung up on a stick.

When Ralph's head is severed and hung like a mere decoration, it would symbolize the end of rational thinking, the finish of democracy, and the destruction of all morality on the island. To the boys who would then be no less or more than savages, his head would represent everything that had oppressed them and the useless rules of the world. Then under the rule of Jack the island would become a hunter's land.

With Ralph, Piggy, and Simon dead, nothing is left on the island except violence and dictatorship. The morality, intelligence, the goodness all gone, evil roams the whole island. Then who is left? The savages and the little boys who have no power whatsoever. The little ones would not survive long, for it is now obvious that the older ones will not let them live. With their eyes fully opened to the sweet taste of power, the boys will not be able to stop killing. The pigs will die, perhaps even no longer exist on the island. When no little ones are there anymore, who is there to reign over? For the feeling of being superior to be fulfilled there must be another person to look down on. However, when the savages have only themselves left, then the power isn't as powerful as it was before.

When this kind of line of events come out, then the most likely two results both end up in total destruction: either the savages start killing each other, or the lowly ones who don't like the dictatorship start a rebellion and the savages have a war by themselves. Whichever the outcome is, not many will survive. Probably at least half of Jack's tribe would no longer breathe when the killing is over. If it ever ends, that is.

So, if the officer had not appeared, probably mass murder would have started itself, and ended itself with the death of the very last survivor on the island. Then the island would become what it was before: an uninhabited island.

I have written this because I wanted to simply see is anybody agrees with me that the boys would have ended up destroying themselves if civilization had never been able to make contact with them.

P.S. Just an afterthought: perhaps the same outcome of destruction is waiting out there in modern society for the boys. Even thought they were safely rescued, the boys would never again normally function in society. Who knows? Maybe Jack and his followers still seek to kill Ralph, and they might even become mass murderers in the world.

Q4 - The Climax

Personally, I think the climax is when Piggy dies.



The situation is very much like this:

Jack and two other boys of his tribe had attacked Ralph's group of boys during the middle of the night. After the attackers are gone, Ralph and Piggy quickly realize that Piggy's glasses has been taken. Ralph is outraged by this act of thievery. The next day he takes Piggy and Samneric with him to go to Jack and ask to have the glasses back. Soon Ralph and his friends are confronting a massive group of savages, each behind a painted mask, unrecognizable as the civilized boys they used to be. Ralph fights Jack, stops, and tries to convince the boys to give back the glasses. Meanwhile, Roger is learning the thrill of dropping boulders on people, very nearly killing them.

Piggy then holds out the conch, the last remaining symbol of organized society, and tries to speak. As he delivers his logical speech, the event that shreds the last pieces of humanity apart happens: Roger rolls an enormous boulder onto Piggy, thus succeeding in killing him outright. Piggy's body is soon washed away into the ocean, and the boys start to attack Ralph.

This is the very part where the story reaches its highest and most devastating part of its plot. Through the death of the intelligent Piggy, the boys finally have destroyed the wall that kept them from the extremes of violence: pure murder. The death of Piggy becomes the climax of the story by bringing everybody on the island to the inescapable point of no turning back. Nothing can ever be the same, and now chaos is to reign upon the island of the boys who are no longer boys.

Ralph has lost his most loyal and wise friend at this point, and now the standards of life in the island have all flipped to Jack's side. Either to be hunted, or to be a hunter. This climax is the start of where escaping from the beast within men has become impossible. The only choices are to be either killed by the beast or to become the beast in order to survive.

This climax was very well-plotted, but I can't help but say that I was rather disgusted by the events. The boys cheer and whoop at the death of Piggy, which signals how the boys have totally given in to the evil within themselves. I also feel pretty sorry for Piggy, who was killed instantly without even knowing it. He was pretty unlucky, when you consider the fact that Ralph was rescued by the navy officer soon after Piggy's death. However, it was due to Piggy's death that the boys started to hunt down Ralph and burn down the forest, which attracted the eyes of the officer. So, Piggy's death was what triggered the end of the story, and called the attention of the navy officer.

I am frankly amazed by how the savageness inside a person can actually make that person immune to flinch from murder. This metamorphosis from civilized boy to a cold-blooded killer is very realistic, and is quite creepy. Also, I personally think that this story shows the surprising ability of humans to be able to adapt to nearly anything. It didn't take very long for the boys to get used to hunting and killing. I can't help but say that the human instinct is one of the most frightening things in the world.

Q3 - The Theme

The major theme of The Lord of the Flies is mentioned quite directly at the end of the book. In the last page of the story is is stated that "Ralph wept for the end of innocence, the darkness of man's heart, and the fall through the air of the true, wise friend called Piggy." The first two reasons of Ralph's weeping is the main theme of the novel: the end of innocence and the darkness of man's heart.

This entire book is about the life of the boys who are stranded on an island by themselves. More specifically, this story describes the demoralization of people who are isolated from civilization and the corruption of humanity. At the start of the book, the boys are all what most civilized boys are like: slightly playful, reasonable, and a bit selfish. No signs of violence can be seen at all from this point. However, as time passes, most of the boys realize that there is no need to heed the rules they had to abide by when they lived in a modern society. Thus, the reason of maintaining rational thinking and ethical lifestyle is gone; the wall that had kept the boys from listening only to their instincts as savages has been destroyed. During their time on the island, the boys, with Jack as their leader, learn how having power over others is sweet, and that power can be easily achieved by force, which naturally leads to violence.

This desire for being superior of others is what guides Jack and the boys to become what they later become: savages. Then, why did this happen? That is one of the main points that this book is addressing. This happened because Jack and his followers felt pleasure in violence, being better than others, and harming people physically. Apparently, Ralph and Piggy did not successfully escape from this instinct of savageness, for they also joined the dance of killing, the dance that was to murder Simon. So, it seems like everybody in the book except Simon seems to have this secret joy in evil. Simon, the only one who seemed to have no evil in his heart, was killed by the others, which might as well have been an inevitable outcome.

The darkness in man's heart is the love for being better than others, which often results in violence: a physical procedure of harming other beings in order to feel more superior than them. This darkness that lurks within probably most humans is also what the Lord of the Flies in the book represents. It is not something that can be escaped from, because it is part of everyone. Ralph later realizes this, and he weeps for this inescapable chaos. He also weeps for the end of innocence: the ability of being ignorant of all the evil within humans and being able to believe in the good of people. Now that he has discovered the darkness that presides in himself and all the other boys, because he witnessed the deaths that were outcomes of that evil, Ralph can never again return to when he never knew that evil. He must now face that darkness forever, even when he returns to the heart of the adult society. This realization of evil that lurks within all men is what ends innocence, and this theme is what the whole book is based on.

Now, why would a teenager need to know of such a sick truth, of such an awful existence of evil within ourselves? It would be better to not know, to be ignorant of it, so that we can never discover it, therefore innocent for all our lives. No, that is not a good thing, and that is why we need to know this theme: the evil within men's hearts and the end of innocence. I have stated above that this darkness is not something that can be escaped from, because it is part of everyone. In the book, the Lord of the Flies says to Simon that the beast is not something you can kill. Surely, it can't be killed in a biological way, but I believe that it can be diminished in a moral way. Simon possessed innate goodness, even when he knew the Lord of the Flies and its truth. This is because he was able to face it, know it, and still be the better of it. Even though he was killed, Simon is morally the better of everyone in the book. We need to know this darkness in us; people must identify this evil and know it from top to bottom and become the better of its natural savageness. It is stated in Tuesdays with Morrie by Morrie himself that you can't escape from something without even knowing what it is. Teenagers living in 2008 should know this theme so that they do not fall as victims of this terrible evil within us; to defeat the beast we must know the truth. Therefore, this theme must be known by teenagers who live in 2008 in order to prevent the destruction of morality and society.

Q2 - A Significant Passage

This passage is from the point where Jack hunts down his first pig while the fire has gone out, and a ship passes by...

Ralph spoke.

*"You let the fire go out."

Jack checked, vaguely irritated by this irrevelance but too happy to let it worry him.

**"We can light the fire again. You should have been with us, Ralph. We had a smashing time. The twins got knocked over--"

"We hit the pig--"

"--I fell on top--"

***"I cut the pig's throat," Jack said, proudly, and yet twitched as he said it. "Can I borrow yours, Ralph, to make a nick in the hilt?"

The boys chattered and danced. The twins continued to grin.

****"There was lashings of blood," said Jack, laughing and shuddering, "you should have seen it!"

"We'll go hunting every day--"

Ralph spoak again, hoarsely. He had not moved.

*"You let the fire go out."

This repetition made Jack uneasy. He looked at the twins and then back at Ralph.

"We had to have them in the hunt," he said, "or there wouldn't have been enough for a ring."

He flushed, conscious of a fault.

**"The fire's only been out an hour or two. We can light up again--"

He noticed Ralph's scarred nakedness, and the sombre silence of all four of them. He sought, charitable in his happiness, to include them in the thing that had happened. ****His mind was crowded with memories; memories of the knowledge that had come to them when they closed in on the struggling pig, knowledge that they had outwitted a living thing, imposed their will on it, taken its life like a long satisfying drink.

He spread his arms wide.

****"You should have seen the blood!"

The huinters were more silent now, but at this they buzzed again. Ralph flung back his hair. One arm pointed at the empty horizon. His voice was loud and savage, and struck them into silence.

*****"There was a ship."

This passage is the conversation between Ralph and Jack after the ship disappears over the horizon along with the hope of rescue. The hunters that Jack ruled over were in charge of keeping the fire alive, but Jack took all the boys to hunt down pigs. Due to that action, the fire burned out and the ship passed by without noticing the boys at all. This causes Ralph to be angry with Jack, and for the first time the two main characters have an obvious conflict.

This part of the story is the point in the plot where the fire seems to lose its importance, thus causing the connection between the boys and civilization to become thinner. Several statements here show how the values of the boys have become.

*Ralph openly accuses the boys of what they have done, and this act shows how Ralph considers being rescued as the most important thing above all.

**Jack states that the fire has been out for only a while, and that it can be lighted once more. This is proof that Jack no longer considers being rescued as a priority. He is already losing his rational way of thinking.

***Jack proudly says that he killed the pig, but he twitches as he says so, as if it was a rather repulsive fact. This single fact is the lingering trace of Jack's reluctance of killing. This is the very last time Jack shows the civilized reaction towards slaughter.

****Jack practically enjoys how he made another living creature spill out its blood and its life. This part is where the inner savageness of a person is shown, and this scene is where Jack finally is metamorphed into the savage he becomes had in himself all along.

*****This one statement of the truth is where Ralph's anger comes from. This terrible fact is also a synbol of how the hope in everybody is crushed. From this point, the relationship between Ralph and Jack is torn down, and somehow the sommunity among the boys from then on slowly turns upside down.

I personally think this passage is interesting, because it is a turning point in the story, where a conflict shows itself, relationships are flipped over, and the hope that the boys had turns into something dark and monstrous. Also, the fire, which signifies the connection between the boys and the civilization of the world, slowly loses its importance. In conclusion, this passage signals the starting point of where the boys slowly lose interest in the world where they belonged and start to feel actual bloodlust.

Q1 - The Characters

The two main characters of The Lord of the Flies are Ralph and Jack.

Ralph, the protagonist of the whole story, is the ideal leader who considers humanity and morality very important. From the start of the story he is elected leader because of his ability to remain calm, steady, and make rational choices. He is a responsible character who is one of the very few boys that try to maintain a civilized manner of living. I like Ralph very much, partly because he attempts and practically succeeds in acting like he would in a society that has adults and humanity, but also partly because Ralph discovers and despairs at the evil that lurks within people including himself. Ralph regards moral highly, therefore he is more and more depressed at the violence that belongs in the core of so many people. Ralph represents the conscience of most people who grow up in a civilized society.

The antagonist of this story is Jack, who is practically the very opposite of Ralph. Jack is described as a boy who wishes to be a leader from the start of the story. He likes the feeling of having power. Jack becomes a hunter who is eager for blood within a short period of time, and he is the leading example of the boys who give in to the savagery that lurks within them all. I dislike Jack, for he loses all the ethical values of a civilized human very quickly. By the end of the book, Jack is a demoralized savage who pursues power, bloodshed, and killing. Jack ends up like this mostly because he finds that the power of being able to harm others makes him feel more superior and stronger than other people. For his love of being better than anybody else, Jack later on decides to kill Ralph as the symbol of his own power over the isalnd and the other boys.

Another quite important character in the story is Simon, who is the sole character in this book that is shown as a truly 'good' person. Simon follows Ralph, is kind to the little boys, and shows himself as a rather peculiar boy. He seems to be physically weak, where he once has a seizure right after he 'meets' the Lord of the Flies. Simon, unlike Ralph and Piggy, believes in the true value of goodness from the bottom of his heart. He was the first one of all the boys to realize that the beast that the boys feared so much might exist inside their hearts. Ralph and Piggy, even though shown as the civilized type, only acts morally because they were raised to do so. They both have the potential of savageness, which showed up on the fateful night of Simon's death. Simon, on the other hand, shows no signs of forged moral or hidden violence, which was why I took a liking to him. However, Simon is killed by the other boys, which represents how the little true goodness of the world perishes under the hands of the evil of all humans.

Piggy, another central character, is a poor boy who is teased and bullied from the start of the book. Piggy is often targeted as a useless, fat victim of teasing.However, he shows great loyalty to Ralph, a deep longing to return to the society of civilization, and he is an extremely logical boy. As he stands by Ralph's side no matter what he develops into an important cahracter, later to be killed by the savageness of humans. By the end of the book, Piggy is stated as a true, wise friend. However, even though Piggy is a rather likeable fellow, he also shows the trace of violence and savageness during the night of Simon's death.

There are other few characters in the story who take a big part in the story. Roger, the eager follower of Jack, also quickly gives in to the glee of harming others and feeling superior. He shows this early in the book when he throws rocks at another little boy without actually hitting him. Later on, Roger's savageness is fully awakened when he starts to enjoy throwing rocks at Piggy, soon succeeding in killing him. Another character would be the officer who appears at the end of the story. He is the only adult to show up in the whole book, and he represents the adult society which the boys can finally return to, but never be the same again.

The last character, or rather, existance in this book is the Lord of the Flies. The Lord of the Flies if represented as the rotting head of a sow, which is a female pig, stuck on a stick. This head is symbolic in its own way. Jack and his followers kill the sow and stick its head as a sacrifice for the beast that they think exists on the island. Later, Simon starts to hallucinate and communicate with the dead head, which is renamed as the Lord of the Flies. The Lord talks to Simon, and is horrifyingly realistic. In this scene, the Lord of the Flies represents the 'beast' that the boys imagined, and at the same time it is the beast inside the boys. The Lord of the Flies is also the very main point of the entire story: the evil that lives in the hearts of men.