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.
1 comment:
I agree with you that humans are born with evilness, which actually unabled boys to cooperate. Additionally, adding the harch environments and no supervisors, the situation got worse. But im not saying that the senses of inferiority and the love of becoming better are bad things. Perhaps, these factors lead to the developments of a society. However, in this case, the factors were misused, or abused, creating such a destruction. If people were all born with kind-heartedness, then there might be an utopian community with only conventional lives.
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