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.