Lord of The Flies

Lord of the Flies William Golding
Plot
In the midst of a wartime evacuation, a British plane crashes on or near an
isolated island in a remote region of the Pacific Ocean. The only survivors
are boys in their middle childhood or preadolescence. Two boysthe fairhaired Ralph and an overweight, bespectacled boy nicknamed "Piggy"
find a conch, which Ralph uses as a horn to call all the survivors to one
area. Due largely to the fact that Ralph appears responsible for bringing
all the survivors together, he is quickly elected their "chief", though he
does not receive the votes of the members of a boys' choir, led by the redheaded Jack Merridew. Ralph asserts three primary goals: to have fun,
survive, and to maintain a smoke signal that could alert passing ships to
their presence on the island. The boys declare that whoever holds the
conch shall also be able to speak at their formal gatherings and receive
the attentive silence of the larger group.
Jack organises his choir group into a hunting party responsible for
discovering a food source. Ralph, Jack, and a quiet, dreamy boy named
Simon soon form a loose triumvirate of leaders. Though he is Ralph's only
confidant, Piggy is quickly made into an outcast by his fellow "biguns"
(older boys) and becomes an unwilling source of laughs for the other
children. Simon, in addition to supervising the project of constructing
shelters, feels an instinctive need to protect the "littluns" (younger boys).
The semblance of order quickly deteriorates as the majority of the boys
turn idle, giving little aid in building shelters, and begin to develop
paranoias about the island, referring to a supposed monster, the "beast",
which they believe to exist on the island. Ralph insists that no such beast
exists, but Jack, who has started a power struggle with Ralph, gains
control of the discussion by boldly promising to kill the beast. At one point,
Jack summons all of his hunters to hunt down a wild pig, drawing away
those assigned to maintain the signal fire. A ship travels by the island, but
without the boys' smoke signal to alert the ship's crew, the ship continues
by without stopping. Angered by the failure of the boys to attract potential
rescuers, Ralph considers relinquishing his position, but is convinced not
to do so by Piggy.
One night, an aerial battle occurs over the island while the boys sleep,
during which a dead fighter pilot is ejected from his plane. His body drifts
down to the island in his parachute; both get tangled in a tree near the
top of the mountain. Later on, while Jack schemes against Ralph, twins
Sam and Eric, now assigned to the maintenance of the signal fire, see the
corpse of the fighter pilot and his parachute in the dark. Mistaking the
corpse for the beast, they run to the cluster of shelters that Ralph and
Simon have erected and warn the others. This unexpected meeting again
raises tensions between Jack and Ralph. Shortly thereafter, Jack decides to
lead a party to the other side of the island, where a mountain of stones,
later called Castle Rock, forms a place where he claims the beast resides.
Only Ralph and Jack's sadistic supporter Roger agree to go; Ralph turns
back shortly before the other two boys. When they arrive at the shelters,
Jack calls an assembly and tries to turn the others against Ralph, asking
for them to remove him from his position. Receiving little support, Jack,
Roger, and another boy leave the shelters to form their own tribe. This
tribe lures in recruits from the main group by providing a feast of cooked
pig and its members begin to paint their faces and enact bizarre rituals
including sacrifices to the beast.
Simon, likely an epileptic,[5][6] wanders off on his own to think and finds a
severed pig head, left by Jack as an offering to the beast. Simon envisions
the pig head, now swarming with scavenging flies, as the "Lord of the
Flies" and believes that it is talking to him. The pig's head tells Simon
that the boys themselves "created" the beast and claims that the real
beast is inside them all. Simon also locates the dead parachutist who had
been mistaken for the beast, and is the sole member of the group to
recognize that the "monster" is merely a human corpse. Simon, hoping to
tell others of the discovery, finds Jack's tribe in the island's interior during
a ritual dance and, mistaken for the beast, is killed by the frenzied boys.
Ralph, Piggy, Sam, and Eric feel guilty that they, too, participated in this
murderous "dance."
Jack and his band of "savages" decide that they should possess Piggy's
glasses, the only means of starting a fire on the island, so they raid
Ralph's camp, confiscate the glasses, and return to their abode on Castle
Rock. Ralph, now deserted by most of his supporters, journeys to Castle
Rock to confront Jack and secure the glasses. Taking the conch and
accompanied only by Piggy, Sam, and Eric, Ralph finds the tribe and
demands that they return the valuable object. Turning against Ralph, the
tribe takes Sam and Eric captive while Roger drops a boulder from his
vantage point above, killing Piggy and shattering the conch. Ralph
manages to escape, but Sam and Eric are tortured until they agree to join
Jack's tribe.
The following morning, Jack orders his tribe to begin a manhunt for Ralph.
Jack's savages set fire to the forest while Ralph desperately weighs his
options for survival. Following a long chase, most of the island is
consumed in flames. With the hunters closely behind him Ralph trips and
falls. He looks up at a uniformed adult - a naval officer whose party has
landed from a passing warship to investigate the fire. Ralph bursts into
tears over the death of Piggy and the "end of innocence". Infected by his
emotion, Jack and the other children, filthy and unkempt but suddenly
reverting to their true ages, also spontaneously erupt into sobs. After
expressing disappointment that "British boys" had fallen into such feral
behaviour, the officer awkwardly turns away to give them a moment to
pull themselves together.
What are some quotes of the conch shell being

used in the Lord of the Flies with page
numbers. These can be any quotes of the shell
being used or talked about.
"S'right. It's a shell! I seen one like that before. On someone's back wall. A
conch he called it. He used to blow it and then his mum would come. It's
ever so valuable--" (15).
Piggy says this quote when he and Ralph first see the shell. His comments
set up two aspects of the shell that will come into play later in the novel: the
idea of using the shell to call someone and the shell being valuable.
Quote #2
"But there was a stillness about Ralph as he sat that marked him out: there
was his size, and attractive appearance; and most obscurely, yet most
powerfully, there was the conch. The being that had blown that, had sat
waiting for them on the platform with the delicate thing balanced on his
knees, was set apart" (22).
This quote reveals how Ralph and the conch are linked in the minds of the
boys; the conch gives Ralph authority and sets him apart. It is this
distinction that makes the boys vote for Ralph for chief over Jack.
Quote #3
"'And another thing. We can't have everybody talking at once. We'll have
to have 'Hands up' like at school.'
He held the conch before his face and glanced round the mouth.
'Then I'll give him the conch.'
'Conch?'
'That's what this thing is called. I'll give the conch to the next person to
speak. He can hold it when he's speaking.'"
Ralph uses the conch as a symbol of authority with the boys in their second
meeting. The conch comes to represent civilization and order in this quote,
as Ralph instructs the boys how to use the conch to take proper turns in
their meetings.
Quote #4
"Exposure to the sun had bleached the yellow and pink to near-white, and
transparency. Ralph felt a kind of affectionate reverence for the conch,
even though he had fished the thing out of the lagoon himself" (78).
The conch is shown here as being "near-white" and transparent.
Golding's description of the conch suggests an innocent quality to the
object, and its transparent nature, a lack of motives or disengenuity.
Quote #5
"The rock struck Piggy a glancing blow from chin to knee; the conch
exploded into a thousand white fragments and ceased to exist" (181).
Roger's act of
savagery destroys the
conch and Piggy, the
voice of reason, in
one fell swoop. As
the conch shatters, so
do the last remnants
of civilization on the
island.

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Lord of the Flies William Golding

What are some quotes of the conch shell being

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