LOTF chapter 9

Chapter 9: A View to a Death
I believe Simon’s death was Jack’s fault. I think this because Jack is the one who takes everyone to hunt the beast and makes them think they need to hunt it. If he hadn’t gotten so obsessed with hunting and led everyone to hunt the beast they might have not believed they needed to hunt it, and wouldn’t have been led to immediately kill it when they believed they saw it. Jack also decided to leave the group, and his parting words were “I don’t want to play anymore.” This means that he thinks this is a game, they don’t realize they are on an island and they could die here. They are boys and to them this is a game but he doesn’t want to play, but it looks like he is the one who is playing. He has gone crazy from hunting and has decided that rescue is not important, and now he has brought all the other boys into the game. Ralph and his boys are the only ones who understand this isn’t a game, not Jack and that has lead to the death of Simon. If Jack had listened to Ralph and stayed with the tribe it wouldn’t have happened. So I believe the death of Simon is Jack’s fault.

LOTF chapter 8

Chapter 8: A Gift for Darkness

The part of this chapter I think was most terrifying is the part where the Lord of the Flies is talking to Simon. What happens in this part is after the pig's head is put on a stick for a sacrifice to the beast, Simon comes over and believes it is talking to him. Simon believes the pig head is speaking to him, telling him all of them are just silly little boys, because there is no beast. He mocks him saying he knew all along, the beast wasn’t something you could just kill; the beast lived inside of them. It is fear, violence, pain, uncivilization, disorder, anger, and chaos. One reason I find this terrifying is because it shows how the heat and the savagery has affected their imagination, but it's the imagination just speaking what Simon has really known all along. Sometimes we don't really understand our thoughts until they are brought out in front of us, and the Lord of the Flies shows Simon that. Also the title of the chapter kinds of explains this, a gift for darkness. The pig head was a gift to the beast, the darkness, the unknown. The pig head talking to Simon shows that in all of us as humans, there is some darkness like fear, disorder, and violence and all those things have been shown on the island. These things have let their imaginations go wild and believe there is a beast that may attack them, they don’t realize it has been attacking them, but unseen to the eye. It has slowly made them into crazed uncivilized creatures. If you think about it, it is terrifying because it shows us that most of the time our greatest enemy is ourselves.

LOTF chapter 6

Beast from Air
Imagining Nonsense
Perspective : Piggy

I sit down on the platform as I watch the slow retreat of the other older boys on the beach and the littluns huddling in terror of the beast. I take off my specs rubbing the one lens I have left; blinking my other eye as all my sight turns blurry. I let out a sigh of exasperation and anger, Jack, I just can’t stand him, he makes me so waxy. I don’t want to be embroiled any more though, so I just back off from Jack. Now one eye is blurry all the time because he hit me and broke my specs, but lucky that he didn’t break the other lens or we would have no way to start the fire. Not that he’d care much anyway; all he cares about is hunting. He seems to have an interminable obsession with it. And now he’s convinced the others to go off to hunt this beast, but I bet they won’t find it. There are no such things as beasts, especially ones that come from water and air. They’re scaring us all into thinking this Island is haunted by some leviathan. There is no such beast as one Sam and Eric described, it would’ve been discovered by now. They said it was furry, with wings, eyes, teeth, and claws, flailing all about the place, but I think it’s all nonsense. The boys going off to look for the beast, they make their way cautiously down the beach but speedily, like they really think something will jump out to attack them. I just don’t believe all these fairytales, it was night, I bet Sam n’ Eric weren’t seeing right. A more reasonable explanation would be a parachute. It could flap around in the wind like wings. It would make sense, with the war and all, a pilot coming down with a parachute. Yes I bet that’s what it is! But we’ll just have to go and see. I hope the boys hurry up because they won’t find anything, and I’m tired of watching littluns.

LOTF chapter 5

Beast from Water
The Fight of Fear
Perspective : Ralph

Today has been a crazy day on the island, and I am thankful to finally be going to sleep. Today I had to call an assembly, because of Jack and the fire. Anger flares inside me just thinking about it. So many things were not getting done. I now lay in a tottery shelter because no one helped us build those, with a sick littlun because of people going to the bathroom in the wrong places, and that is just the beginning! No one is bringing fresh water from the stream, people are starting fires all over the island, and even more important than anything, the fire hasn’t been kept going. My head hurts from the anger at Jack and the thought that we could have been rescued. We were so close but of course, to Jack, nothing is more important than hunting, not even getting rescued. If we were rescued, none of who is chief and what would matter and he wouldn’t need to go crazy about hunting, and have this ludicrous want for power. Things just continue to fall apart. The chant of jack and all his followers still rings in my head, the sound of wild animals almost. Wild animals, that brings me to think about the beast again. The sigh of the sea is so near, I’m almost ready to hear the drippings of something coming from the water, if it is true what that boy Percival said about the beast coming from there, but I need to forget about it. There is no beast, just the heat and our imaginations. Yet still those thoughts loom in the back of my head as the sick littlun near me continues his lamentation and discursive in his sleep about the horrid thing. The dirtiness of our nature; getting scared of beasts, fighting, our strike of competitiveness just makes my head ache even more. But I have made my decision, I will continue to be chief, no matter how Jack and the other boys test me. At least I have Piggy and Simon, honest and smart companions. Piggy is right, if I don’t continue to be chief, we will lose the rules, our decorum, and all become savage, and that can’t happen. I’ve learned that all we have here is each other, and if we can’t work with that everything will just fall apart. We will just have to see what tomorrow brings.

LOTF chapter 4

Painted Faces and Long Hair
Lost and Found
Perspective : Jack

Dear Diary,

Today on the island it has been both good and bad, but sometimes I wish I was home in England. There I was always the leader, the head choir boy, but now Ralph has that new spot, and we restlessly fight because of this. Today we fought like this, when I brought back the pig. I can remember the hunt, still the memory blazes in my mind. I can almost feel the warm clay as I spread it across my face, as the sun bored in it as we headed through the thick trees down to the beach. Just as it was supposed to, the clay kept us hidden. The pigs only seeing the shadows of the jungle reflected in our black, red, and white faces. We slowly made a circle on one pig that hadn’t sensed the danger, and with every step we closed in closer. Then the feeling of power and adrenaline suddenly rushed through me as I pulled the knife behind my head and slashed down quickly, cheers rising from the other boys, the sense of my leadership back. But then when we got back, that was when the fighting began. The twins had the pig, with gouts spilling from it, smiling and cheering as we headed up the mountain. It was at the top though that things went wrong, our cheerfulness most obviously not echoed in the other boy’s faces. Ralph just didn’t seem to get it. We had caught a pig! We had defeated a living thing, gotten meat for everyone. Shouldn’t they be thankful? Now I see though why Ralph was chosen as leader, he knows what needs to be done, looks at what everyone needs, not just himself. It was the burning sensation though inside me that drove me to fight. We needed all the hunters to hunt the pig; otherwise we wouldn’t have been able to circle the pig. Ralph could have always gotten the littluns to add wood to the fire, they never work. All they do all day is play and eat, cry and sleep. They wouldn’t have pig if it wasn’t for us. If he had gotten littluns to do it then the ship could have seen us. I know it was my job, but I had to hunt before time ran out, and it got dark. All I know is I don’t think things will get better here on out, unless we figure things out fast.