The shore was fledged with palm trees. The ground beneath them was a bank covered with coarse grass, torn everywhere by the upheavals of fallen trees, scattered with decaying coconuts and palm saplings.
I lift my chin slightly, squinting at the opening pages of Golding's Lord of the Flies. A group of British boys, ages six to twelve - fair-haired Ralph, fat boy Piggy, Jack, Simon, and a handful of 'Littluns' - survive a plane crash and are stranded on a desert island in the Pacific Ocean.
I'm already captivated by its premise.
Whizzoh! I feel just as excited as Ralph, as he exclaims. Nobody knows where we are. We may be here a long time. While we're waiting we can have a good time on this island.
No grownups! I chirp. I read on, tapping my pencil doggedly.
Ralph stood, one hand against a grey trunk, and screwed up his eyes against the shimmering water. Behind was the darkness of the forest proper. Oh-ho, that's the ominous part.
They're all dead, says Piggy, his spark of hope fizzling with a silent hiss. An' this is an island. Nobody don't know we're here. Your dad don't know, nobody don't know-- We may stay here till we die.
I'm sorting through my memory, thinking that survival and ultimate rescue can't be the novel's leitmotif (that's literary-criticism-speak for 'theme'). It's too literal.
Sure enough, Prof, straddling the high wooden chair on which he likes to perch, confirms my thought in his assured, elegant way. The central concern of the novel is the conflict between the instinct to live by rules and act peacefully against the instinct to act violently to obtain supremacy over others and enforce one’s will.
Hah! I mutter, The price for your heart's desire is your heart. A life for a life. A world in balance. There are murmurs of agreement among the senior English majors in the 20th Century Literature class.
Wacco! Wizard! Smashing! So those initial exclamations from Ralph and the other boys who have emerged one by one from the bushes simply set the stage for what is to come – and it isn't going to be smashing good. They are simply actors who will play out roles already written for them.
As if reading my mind, Prof intones, his voice becoming brittle. The novel is an allegory. Its characters signify important ideas or themes. He has placed his elbows on the desk and is touching his fingers together. Ralph represents order, leadership, and civilization, he continues.
I thought so.
When the conch shell is against his lips, he's in charge, Prof finishes his thought.
Clearly, the conch itself reiterates the same symbolism, I mutter, almost too quickly.
I like Piggy! A junior said, blushing, her voice out of the darkness from the back of the room. He is intelligent and despite his glasses he is the most rational boy in the group. For all his ludicrous body, he has brains.
That's right, Prof agrees. Piggy represents the scientific and intellectual aspects of civilization.
Catching on with the logic, her seatmate echoes in a husky voice, And his glasses represent the power of science and intellectual endeavor in society.
She must have read that from a literary criticism essay, I whisper it like a secret.
Again, Prof concurs. This symbolic significance is clear from the start of the novel, when the boys use the lenses from Piggy’s glasses to focus the sunlight and start a fire.
And yet, despite their best efforts, that understandable and lawful world slips way. Unbridled savagery and the desire for power emerge in their midst. Jack, despite his declaration that they're not savages, leads a group of cloaked boys. Trying to keep his voice down, he hisses, The choir. They could be the Army – or hunters.
So what could the imaginary beast that frightens all the boys stand for? Prof drawls, nonchalant. A grin spreads across his lined forehead as he waits for an answer. None is immediately forthcoming. After an uneasy silence, even from the English seniors, he volunteers the words with sudden ferocity and desperation. It's the primal instinct of savagery that exists within all human beings.
The boys’ behavior is what brings the beast into existence, so the more savagely the boys act, the more real the beast seems to become, Prof continues to speak quietly, seriously.
Now I understand why, by the end of the novel, the boys begin to treat the 'Beastie' as a totemic god, offering it the 'Lord of the Flies' - the bloody, severed sow’s head that Jack impales on a stake in the forest glade. I see the 'observing' sophomore seated on the front row twist in his chair like a diabolical Chinese dragon. The whole class has become uneasy.
We look with narrowed eyes at Prof, as he continues in the same low voice. It becomes both a physical manifestation of the beast, a symbol of the power of evil, and a kind of Satan figure who evokes the beast within each human being.
His face darkened to an ominous hue, Prof hastily adds, Only Simon reaches the realization that they fear the beast because it exists within each of them. He grimly reads Simon's line from the book, Beastie. Maybe it's only us.
What ensues is a battle between the two groups of boys. Piggy who has only gone to ask Jack for his glasses, meets his demise. A rock strikes him from chin to knee. Piggy fell forty feet and landed on his back across the square red rock in the sea. His head opened and stuff came out and turned red. Piggy's arms and legs twitched a bit, like a pig's after it has been killed.
As part of the quest to hunt and kill Ralph, Jack's gang sets fire to the forest. It is this fire of savagery that finally summons a ship to the island.
When the naval officer asks Ralph and the group of bloodthirsty, savage children pursuing him to explain, Ralph begins to weep. He 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 other boys begin to cry as well. The officer turns his back so that the boys may regain their composure.
I can hardly hear Prof's closing commentary. His brows drawn together, he speaks of the instinct of civilization as good, and the instinct of savagery as evil.
My thoughts are in disarray. Feeling properly despondent, I rise from my seat and leave the classroom.
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