For your amusement and edification, Jon is reading Lord of the Flies and blogging about it. A complete list of posts is here.
It's hard to come up with an image more placid than huts on a beach, so from the chapter title, you might guess everyone will soon kick back and drink lemonade or something. But wait—what if the huts are a metaphor for one side of an awesome conflict that will soon get all crazy? Because they are, and it will. But first, hide whatever pigs you might have lying around, because it's Jack o' Clock on LotF Island.
Up until now, Jack has been something of a violent mystery; he's been involved in the story a lot, but we haven't seen things from his perspective. This chapter begins with a long passage entirely about Jack, establishing him as a violent less-of-a-mystery. We find him crouched in the underbrush, locked in his single-minded pursuit of pigs (yes, still). Evidently some time has passed since the last chapter; he has a sunburn, his hair is longer, and the island is no longer on fire. Jack also seems to have gotten pretty good at tracking wildlife.
Being away from orderly society is probably wearing on everyone by now, but Jack has progressed well past the "forgot table manners" stage and is careening straight into "lunatic blood-crazed beast-man" territory. The narrator compares him to a dog and an ape within the first four paragraphs of the chapter. Jack, frustrated he hasn't killed anything yet, has a frantic madness in his eyes. In the last chapter, Piggy sarcastically remarked that the kids were acting nuts because it was past tea-time. Well, it is way past Jack's tea-time, and Piggy would certainly have something to say about it if he were here now. Except he wouldn't actually say it, because Jack would probably flip out and eat him.
After a near miss at finally catching a pig, an irritable Jack skulks back to the beach, where Ralph has been trying to build shelter. Have you ever tried to get a bunch of kids to build a house? Probably not, because you'd get arrested, but apparently it isn't easy. As soon as we see one of the huts, it falls apart, which tells you everything you need to know about Ralph's house-building success rate.
Poor Ralph has gotten no help from anyone but Simon. He laments that if he called a meeting right now, everyone would show up, and they'd be all OMG WE SHOULD BUILD, UM, A SUBMARINE! and then they'd wander off or go hunting. The "or go hunting" remark doesn't sit well with Jack, who twice asserts "we want meat." Ralph shoots right back that nuh-uh, they want shelters, "because of the—" and then does not say "monster," because he's good old rational Ralph, and he doesn't want to entertain the foolish notion of a monster in the jungle. But the kids are scared, they have nightmares, they scream, almost as if—
"As if it wasn't a good island," interrupts Simon.
We've had two pretty well-defined sides up until this point: Ralph is civilization; Jack is savagery. Now we have Simon, who is basically an enigmatic pile of question marks. To a lesser extent, the island itself is becoming a character too, but we'll get to that later.
Anyway, Ralph and Jack take a short break from arguing to be shocked by Simon's mysteriousness. Jack seems to agree with Simon's sentiment about the island, but then he and Ralph start yelling at each other again (this time because Jack looked so excited that Ralph thought he saw a ship, but actually Jack was just getting excited about killing pigs again.) They wind up in a speechless stare-down, "two continents of experience and feeling," "baffled, in love and hate." Ralph wants to build, sustain, and be rescued; Jack literally has difficulty remembering what "rescue" means. His thoughts, of course, are elsewhere.
Meanwhile, Simon has wandered off on his own. If you recall, in the first chapter, the narrator's description of this character was basically limited to "here's Simon, he's unconscious." We now learn that Simon is a small, dark, bright-eyed kid with a deep tan. The narrative switches to him as he helps littluns reach some fruit, and then continues on deeper into the jungle. He makes his way to a clearing and then just sort of hangs around for a while. He's not playing, looking for food, hunting, or anything else. He's just there.
Each of these kids has a different relationship with his surroundings. For the sake of argument, let's say the island is a girl. Simon is going out with the island; he goes off alone with it, spends time with it, and seems to share a kind of bond with it. Jack has gotten to second base with the island; he's felt what Simon has felt (metaphorically, of course, come on), but without the same emotional attachment. Ralph bumped into the island at a social function but it was awkward and Ralph was just waiting for his dad to come take him home. So he's vaguely aware of what the other two are talking about, but he considers it preposterous and wants nothing to do with it. (In this analogy, it helps to think of the island-girl as someone who can't be taken seriously, like if she's wearing a clown suit or something).
We'll learn more about the island's character in due time; for now we're left with a clear picture of these boys' differing relationship with the island. Obviously it's only a matter of time before Ralph's tenuous leadership is tested, but how much longer will these English schoolboys' ingrained civility hold out? (Answer: the next chapter is called Painted Faces and Long Hair, so basically it will last until the end of this sentence.)
For more Jon on LotF, click here.
By: Jon_Skindzier
Topics: Books
Tags: books we could do without, Books, blogging the classics, blogging lord of the flies
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