Blogging Lord of the Flies, Chapter 4: Painted Faces and Long Hair

Jon is blogging Lord of the Flies. For a list of his posts, go here.

Welcome to Chapter 4, Painted Faces and Long Hair, aka The Boys Finally Kill Something On Purpose, And Also Are Jerks.

We start with a description of how the boys are coping with life on the island. Most of the kids (particularly the littluns) basically just goof off and eat and get confused by nature, unless bad things are happening to them. The littluns are filthy, careless, and either treated like crap or ignored entirely. One of them (Percival) had a total breakdown, which everyone considers hilarious.

As the chapter begins, three of the littluns are building a sandcastle; Roger and Maurice arrive and kick it down. Percival cries, and another littlun (Johnny) gleefully throws sand in his eyes.

In case you haven't guessed the theme so far, it's that kids are pretty much terrible. And really, thinking back, have we actually seen anyone being genuinely nice? Pretty much just Simon, Right? Piggy's pitiable, but he's not actively kind. Ralph's nice in comparison to Jack, but then Pol Pot is nice in comparison to Jack, so that really isn't saying much.

One of the littluns, Henry, wanders off to play with baby crabs in the ocean. Golding is pretty explicit about the fact that Henry wants to dominate and control their tiny lives (see, even the littluns are jerks). Roger follows him, skulking along in the background and staying hidden behind a tree. As he stands (creepily) under the tree, some coconuts dislodge and fall to the beach. Here is how Roger reacts to this:

This is relevant because the expected reaction to falling coconuts, which kill more people than shark attacks, is to go "noooo deadly coconuts" and dive out of the way. Roger just stands there, because he's basically an emotionless sadistic robot. Then, eyeing Henry, Roger picks up some rocks. If this were a cartoon, a little devil and angel would appear on Roger's shoulders as a kid-accessible way of expressing internal conflict. "Go ahead, throw rocks at that six-year-old in order to maim him for no reason," the cartoon devil would say. "But what would your mom think?!" the angel would retort. Roger does throw the rocks—but some part of him still behaves as though his mom might come bounding out of the jungle and smack him with a rolling pin for being a cruelty machine. So although he tosses the rocks, he intentionally misses, only almost senselessly hurting a child. For now. Bravo, Roger!

The thing about human nature is that few people are just mindlessly, enthusiastically evil. No, what happens is that they gradually urge each other onward toward worse and worse behavior until eventually everyone's a frothing maniac. Roger is the anti-Simon and a genuine sadist, but he needs a trigger of some kind before he really loses it. Hmm… a trigger for violence… Who might b—Oh hey it's Jack! Hi Jack!

Right on cue, Jack arrives with a metaphor for his dwindling humanity plan: he's going to paint his face with clay and charcoal so that he can sneak up on the pigs. When he finishes doing so, he seems like "an awesome stranger," dancing and laughing and snarling. Everyone is understandably a little freaked out. Jack insists that they come along on his pig-hunting mission, and they agree, because "[t]he mask compel(s) them."

Back on the beach, Ralph, Simon, and Maurice are just lazing around. Piggy's there too, and Ralph is once again treating him like some smelly, unwelcome secondary character. In fact, Ralph's busy trying to ignore Piggy when suddenly OH SNAP there's a ship! Maybe they people aboard it will notice the signal fire and everyone will be rescued and this whole ordeal will finally be over and…Oh. There's no signal fire. It has burned out. Awesome. Ralph goes tearing off up the hill, a big frantic swearing mess, as the ship recedes into the distance.

Remember when Jack magnanimously offered to have his hunters tend the fire? It turns out that was more of an empty gesture than a solemn pledge to keep the fire going no matter what. So what might Jack and his hunters have been up to instead of keeping the flames burning? This should not be difficult to guess.

As Ralph arrives at the place where the fire should have been, the hunters march out of the forest, led by a knife-wielding, bloodied Jack, chanting about murder and carrying a dead pig. They're thrilled with their accomplishment, all RALPH RALPH WE KILLED A PIG IT WAS AWESOME RALPH, and it takes a while for Ralph's furious glowering to sink in. Once Ralph finally makes it clear that they've just missed their chance to be rescued because everyone was busy murdering, even hapless Piggy is angry enough to yell at Jack. Of course, since Piggy is a pudgy intellectual and Jack is practically Sabertooth, Jack promptly punches him and half-breaks his glasses.

Jack proceeds to make a fake-apology, acting now like the considerate leader who got everyone meat. Ralph is standing angrily right where the fire should be, and even Jack isn't crazy enough to be all "HA HA LET'S SET RALPH ON FIRE," so he's forced to have the boys build up a new fire nearby. To everyone's surprise, Ralph quietly and politely takes Piggy's glasses, helping to start up the fire again. With a cooked pig in front of them, even Ralph can't refuse actual food. The only boy who does is Simon; he gives his portion to Piggy. Jack flips out at this; his position as The Meat Provider isn't worth much if people refuse to eat his offerings.

Soon their talk devolves into where they found the pig, and the details of the hunt. Everyone's relishing the description and singing their creepy song when Ralph announces that he's calling an assembly, right now, in the dark if need be. He walks off down the mountain.

And with that ominous proclamation, Chapter 4 concludes. Why is Ralph calling this meeting? Who really has control of these confusingly violent kids? If Jack can't catch more pigs, will he just start eating everyone? These questions and more will be answered in Chapter 5: Beast from Water.

Previous posts on LotF are collected here. Happy reading!