Second Response

In the last paragraph, Golding writes “...Ralph wept for the end of innocence, the darkness of men’s hearts...” Discuss how this relates to the events that happened in the book.

- Throughout the book, we discovered the different personalities in most of the boys. Some of them came across as the most innocent people ever, in the beginning, but eventually, they became very violent and twisted. At the beginning, most people were shy and very easy to get along with, but towards the end of the book, when everything was falling apart, personalities changed. When Simon came to tell everyone that the so called 'beast' was actually a dead man with a parachute, everyone attacked him and killed him with their spears. This goes to show how the innocence ended and how the darkness in their hearts got the best of them and changed them into completely different people.

Symbols are everywhere in LotF - pick 2 that really stood out to you and discuss their importance to the story.

- The first symbol I noticed right off in the book was the conch. Ralph, the 'chief', would blow the conch to get all of the boys together for meetings. This became a big part of the book, for they would have meetings every day. The boys made a rule that in order to be able to talk during the meetings, you must be holding the conch. Eventually, Jack got fed up with the whole idea of the conch in general, and threw a fit about it. This was the beginning the big split between the boys on the island.

-The second symbol I noticed was the pig head. Jack and the rest of the hunters killed a sow, and cut its head off and placed it on this stake, basically as a symbol of victory. When Simon went into the woods and found the pig head on the stake, he realized that it was the "Lord of the flies." He thought that it was talking to him and telling him that there was no beast on the island, except for the beasts inside of the children. Right after the talk with the pig head, Simon passed out. Later, Ralph came across the pig head as well, except when he got there, it was mostly skull. He used the stake that the pig head was on, to save himself from Jack and the rest of Jack's crew.

First Responses

2) One of the main points of this book is to look at the effects of authority, or the lack of authority, on people. The "society" that the boys created eventually begins to fall apart; do you think this is because of the leaders they chose (Ralph and Jack), or because of the situation they were in (meaning who their leaders were didn't matter)?

- I believe that the society that the boys created fell apart mainly because of the age group, or, the situation they were in. Most of the kids were around six or seven years old, and didn't want to do anything to cooperate with the rest of the group of boys. The older kids though, wanted to hunt, or create shelter and fire in a timely manner. They were unable to most of those things as fast as possible though because they didn't have many people to help them. All of the boys wanted different things, and most just wanted to play and fool around. When things fell apart, it was because Jack and Ralph could not see eye to eye and no matter how one another explained something, they just could not agree. They split apart, and this is when everything became a disaster.

3) Suspend your rationale thinking for a moment, and imagine that the place you all know best involving established authority - school - is suddenly without teachers, Ms. Nadeau, etc. for an extended period of time (think weeks). What would happen?

- If there were no teachers at school, I believe many people would fail to show up every day. I have a feeling that if anybody did actually show up, then there would be chaos. There would be different groups formed, such as; the ones who would trash the school, the people who would try to take over the teachers position, the ones who would try to keep the sports teams going without a coach, and so on. There would be so many people scrambling about, not even knowing what to do. The upperclassmen would be trying to make all the rules, as the underclassmen would be testing the limits and being immature in many ways, which is basically how it was in Lord of the Flies.