Lord O Flies Quarter 3

Novel Quarter 3

By David Lowe

Novel: Lord of the Flies

By William Golding

Skeletal plot:

1. Ralph, Jack, and Roger travelled to the top of the mountain and found “the thing that bowed”

2. They called a meeting at the base camp, Jack claimed Ralph was a coward, arguing pursued, and Jack leaves on his own.

3. With the “beast” on the summit, the remaining group makes a fire at base camp

4. Jack forms a tribe with some who followed him, they hunt and prepare a feast to persuade others to join.

5. Simon talks to the head of a pig on a stick, and finds the beast is a dead body

6. Jack steals some fire from the group

7. Jack hosts a feast, with meat,

8. Ralph and piggy visit the feast

9. The tribe does their hunting dance; Simon comes out of the bushes during it and is attacked and killed by everyone.

Conflict:

The conflict in the third quarter is no longer at all directed with surviving but the conflict of the boys and the “beast” and Jack’s tribe vs. Ralph’s, everyone killing Simon, and Anarchy against Lawfulness.

Setting:

The setting is still on the island, but much of this quarter’s setting is on the other side of the island and at night. The setting at night creates an atmosphere of dread, and death.

Characters:

Ralph, changes to no extent at all in this quarter, and his fighting with Jack becomes more open and extreme.

Piggy, still slowly becomes pushier with telling everybody what he thinks, and becomes generally happier when Jack leaves the group.

Jack thinks he should be king of the island, he thinks he is better than everyone, and that only food is important. He is generally arrogant, and selfish, only occasionally thinking about others.

Simon, although he is killed at the end of the quarter, represented the line of nature and tranquility, between Ralph’s idealism of today’s systems of uniformity and Jack’s ideas of Savagery and Tribalism.

POV: 

The story stays in its 3^rd person, limited omniscient point of view, still allowing it to give some insight into what each person is thinking and wanting.

Notable writing styles:

Generally the same as last quarter, many similes “a black blob of flies that buzzed like a saw” pg 152 line 5

Lots of imagery but down, “A wave of heated air trembled above the ashes but without a trace of smoke” pg 153 line 25

The unusual vocabulary is just European diction,

The novel is based around the fear the boys created within themselves, and the conflict between the leaders. This is because almost every other paragraph has something to with one of those things.

The dialog is still realistic, just for Europeans. “we shall do you. See jack and roger and Maurice and Robert and Bill and piggy and Ralph”

Themes:

Death

Hopelessness

Betrayal

Power

Isolation

Survival

Individualism

Deception

Suffering

Alienation

Loss

Personal Response

I couldn’t relate at all to what happened in the quarter; however the story finally got a little absorbing for me as a reader. The story left a bit of an unsettling feeling to it after this quarter I found, due to Simon talking to the impaled head of a pig in this part, and it responding to him, making me think, was he insane this entire time?