The Scrivener: Lord of the Flies - 3
…It is important to note that even though half of the boys were members of a choir, with silver crosses on their capes, and had sung like angels, they have no recourse to whatever beliefs they once had about God. If they previously had any reverence for God, their dire circumstances have erased it from their minds, replacing it with fear of an unknown beast. What they were taught about in church has vanished and been replaced by darkness…
Brian Barratt brings a deeper insight into one of the greatest novels of modern times, William Golding’s “Lord of the Flies’’.
This is the third of eight articles about this significant book.
To read the first two in the series, along with dozens of brilliant articles by Brian, please click on http://www.openwriting.com/archives/the_scrivener/
And do visit his mind-stretching Web site The Brain Rummager
www.alphalink.com.au/~umbidas/
…The boys realise in different ways that there is a "beast" on the island. Some of the younger ones have caught glimpses of it but are unable to explain what they saw. Is it a squid, a "snake thing", a "beastie", "something big and red and horrid", a ghost? It becomes the frightening symbolic figure around which the story develops…
We begin to realise that this unknown beast in the dark is actually the body of a parachutist who baled out from one of the aeroplanes in the continuing but unheard battle over the sea. When the older boys eventually see it, they still do not know what it really is, and even the usually level-headed Ralph is very frightened.
Jack, usurping leadership from Ralph, offers the beast a gift in the form of a boar's head mounted on an upright stake.
'This head is for the beast. It is a gift.'
The silence accepted the gift and awed them. The head remained there, dim-eyed, grinning faintly, blood blackening between the teeth. All at once they were running away, as fast as they could, through the forest towards the beach.
This bloody offering is "the lord of the flies" which forms the title of the story. It is a reference to the name of a Philistine god in the Old Testament of the Bible (The Second Book of Kings chapter 1). It is a literal translation of Baal-zebub, Beelzebub. The same word denotes Satan, the Devil.
It is important to note that even though half of the boys were members of a choir, with silver crosses on their capes, and had sung like angels, they have no recourse to whatever beliefs they once had about God. If they previously had any reverence for God, their dire circumstances have erased it from their minds, replacing it with fear of an unknown beast. What they were taught about in church has vanished and been replaced by darkness.
The failure of democracy and the breakdown of law and order are followed by a collapse of morality. Violence mounts to a terrifying peak when Jack and his hunters pursue and kill Simon, hysterically believing him to be the beast itself. After the murder, Ralph and Piggy try to come to grips with what has happened:
'That was murder.'
'You stop it!' said Piggy shrilly. 'What good're you doing talking like that?'
...'I wasn't scared,' said Ralph slowly, 'I was – I don't know what I was.'
'We was scared!' said Piggy excitedly. 'Anything might have happened.
And something does happen.
Piggy has been "the centre of social derision so that everyone felt cheerful and normal". Those words are among the most important clues about what was happening — the boys felt normal. They had built sand castles; thrown stones; played and swum in the water; gathered round the camp fire; cried for themselves and their plight; and all the things that normal boys do. Boys also have to make fun of someone, and Piggy is their prime target.
There had grown tacitly among the biguns the opinion that Piggy was an outsider, not only by accent, which did not matter, but by fat, and ass-mar, and specs, and a certain disinclination for manual labour.
In a dramatic encounter at the sea's edge, Piggy asks, "Which is better — to have rules and agree or to hunt and kill?" A rock is suddenly dislodged from higher up the cliff, knocking him to his death in the swirling sea. It is Roger who pushes the rock. When he had first appeared, as a choirboy bearing a silver cross, he was "a slight, furtive boy whom no one knew, who kept to himself with an inner intensity of avoidance and secrecy." Under Jack's malign influence, he dislodged the killing rock "with a sense of delirious abandonment".
Ralph 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 final horrific act of violence will be an attempt to kill Ralph himself.
© Copyright Brian Barratt 2009
