Thursday, December 5, 2013

Lit. Analysis Extra Credit LOTF

A plane carrying a group of British boys ages 6 to 12 has crashed on a deserted island. With no adults around, the boys are left to fend for and govern themselves. Things start out okay. The boys use a conch as a talking stick, and Ralph, one of the older boys, becomes chief.
And then trouble begins. They're afraid of a "beast" somewhere on the island, and then they decide to build a signal fire using the glasses of a boy named Piggy. But Jack, jealous of Ralph's power, decides the boys should devote their energies to hunting food instead of watching the fire. The longer they're on the island, the more savage he becomes. Meanwhile our other key player, a wise and philosophical boy named Simon, works with Ralph to build shelters.
Eventually these latent conflicts become not so latent, and the boys who are supposed to be tending the fire skip out on their duties to kill a pig. The blood and gore of the hunt is all very exciting until they realize that, while they were out being bloodthirsty boys, the fire went out and a ship passed by without noticing them. Jack has also managed to punch Piggy in the face and break one lens of his glasses.
Right about this time a dead man attached to a parachute comes in. The mysterious parachuting creature is mistaken for the beast, and the boys begin a massive hunt to kill it. Only Simon thinks the beast is themselves. He goes off into the woods to got to his happy place.
Jack decides Ralph shouldn't be chief anymore. He secedes and invites whoever wants to come with him and kill things. Most of the older kids go with him, and Simon is hiding, he watches Jack and the other kids hunt a pig. This time, they slaughter a fat mother pig cut off her head, and jam it onto a stick in the ground.
Simon stares at the head, which he calls "the Lord of the Flies" as it tells him that it is the beast and that it is part of him. Simon passes out, gets a bloody nose, and wakes up covered in sweat, blood, and other generally disgusting things. Despite all this, he decides to continue up the mountain to face the beast. Then he vomits and staggers down the mountain.
By now, Ralph and Piggy  are attending a big feast that Jack is throwing.A  reenactment of the pig hunt until Simon walks up to the crazz boys. He tries to tell them about the beast, but they don't recognize him and the boys jab at him with their spears until he's dead. Simon's body is washed out to sea that night, and the wind carries off the body of the dead parachuting man, while Ralph and Piggy convince themselves they didn't take part in murdering Simon.
It's all downhill from here. Jack's crew attacks Ralph and Piggy and steals Piggy's eyeglasses to make fire on their own. When Ralph and Piggy decide to calmly talk it out with the "savages," Roger pushes a huge boulder off a cliff, killing Piggy. Ralph ends up running for his life, finds out that there's a head-on-stick future planned for him, and at last makes it to the shore of the island where he runs into a officer of the British Navy. The boys are rescued.

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