The officer echoes a sentiment expressed by Jack in Chapter 2 (“we’re not savages. We’re English . . . So we’ve got to do the right things”). Learning of the two deaths, the officer comments “I should have thought that a pack of British boys . . . would have . . . put up a better show than that.” Both Jack and the officer are equally ignorant of the truth of the matter: Like all of humanity, these boys have and act on impulses that are at best uncivil and at worst deadly. In the novel, Golding uses events and mores associated with the British (his own culture), but his theme is universal. Although one could limit the interpretation to British imperialism (bestial aspects of British colonialism contrast sharply with the supremely polite British identity, for example), to do so would be to deny the larger truth: That all people — and therefore all societies — possess and display, to varying degrees, these deadly impulses.
