Ralph now longs for the comfort of the familiar, but the home he wishes for is a glamorized ideal. He remembers his former life as a place where “Everything was all right; everything was good-humored and friendly.” The reader, of course, is aware that back home — the world the boys have left — exactly the same sorts of human weaknesses which dominate the boys are playing out in the form of nuclear war. As Ralph looks out at the ocean and viscerally experiences its size and power, he considers how the other side of the island offers “the shield of the quiet lagoon” and midday mirages to protect them all from the truth of the ocean’s vastness. Faced with the reality of the ocean, he feels as though hope for rescue, and by extension for civilization, has become a mirage.
The images of civilization are in his head as are its voices — the same voices that conditioned Roger’s aim to miss Henry, for example, and Piggy’s, chiding him for being childish and another voice scolding him for being foolish enough to allow Jack to goad him into seeking out a potentially dangerous animal in the dark with only two other boys and spears of wood. In counterpart to the voices of civilization in his head is Jack’s voice, a disembodied voice in the dark like the figurative devil on his shoulder: “‘If you don’t want to go on,’ said the voice sarcastically, ‘I’ll go up by myself.’” By not attributing this challenge directly to Jack, Golding not only indicates the supreme darkness in which the boys are working but also emphasizes the evil that Jack represents. He describes Jack as a “stain in the darkness;” when Jack leaves, “The stain vanished. Another took its place.”
