Summary
After the assembly, all the boys go to sleep. Above them an aerial battle is taking place. A casualty of the battle floats down to the island on his opened parachute. The wind drags the body to rest at the top of the mountain. The breeze inflates the parachute occasionally, making the body appear to sit up and then sink forward again. Samneric, tending the fire on the mountain, catch a glimpse of the body's movement and hear the parachute inflating. They flee to Ralph in a panic with a story exaggerated by their fear.
At dawn, Ralph calls an assembly, where they decide to investigate the only spot on the island left unexplored: the castle-like rock formation at one end. With Piggy and the littluns remaining behind on the beach, Ralph and the others go to the castle. Ralph goes first by himself, followed a few minutes later by Jack. After they establish that the beast is not there, the other boys join them in the castle and want to play there a while. They resist when Ralph announces that they need to all go check on the fire, but he forces the issue and Jack leads the way back up to the fire site.
Analysis
This chapter begins and ends ominously. The aerial battle that opens the chapter establishes that war continues to rage in the world where most of the boys long to return. Ralph, Piggy, and Simon finished the previous chapter detailing the merits of adults and adult behavior, how adults would remedy their unpleasant situation with ease and dignity. Yet that night, "a sign came down from the world of grownups" that is frightening and mysterious and changes the entire complexion of the group for the worse. When Samneric establish to everyone's satisfaction that an actual beast does exist, the boys shift automatically and instinctively into an aggressive mode based on fear: "the circle began to change. It faced out, rather than in, and the spears of sharpened wood were like a fence."
The main theme of this chapter is the effect of fear. For Samneric, their initial fright magnifies their involvement with the creature from merely seeing movement and hearing the parachute to being actively chased down the mountain as they flee. They report eyes, teeth, and claws that they couldn't possibly have seen. The other boys are so eager for a remedy to this fear that they feel the first unified urge for mutiny when Ralph forces them to leave the perceived safety of the fort-like castle rock to check on the fire.
Fear acts as a sort of litmus test for leadership. While Piggy and Jack both put forth unworkable plans of action — Piggy wanting to restrict their living area to the platform, Jack wanting to rush out and hunt the beast down — Ralph is able to proceed with sense and caution. Harkening back to his new appreciation for the power of thought, Ralph lays out his concerns about both plans and asserts, "So we've got to think." He points out that the beast obviously can't be hunted like the pigs because it leaves no tracks; otherwise, Jack would have already seen the tracks. Remaining all the time on the platform will not work due to lack of fire, food, and space. Ralph is able to keep the group's focus on the hope for rescue, despite Jack's attack on his authority.
Fear brings out the dictator in Jack. He attempts to take control of the group, claiming this situation is "a hunter's job" in which Ralph is not qualified to command. Showing yet again no mercy for the helpless or vulnerable, he advocates abandoning the littluns without a guardian while everyone else goes on the hunt. Like a dictator, he assigns a high value only to those he finds useful or agreeable to his views and looks to silence those who do not please him. Making a pitch for censorship, Jack declares, "We don't need the conch any more. We know who ought to say things. What good did Simon do speaking?"
Yet Simon is the only boy who has insight into the nature of the true beast, the abstraction that Jack feels watching him in the jungle. Pondering all the characteristics of this animal beast Samneric seem to have discovered, Simon sees that all the pieces don't add up: If this beast had claws and wings, why was it not fast or fierce enough to catch Samneric? When Simon tries to visualize what this beast might look like, "there arose before his inward sight the picture of a human at once heroic and sick" which is a depiction of Golding's vision of humanity as flawed by inherent evil. Golding gives this knowledge to Simon, an outsider, to reflect the place visionaries or mystics typically hold in society: on the fringes, little understood by the majority, and so often feared or disregarded. As a mystic, Simon is not fully present in the physical world, living so inside his head that he can't keep from banging it into a tree as they make their way to the castle rock. Simon was unable the night before to make the other boys see his outlook; even Ralph, with his new appreciation for thought and wisdom, dismisses Simon without considering that he may have valuable insight.
Ralph has more pressing concerns in light of this crisis. As the leader, he feels the obligation to lead the way into the unexplored territory at the castle rock, even though he is initially as frightened as everyone else. He even suggests that Jack go first, perhaps daring Jack to live up to his declaration that this is "a hunter's job." Yet Ralph is unable to overlook his own pressing sense of responsibility and takes the lead alone around the cliff. In a credit to the conditioning he received back home, politeness is his default even in this tense moment.
As he is about to embark, Simon mumbles, perhaps in an attempt to comfort him, that he doesn't believe in the beast; Ralph "answered him politely, as if agreeing about the weather. 'No. I suppose not.'" British culture is famed for such civilized reserve in emotional times; by the standards of the society he's left behind, Ralph is a gentleman. The calmness of his reply is also a testament to his strong alliance with reason, further characterizing Ralph as person who values thought and logic.
When Ralph is actually on the path, he "realized with surprise that he did not really expect to meet any beast and didn't know what he would do about it if he did." This realization underscores Ralph's ability to remain calm and realistic in stressful situations. During the showdown with Jack during the morning's assembly, his clearheaded response helped him maintain his authority; the boys found his hope for rescue during this height of fear more appealing than Jack's desire to hunt. Jack self-indulgently seeks the glory of the hunt while Ralph seeks safety for the group, a fact not lost on the other boys at the time.
Inevitably, once Ralph has accepted the obligation that comes with leadership and has made his way alone toward the castle rock, Jack follows. "Couldn't let you do it on your own," he explains, motivated less by concern than by an inability to allow Ralph his full share of glory as a solo explorer. Immediately, Jack claims the area as ideal for a fort and identifies a loose boulder as a weapon. The other boys warm up to Jack's plan right away and prefer to remain there playing fort and feeling secure rather than follow Ralph's command that they all make the journey to the fire site to re-light the fire.
The group's favor swings back and forth from Ralph to Jack ever more rapidly. After the successful hunt led by the swaggering Jack, Ralph in contrast has begun to seem to the boys like the absurd, stodgy authority figures back home. Samneric mock his justifiable anger later when they are out of its reach. "Eric sniggered. 'Wasn't he waxy?' . . . 'Remember old Waxy at school?'" Imitating the schoolmaster they had nicknamed Waxy for consistently waxing angry at his students' classroom antics, Samneric laugh at Ralph as well, despite the fact that their desertion of duty caused his anger and the loss of possible rescue. Perhaps they laugh to dispel their guilt or because their childish perspective has already allowed them to forget the loss they caused. Either way, Ralph's priorities are lost on them.
In this chapter, even Ralph begins to lose sight of his priorities. When he reminds Jack that they need to keep the signal going, he explains "That's all we've got." In the previous chapter, Ralph uses the same phrase about the rules when Jack challenges their usefulness. The rules represent a certain civility of domestic order, which Ralph was hard pressed to create or maintain prior to this current crisis. Now his focus narrows from civility to survival. The smoke signal is truly all they have because he doubts they can kill or control a beast that can't be tracked; all he can hope for now is rescue. Once inside castle rock, however, the area that becomes Jack's domain, a "strange thing happened in his [Ralph's] head. Something flittered there in front of his mind like a bat's wing, obscuring the idea" — the hope for a return to the ponies and tea time of which he dreams. The figure envisioned by Simon of "a human at once heroic and sick" could be a composite of Ralph and Jack. Now getting worn down by the hardships and incomprehensible fears of primitive life and out of reach of the conditioning of civilization, Ralph is gradually becoming infected by the savagery that is rapidly eating away at Jack's humanity.
Glossary
waxy [Brit. Informal] enraged.
polyp any of various cnidarians, as the sea anemone or hydra, having a mouth fringed with many small, slender tentacles bearing stinging cells at the top of a tubelike body.
plinth a course of brick or stone, often a projecting one, along the base of a wall.
embroil to draw into a conflict or fight; involve in trouble.
diffident lacking self-confidence; timid; shy.
