Summary
Ralph calls an assembly at Piggy's urging, wherein they decide the four remaining biguns will ask Jack's tribe for the glasses back, reminding them of a signal fire's importance. Samneric express a real fear of approaching the other boys who have now become complete savages.
Jack's tribe is hostile to Ralph's little group; Roger throws stones at the twins to scare them. Jack emerges from the forest where he had been hunting and tells Ralph to go back to his end of the island. When Ralph calls him a thief for stealing Piggy's glasses, they fence briefly with their spears before Piggy reminds Ralph to focus on their agenda.
The savages laugh derisively at Ralph's impassioned speech about the necessity of a signal fire. Then Jack orders his tribe to grab Samneric and tie them up, prompting a fistfight between himself and Ralph. Again, Piggy interrupts and, holding the conch, attempts a speech as well. While Piggy admonishes the boys for becoming savages, Roger releases a huge boulder in Piggy's direction, knocking him off the cliff to his death on the rocks below. A large wave quickly carries off his body.
Jack screams in victory at Ralph and then throws his spear at him. The spear wounds Ralph but bounces off, and Ralph flees for his life. Samneric remain tied up in the hands of the savages, menaced by Jack and soon to be tortured by Roger.
Analysis
As the last three biguns remaining with Ralph, they have a great stake in quickly developing some solutions to Piggy's virtual blindness and the loss of a signal fire, as well as protecting themselves from Jack's deadly tribe. Piggy insists that Ralph call an assembly to discuss the matter. Although blowing the conch to summon only themselves seems rather ridiculous, Piggy asserts that "It's the only thing we got." Assemblies regulated by the conch still bring him comfort despite their lack of effectiveness.
In fact, the conch is the only tool of authority or action left to them, but it's an ineffectual one, given the savages' loss of regard for it. When Ralph blows the conch at Castle Rock, for example, the savages greet him with silence and a stone thrown at Sam by Roger. The conch symbolizes not only the power to speak during assembly but also the power of speech itself, an ability that separates humans from animals. In a way, the savages cause Ralph to lose his power of speech, when he gives up his address on the importance of rescue because he is "defeated by the silence and the painted anonymity." With the exceptions of Jack's commands, the savages' reactions to Ralph's and Piggy's speeches are all non-verbal: jeering, laughing, booing, and a general "clamor." Following Roger's impulsive assassination of Piggy, "the silence was complete" as Piggy provided the last bastion of human intellect and reason on the island.
Even up to the moment of his death, Piggy's perspective doesn't shift in response to the reality of their situation. At their little assembly, he demands action, still relying on Ralph to get things done despite the obvious disregard for his authority shown by all of Jack's tribe. Piggy cannot think as the others think or value what they value. Because his eminently sensible approach to life is modeled on the attitudes and rules of the authoritative adult world, he thinks everyone should share his values and attitudes as a matter of course. Speaking of the deaths of Simon and the littlun with the birthmark who had first brought up the beast as a concern, he asks "What's grownups goin' to think?" as if he is not so much mourning the boys' deaths as he is mourning the loss of values, ethics, discipline, and decorum that caused those deaths. Claiming that Jack has "got to" return his glasses because "what's right's right," he reveals that he holds a certain code of ethics to be universal and non-negotiable, as fundamental as fire. In reality ethics originate from a particular society's values and expectations; Jack's subculture has radically different ethics from Ralph's.
Samneric fully appreciate this difference; their change in perspective is evident at the assembly. In Chapter 6, they speak mockingly of a schoolmaster nicknamed Old Waxy as if his waxing anger was nothing to fear. Now they fear for their lives, saying that if Jack "gets waxy we've had it." Even more devastating to their morale is Ralph's oddly timed outburst of "smoke! We've got to have smoke." From his delivery, they realize Ralph can't remember why they need smoke but is just mouthing the words as a sort of desperate plea for clarity. Piggy, too, grasps that Ralph has forgotten the purpose of smoke; his reminder of smoke's purpose makes Ralph defensive. Ralph's denial of his fallibility causes them to view him as fallible. They look at him as though "seeing him for the first time": a boy trying to accomplish what an adult would have difficulty achieving in these circumstances — reasoning with a pack of killers.
Roger, the sadist, relishes the role of a killer. In Chapter 4, Roger is restrained from throwing stones directly at other boys by the social discipline internalized during his former life. When he makes Sam nearly lose his footing with a well-placed stone throw, Roger experiences viscerally the mastery he can now wield over others, and the reader recognizes a dramatic change. Like Samneric, Roger's perspective has changed with the power shift on the island. From his point of view on top of Castle Rock, "Ralph was a shock of hair and Piggy a bag of fat"; they are not humans or other boys to him. Mentally dehumanizing those not in his group frees Roger from the restraints of decency, an effect he feels as "a sense of delirious abandonment" when he releases the rock that kills Piggy.
Perceiving other humans as less than human is the basis of an infinite number of prejudices and bigotry as well as the moral underpinning of genocide. Jack's boys enthusiastically bind Samneric because they sense Samneric's "otherness"; that otherness allows the savages to justify their cruelty against their own kind. Such a mental adjustment is also necessary for soldiers to make in order to justify killing their enemies who are part of the family of humanity, an adjustment made even by the very civil and polite naval officer who ultimately rescues the boys. All the boys made that adjustment themselves when they chose to perceive Simon as the beast rather than as one of their own.
Although all the boys were guilty in Simon's death, the other savages perceive Roger differently after Piggy's death. Because he calmly and single-handedly kills someone, he is marked as a hangman, one who "wields a nameless authority." Just as Ralph has an instinct for diplomacy and leadership, Roger has an instinct for torture. Without the "protection of parents and school and policeman and the law" which surrounded Henry in Chapter 4 and forced Roger to miss when he threw stones, Roger is free within Jack's primitive subculture to make deadly contact.
Ralph seeks to remind the savages of those very constraints, to summon the conditioning voices of civilization that always warned them to play nice and share with others. At the assembly, he suggests that his group present an image of their former, civilized selves when approaching the savages. He wants to differentiate his group from Jack's tribe, as if to remind them of what they've lost or tantalize them with what they could have if rescue is achieved. In contrast, Samneric want to put on paint, hoping for mercy through assimilation. They fear that reminding Jack of the constraints he's now free of will only aggravate his abuse of power. "They'll be painted! You know how it is." Sadly, the twins turn out to be correct about the antagonizing effect of "otherness." When Jack orders his boys to bind the twins, Samneric "protested out of the heart of civilization" with language that marks them as outsiders in this group, which has left behind such civilized verbal niceties as "Oh, I say!"
Seeing the twins bound, Ralph's language gets to the heart of the matter quickly. He shouts at Jack, calling him "a beast and a swine and a bloody, bloody thief!" This emotional accusation is in fact truthful. Jack is living out the beast's urges, the beast that spoke to Simon in the guise of a swine head. Jack stole not only Piggy's glasses, but also hope, rescue, Simon's life, Ralph's authority, and the vestiges of civilization from their small island culture. Ralph's use of "bloody" works not only as an expletive but also as an accurate adjective, considering the deaths Jack has caused by fostering an environment of enmity coupled with ferocity.
Initially, Jack and Ralph feel some reluctance to engage fully in combat. When Ralph calls him a thief, Jack rushes at Ralph threateningly with his spear, but they each wield their spears more like sabers, unwilling to use the "the lethal points." They verbally square off, daring each other to come fight but remaining out of each other's reach. Up to this point, none of the boys have fought to the death one on one. Simon's death occurred in the midst of a group frenzy. Even Roger does not engage in hand-to-hand combat but acts more as a physically removed assassin. Until Jack acts after Piggy's death and flings his spear dead-on at Ralph, he is no doubt at some level reluctant to kill another boy for the same reason he couldn't kill the first piglet he encountered in Chapter 1: "because of the enormity of the knife descending and cutting into living flesh."
In addition, Ralph and Jack are connected through a love/hate relationship that neither one of them understands, a link Ralph thinks of as "an indefinable connection" in Chapter 12. They began on the first day with the glamour of a new friendship; "They were lifted up: were friends." Golding's use of the phrase "lifted up" to describe their friendship implies that a partnership between the humane and the bestial components of humanity can result in great things. Yet the two forces must remain in balance to produce positive effects. The conflict on this island begins with Jack attempting to dominate the group rather than work with Ralph to benefit it. For his part, Ralph remains so focused on promoting a sense of order that he overlooks the boys' desire for food more substantial than fruit. Because Ralph so strongly identifies with the civilized part of himself, he cannot understand how Jack can live so far within his animal side. Once Jack makes an attempt on Ralph's life, however, appreciation for each other's perspectives is rendered moot as Ralph becomes re-classified as prey rather than as another human being.
Evil has triumphed: Spirituality, creativity, and religion went with the demise of Simon; intellect and reason die with Piggy; and rules, authority, and tradition are destroyed with the conch.
Glossary
myopia nearsightedness.
propititate win or regain the good will of; appease or conciliate.
pinnacles pointed formations; peaks, as at the tops of mountains.
pinch [Slang] to steal.
truculent fierce; cruel; savage; ferocious.
talisman anything thought to have magic power; a charm.
