Summary
The chapter opens with a general description of the island's changes throughout the day and the boys' responses to each day's cyclical progression. The focus narrows to the littluns' subculture and three of the littluns interacting as they play with one of their sandcastles. Then Roger and Maurice emerge from the jungle and deliberately destroy some of the sandcastles on their way to the beach.
Jack gathers the hunters to reveal his new hunting strategy: using colored clay and charcoal to camouflage their faces. Jack commands all his hunters, including Samneric who are on fire-maintenance duty at the time, to join in a hunt.
Ralph spots a ship in the distance and is confident that the ship's crew will spot the boys' smoke signal. But, unknown to Ralph, the fire has gone out, being left unattended. When Simon points out that there is no smoke, he and Ralph and Piggy hurry up the mountainside. By the time all three have reached the dormant fire site, the ship is gone.
Meanwhile, Jack and his hunters are triumphant, marching up to the fire site with the carcass of a pig. Jack and Ralph face off about the desertion of the fire for the sake of the hunt. Jack apologizes but Ralph remains angry. Tensions ease somewhat as the boys eat roast pig. The hunters reenact the kill as a sort of celebratory dance. In response, Ralph announces an assembly on the platform immediately.
Analysis
As the most fundamental of all cycles, the daily experience of morning's promise followed inevitably by night's menace is a microcosm of larger cycles. Golding's opening description of the island's daily rhythm is evocative of the many cycles that govern humanity: the life of an individual from birth to death, the development and disintegration of cultures, the rise and fall of great civilizations.
Even among this small group of boys, subcultures have sprung up. The littluns spend their days among themselves, following their own priorities and interests; "their passionately emotional and corporate life was their own." Within the littluns are further distinctions based on size and temperament, either of which can provide an immediate advantage to one littlun over another: "Henry was a bit of a leader this afternoon, because the other two were Percival and Johnny, the smallest boys on the island." Yet Johnny has the upper hand over the sensitive Percival due to his inclination to bully. In addition, while Johnny may be one of the smallest, he is also "well built." With no adults to control their activities, Henry and Johnny join in picking on Percival because they enjoy the thrill of mastery over another creature and because it keeps boredom at bay.
The boys focus on the most entertaining possibilities of the island, such as hunting, playing, and eating, to the detriment of such mundane but necessary tasks as building shelters. They are free to set their own priorities and agenda on an individual basis, allowing some of the boys the chance to develop the application of their own worst impulses. Henry, for example, assumes a dictatorial manner, experimenting further with mastery over other creatures as he traps tiny transparent beach scavengers in his footprints. His experience is a microcosm of another kind: Describing how Henry "became absorbed beyond happiness as he felt himself exercising control over living things," Golding alludes not only to Henry and Johnny's persecution of Percival but also to Jack's compulsion to hunt and to the probable cause of the nuclear war that landed the boys on this island.
The link between Henry's activities and Jack's is further strengthened by the image of Henry's attempt to verbally control the transparent creatures — "He talked to them, urging them, ordering them" — which evokes the image of Jack in the previous chapter staring at the traces of the pig trail "as though he would force them to speak to him." Both boys try to force their verbal communication on nonverbal entities, an effort doomed to failure. Henry cherishes what little control he feels he has and does not mind that his orders go unheeded. His efforts at mastery over another are still in the play stage, although cruel nonetheless to the vulnerable Percival. Jack, on the other hand, has a much more difficult time tolerating resistance.
When the boys are forced to rebuild the fire in a different spot because Ralph silently refuses to move from the site of the original fire, Jack is furious. Ralph uses a means of control over the group that is nonverbal and nonviolent, ensuring that neither the rhetorical skills nor the physical superiority of the hunters can be used against him. In the face of passive resistance, Jack is powerless to stop Ralph from imposing his will on the group and asserting his authority.
As the biguns Roger and Maurice torment the littluns by destroying their sandcastles, they still hear in their heads the reprimanding adult voices of the civilization they left behind. Roger throws rocks at Henry, but he throws them so that they'll miss, surrounded as Henry is by "the protection of parents and school and policeman and the law. Roger's arm was conditioned by a civilization that knew nothing of him and was in ruins."
Even Jack still feels the influence of his former life, laughing while he describes the great amounts of blood spilled in the hunt but shuddering at the same time. His distaste is followed quickly by acceptance, however, as he wipes his bloody hands on his shorts. Golding implies a certain relief for Jack in the phrase "able at last to hit someone, [Jack] stuck his fist into Piggy's stomach." His entire life had been moderated by rules set by adults against hitting other children or physically acting out his aggression; now on the island, only the conditioning he received while still in civilization holds him back, and the imprint of that conditioning is fading fast from his character.
Most societies judge character to a great extent by how an individual behaves, how thoroughly a person has internalized the mores and ethos of civilized society. British culture, in particular, places a high value on maintaining civility even under adverse circumstances, the mask of good manners concealing strong emotions and impulses. Jack discovers the other side of a mask's power — the power to liberate — when he applies the clay and charcoal camouflage: "the mask was a thing on its own, behind which Jack hid, liberated from shame and self-consciousness."
While the masks of polite society leash our evil nature, Jack's mask of colored clay unleashes it. The mask — or the transformation it invokes — frightens the hunter Bill, who initially laughs but then backs off into the jungle, and it compels the twins to abandon their fire tending duties, a symbol of how they are being drawn away from all of the civilized domesticity and communal hope for rescue represented by the fire. Jack refers to the mask as "dazzle paint," the camouflage used in warfare, clearly linking his new identity as a shameless killer with those adults fighting the war.
When the ship is sighted, Ralph remains calmly in place while the other boys present blunder around in excitement. Yet, when he realizes that there is no smoke signal for the ship to sight, he loses the calm that has so far characterized his behavior — the mask over his emotions. Now he rushes heedlessly up to mountain to the fire site, "savaging himself" on the bushes, reaching the top only to see that the fire is out and the ship is leaving.
He loses control at this point: "his voice rose insanely. 'Come back! Come back!' . . . Ralph reached inside himself for the worst word he knew. 'They let the bloody fire go out.'" His use of a profanity indicates strong emotion not yet displayed; his anger compels him to break with the decorum so important to his culture. In the midst of this crisis, even Piggy, who is most closely linked with adult perspectives, "whimper[s] like a littlun" when he reaches the mountain top and, in the next chapter, also uses a vulgarity when Simon suggests that there may be a beast.
Under duress, some of the boys break with the social decorum expected of the offspring of proper civility, letting their baser emotions rule. Others of the boys go further, abandoning rational thought or civil communication. Jack has begun to think like an animal, as when he explains his rationale for the dazzle paint. His speech pattern becomes simplistic, mimicking the impressionistic understanding of animals: "They see me, I think. Something pink, under the trees." His group of hunters doesn't have the mechanism of the conch to regulate their discourse; they talk over each other when describing their successful hunt. When Jack as leader wants to make himself heard, he interrupts and takes the floor by force of personality rather than by an established, polite precedent.
Jack's shortsightedness has cost the boys a rescue while at the same time bringing them the immediate victory of a kill. Firmly rooted in their respective worlds, neither Ralph nor Jack can understand the other's position. "There was the brilliant world of hunting, tactics, fierce exhilaration, skill; and there was the world of longing and baffled common-sense." When Ralph denounces Jack for not keeping his agreement to maintain the fire, he is mourning not merely the lost opportunity for rescue but the loss of the world they've left behind in England.
Because Jack has already lost interest in that world of politeness and boundaries, he feels no compunction to keep the fire going or to attend to any of the other responsibilities of a domestic life. He uses the device of an apology as a tool to end the conflict with Ralph, more of an instinctive political maneuver than an expression of regret. This apology pleases the crowd but infuriates Ralph, who perceives the apology as a "verbal trick" distracting everyone from the tragedy that had just occurred. Rhetoric triumphs for Jack despite the harm he has caused with his negligence and misplaced priorities.
Later, after Simon rebukes Jack for refusing Piggy a share of the meat, Jack lists all he has done to bring the boys meat in an effort to gain their full appreciation for his accomplishment and for what he's going through in his metamorphosis from choirboy to killer. The others do not fully comprehend Jack's message. He "looked round for understanding but found only respect." Although he does not get understanding, he does get respect, which is all that is required for a demagogue. Jack also discovers that the ritualistic face-painting and dancing further separates him from the constraints of his civil training and that involving his hunters in the dancing and chanting of the mock hunt after the meal has a powerful bonding effect, bringing the hunters more strongly under his influence.
Ralph is envious of this influence and of the victory Jack has brought to the group. He has not been able to provide such a decisive triumph for the boys, dependent as his agenda is on the external event of rescue and on the maintenance of cultural norms alien to their current environment. When he announces an immediate assembly, he is calling the boys not only to the platform but back to all that it symbolizes.
Glossary
dazzle paintBritish term for camouflage; the disguising of troops, ships, guns, etc. to conceal them from the enemy, as by the use of paint, nets, or leaves in patterns merging with the background.
accent a distinguishing regional or national manner of pronunciation; here, Piggy's manner of speech, characterized by his use of double negatives and informal contractions.
bloody [Vulgar Brit. Slang] cursed; damned.
Ha'porth contraction of "a halfpenny's worth," meaning a very small amount.
One for his nob a hit on his head.
Give him a fourpenny one hit him on the jaw.
