The climax of this novel is when Piggy is killed by Roger in chapter 11. Ralph and Piggy go to Castle Rock to get Piggy’s stolen glasses back. They are stop by Roger and Jack who appeared from the jungle refuses to return the glasses. Piggy lifts the conch and says repeatedly ‘Which is better – to have rules and agree, or to hunt and kill?’ From the action of Piggy who still sticks to the old conch protocol, we can see that he is the kind of person who always respects the order or rule even though no one else would think that the rule is still effective. At that time Roger throws a rock to Piggy that strikes Piggy ‘a glancing blow from chin to knee’. Then the conch breaks and Piggy falls from the cliff and is killed with ‘his head opened and stuff come out and turned red’.Piggy is the first who is killed by the savage on purpose. (The previous killing of Simon is somewhat accidental.) Piggy represents the orders or rules of our society, and therefore this killing symbolizes the complete destruction of civilized nature of the British children.
I was terrified by this chapter not only by the killing of Piggy itself, but also by the silent grave terrorist, Roger. Even Jack feels ‘the hangman’s horror clung round him’. Samneric cease yelling when ‘Roger advances upon them as one wielding a nameless authority, edging past the chief, only just avoiding pushing him with his shoulder’.
Major protagonists are Ralph, Simon and Piggy while antagonists are Jack and Roger. Ralph is elected as the leader of the children by popular majority vote. He has leadership, and looks believable, dependable and well-mannered. His leadership comes from instinct and not as much as from his deep insight about human nature, and therefore he was not able to keep the children civilized when the antagonist Jack allures them into instinctive animal pleasure. Simon is good-natured and has insight in the true nature of man, although he is a little younger than the other main characters. His flaw is that he wishes to be alone and does not like to talk in front of others. Piggy is smart and wishes everything in universe to be in good order. However, he is a little lazy and his appearance is not attractive so that others make fun of him. Jack was the leader of the choir before the plane crash, but lost the popular vote against Ralph because he looks ‘ugly without silliness’ and intimidates others. Later he wins against Ralph by providing the children with meat in return for submission to him. He represents the savage nature in man. Roger is quiet and dismal. He appears to be resentful to everyone probably because he has an abused childhood. He is much worse than Jack and represents the evil.
It may be argued that many conflicts between individuals, between individual and society, or between nations result from our internal character flaws. One example I can think of is the massacre at Virginia Tech on April 16, 2007. The shooter Seung-Hui Cho who was also a student killed thirty two other students and himself. The cause of Cho’s behavior is generally regarded as his mental illness and resentment to other students. However, Cho had never thought his behavior was because of his internal ‘beast’. Instead, he said ‘I die like Jesus Christ, to inspire generations of the weak and defenseless people’ in the video message mailed to NBC News. He must have thought that he ‘Kills the beast! Cuts his throat! Spills his blood’ during his shooting.
The novel, ‘Lord of the flies’ by Golding descries the savagery behaviors of young British children survived from a plane crash in an isolated unmanned island. What Golding is trying to reveal to us in this novel is the faulty but true human nature or characteristic, which could be very cruel and destructive, or lazy, ignorant and incompetent at the best. The major theme of this novel is that our animal-like brutal nature is hidden barely below the ethical or legal restrictions of our society, and that our beast could erupt anytime into violence or wars when the subtle equilibrium of our society is impaired.