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Lord of the Flies Identity Quotes Page 3
Citations follow this format: (Chapter.Paragraph)
| Quote #7 Someone was throwing stones: Roger was dropping them, his one hand still on the lever. Below him, Ralph was a shock of hair and Piggy a bag of fat. (11.198) |
This is how we are to understand Roger’s murdering Piggy. From his vantage point (literally and figuratively), he is able to take away Ralph and Piggy’s humanity. He reduces them to “hair” and “fat,” and once their identity is gone, his action no longer constitutes murder.
| Quote #8 Quote Ralph listened […]. He had even glimpsed one of them, striped brown, black, and red, and had judged that it was Bill. But really, thought Ralph, this was not Bill. This was a savage whose image refused to blend with that ancient picture of a boy in shorts and shirt. (12.2) |
Ralph is doing what we aren’t allowed to do, what would make us all feel better: he’s convinced himself that these little terrors aren’t the same boys he knew before. If they were, he’d have to face the fact that they all – including himself – are evil and savage. It’s much easier for him to simply say “this [is] not Bill.”
| Quote #9 The boys, their bodies streaked with colored clay, sharp sticks in their hands, were standing on the beach making no noise at all. (12.219) |
With the arrival of the naval officer, the boys turn back from “painted savages” into “little boys” covered with clay and holding sharp sticks. Ralph is no longer afraid of them in the presence of this representative of civilization and the adult world. What’s interesting is that the boys, conceivably, could easily overpower the adult and send him the way of Simon and Piggy. But it is his authority – arguably an arbitrary and fragile characteristic – that ends the “game.”
