Lord Of The Flies Chapter 3 Summary

At the beginning of the Lord of the Flies, Golding presents the reader with a group of young, civilized, British school boys who have been stranded on an uninhabited island somewhere in the South Pacific Ocean. The boys have fled Great Britain in an attempt to escape the nuclear war which was occurring. The boys who are now free from the restraints of a constructed society that they left behind in Britain attempt to create a miniature version the society that they are accustomed to. But ultimately that illusion of a civilization deteriorates as the time passes and the boys embrace living a life without consequences. The boys undergo a transformation from being civilized individuals into savages without their own identities, despite their efforts

Although he degraded himself to the point of acting like a pig to try and catch it, he was unsuccessful as the pig evaded him. Civilization is favoured more, at this point in the novel, than the savage life that Jack is following. This creates conflict between Jack and Ralph, as Jack is looking more towards the short term goals for the island such as having meat while Ralph is dealing with the long term goals such as a signal fire and huts for shelter. The idea of the beast had been brought up several times before within the novel, but it was quickly dismissed by the older boys as the littluns imagination. The beast was first brought up by the boy with the mulberry birthmark, who had claimed he had seen the beast, but even after his disappearance the littluns have claimed to have seen it and have been growing increasingly frightened throughout the novel up to this point. For the first time however, Ralph and Jack acknowledged the possible existence of the beast as Jack mentions that he feels as though he is not alone when he is out hunting in the jungle. Within the novel, the beast will become increasingly apparent as the civilization of the boys continues to