1. " They were on the lip of the circular hollow in the side of the mountain."
1.1. Ralph, Jack and Simon use this mountain to observe "their island." From the top they are able to see the features of the land and find usable resources. They also use the mountain to build a fire and signal someone to rescue them. The boys feel safe on this mountain because they are on top of the world. They are also unreachable by unwanted guests.
1.1.1. I agree that they are now feel quite safe on the island at this point, everyone is getting along, they are figuring out how to get resources, All so far seems to be going well. But they are beginning to get a little greedy and are starting to feel the need to claim the island for themselves. They see how good the island is and the want to claim it for themselves. They are away from their family and all their normal resources and so now they want to feel in control of what happens on the island.
1.1.2. This is why the mountain is Jack's ideal hideaway. When he puts the gate around the mountain top, he is "unreachable by unwanted guests." Mary U
2. “Only we don’t have any paper.” (Golding 27)
2.1. The kids don’t have enough if any resources to work with. They aren’t sure what they should be doing on the island. They don’t know how to reconfigure their lifestyle to the island and how to survive there. For my example they don’t know how to get things like paper or a substitute for it. They aren’t used to not having an abundance of resources for their use.
2.1.1. The boys are having a hard time adapting to the conditions of the island. They are used to having everything they need provided for them. As soon as this is taken away, they don't know what to do and they must learn how to be independent.
2.1.2. One could assume that some of these kids come from families of fortune given that they go to a Catholic school. This change in lifestyle must be some of what contributes to the insanity later on in the book. Mary U
3. “This belongs to us.” (Golding 29)
3.1. Ralph is acting childish. Whenever he sees anything of value he feels the need to claim it. He feels a need to provide something for his friends. And claiming the island is his way of being in charge and helping others by getting them everything that he can claim or get easily.
3.1.1. The way Ralph responds resembles the way in which a toddler would react if someone took his or her toy.
4. Red bubbles are Katie Carlson's
5. “except for a pair of tattered shorts held up by his knife-belt he was naked” (Golding 48)
5.1. The boys don’t have the recourses needed to live a civilized life on the island. They are losing their sense on what is civil.
5.1.1. The breaking of Piggy's glass lenses, once at the beginning and at the end symbolize the falling of society. Mary U
5.1.2. The Lord of the Flies symbolizes the beginning of their savagery. Jack uses it to show his power from hunting.
6. “Oh, hullo. Water? There by the tree. Ought to be some left” (Golding 50)
6.1. They probably need to come up with a better way to collect and store water than going all the way across the island to the river or getting the very small amount in coconuts. I mean coconuts isn’t the most efficient way to store water.
6.1.1. Ralph is trying to create an economy on the island. He is trying to create rules for everyone to follow in order for there to be peace on the island.
7. Jack was very clever in discovering the clay. He decided that it would help him catch and kill a pig. Jack is very stubborn, so he insists on hunting pigs. He uses the clay to paint himself to blend in with the land making it harder for the pigs to know he's there and escape.
7.1. "One of them contained white clay, the other red. By them lay a stick of charcoal brought down from the fire."
8. When Ralph calls a meeting he needs to talk. The boys get offended at some of the things he complains about and try to interrupt. Luckily, Ralph uses the shell to his advantage and makes it so no one else can talk. Without the shell, their meeting would not have accomplished anything. The shell allows their group to communicate with eachother and decide what to do to the beast.
8.1. The breaking of the shell, much like Piggy's glasses, symbolizes the final shattering of their society. Everything after this point is pure insanity. Mary U
8.2. "I got the conch,' Piggy said indignantly. " Ralph- they ought to shut up oughtn't they?" (Golding 83)
9. “ “But I shall! Next time! I’ve got to get a barb on this spear! We wounded a pig and the spear fell out. If we could only make barbs-”” (Golding 51)
9.1. They are starting to begin thinking about how to advance the technology that they have. They want more high-tech weapons to kill the pig. But I’m afraid about what the mass of weapons that they are now accumulating could cause.
9.1.1. If the boys had more advanced weapons then more of them would have died than just Simon and Piggy.
10. " The pig track was a dark tunnel, for the sun was sliding quickly toward the edge of the world and in the forest shadows were never to far to speak." (Golding 119)
10.1. The boys use the pig run to find and kill their food. Without this run the boys would have never found the boar that they needed for food. The need the pigs to hunt so that they don't start hunting and eating each other. The savagery is continuing to grow so the boys need to keep finding things to kill that is not other people.
11. "The head is for the beast. It's a gift. The silence accepted the gift and awed them. The head Remained there, dim-eyed, grinning faintly, and blood blackening between the teeth. (Golding 137)
12. The pig head is used in many ways. It's used by the author to symbolize the evil in the man. It is also used by the boys as bait for the beast. They think that if they leave the head, then the beast will not bother them and eat the head. It is also used as a way to feed the boys hunger for killing by symbolizing Jack's power in killing.
13. "A fire could be built on them rocks. On the sand even." (Golding, p.129) Mary U
13.1. Since they can't go back to the top of the mountain for fear of the beast, they're trying to decide where they could put the signal fire. Based on their resources of course.
13.1.1. I agree that they are trying to find the best place for the fire since they no longer believe that it is safe on the mountain. They are trying to find the optimal place but they are beginning to get a little despite because they need the fire to get rescued. They still remember what happened when they let the fire go out, even if for only a short while.
14. "Ralph dived into the pool." (Golding p. 147) Mary U
14.1. In order to get clean, the boys are using the pool by the rocks as a bathtub. The knowledge that they are filthy makes them want to find a resource to make themselves clean.
14.1.1. Ralph puts a lot of emphasis on the fact that he likes to be clean and he hates the fact that his methods on the island are not very effective.
15. "That shelter might fall down if the rain comes back" (Golding 80).
15.1. Because Simon and Ralph were the only ones who built the third shelter, it is not very strong or well built. Ralph and Simon are commonly the only ones doing all the work. The economy is starting to fall apart because everyone is too lazy to do what they were told to do. This could weaken the society as a whole and make it a lot harder to get off the island safely.
16. "S'right. It's a shell." (Golding, p.15) Mary U
16.1. This quote signifies the finding of the shell that plays a major part in the story later on. It becomes a symbol of order and peace.
17. "The littluns watched him inscrutably over double handfuls of ripe fruit. (Golding p. 56) Mary U
17.1. In this quote, there is both economy and gained a resource. Economy, being, the community involved. The older ones help the younger ones. The resource here, is the fruit.
18. "We eat pig." (Golding p. 83) Mary U
18.1. The pigs have come up, yet again as a somewhat reliable and filling resource. Besides the fruit, this is the only other food source they have.
18.1.1. Because the pig is such a reliable resource, Jack and his hunters place major importance on hunting.
18.1.2. I agree that the pig meat is a filling resource, at least more so than the fruit. On average fruit has far less calories than pork, but we don’t know how many pigs are on the island. There could be very few. This makes me think that the pigs could easily be hunted out. Because of the limited number of food choices, they could easily starve. The pigs could all be killed and the fruit would not grow continually through the wet and dry seasons so if they didn’t get saved then they would have run out of food.
19. "So we need shelters as a sort of- Home" (Golding 52).
19.1. In chapter 4, the boys realize that they need to have homes. Not only will the shelters provide comfort for the boys, but it will also give them protection from from any weather or animal. They can use their resources of wood, leaves, etc. to build their shelters.
19.1.1. I agree that they are now feeling the need for their home, but also they are reluctant to call it their actual home. They still have hope and they know they will need shelter to survive until they can get home. But seeing that they are still holding on to their idea of home, they know how they should behave and how to be civil. But this is bringing back of old memories of what their home was like and that these shelters will not compare. So they are not a home, they are needed to get back to their real home.
20. "So we'll have the fire down here" (Golding 129).
20.1. They realize that because of their fear of the beast, they can no longer have the signal fire on the mountain. They think the beast lives up on the mountain so they must move the signal fire closer to them.
20.1.1. The fire is not as successful when it is not on the mountain because it isn't high enough to be seen from far away. The wood is also wet so it doesn't want to catch a spark.
21. "The tribe must be sitting around the gutted pig, watching the fat ooze..." (Golding p.184) Mary U
21.1. After Piggy dies, the tribe sits down to eat their most precious resource, a pig. I find it disgusting that they can eat right after killing an innocent person.
21.1.1. This shows the gluttony that is within all of us. Even though there isn’t a large supply of food they are eating a feast. They should be saving the food and rationing it off so that they don’t have to worry about hunting and running out of food later. It’s thoroughly disturbing that after killing one of their former friends they can be quite carefree.
21.1.2. This quote also shows that Jack's tribe is better off because they have enough food and they don't need to worry about starving. Their tribe is this way because of the importance they put on hunting.
22. "...and Jack, painted and garlanded, sat there like an idol. There were piles of meat on green leaves near him, and coconut shells full of drink" (Golding 149).
22.1. Jack's tribe is not struggling with shortage of supplies. Because they do not worry about running out of resources, they use them to show how Jack is a leader and is better than everyone else.
22.1.1. Which begs the question: If there are so many resources for shelters on this island, why doesn't Jack have some of his hunters build shelters for themselves? Mary U
23. "We shall take fire from the others" (Golding 161).
23.1. Jack's tribe can provide food by hunting, but cannot provide fire by itself. In order to have fire, they must steal from Ralph's tribe.
23.1.1. Jack also steals the fire instead of asking for it to show his power on the island.