The Short Version
Today it’s the ending of Lord of the Flies, by William Golding. And fair warning, this one is full of spoilers.
The short version: two boys die, the conch is destroyed, and the tribe sets the island on fire hunting Ralph. He’s saved at the last second by a naval officer. And then Golding turns that rescue into the darkest joke in the book.
How It Falls Apart
Quick recap of how we get there. The signal fire goes out while Jack’s hunters are chasing pigs, just as a ship passes. Ralph is furious. Jack doesn’t care.
Fear of the beast grows. The twins, Sam and Eric, see something on the mountain in the dark. Jack splits off and starts his own tribe of painted hunters, promising meat and protection.
The Beast On The Mountain
What the twins saw was real, but it wasn’t a beast. It was a dead parachutist, a helmeted figure who came down from an air battle overhead, still tangled in his parachute lines. When the wind blows, the body sits up and bows.
Later Ralph, Jack and Roger crawl up in the dark to within three or four yards of it. The wind lifts its head toward them, and they run. Nobody stays long enough to understand.
The Lord Of The Flies
After killing a sow, Jack’s hunters cut off her head and leave it on a stick sharpened at both ends, as a gift for the beast. Flies swarm all over it.
Simon finds it alone. In a kind of fit, he imagines the head talking to him. It calls itself the beast, and mocks him: fancy thinking the beast was something you could hunt and kill. It’s part of you.
Simon’s Discovery
That’s the big idea. The beast isn’t a monster in the jungle. It’s inside the boys themselves.
Simon climbs the mountain, finds the dead parachutist, and understands. He frees the lines, and stumbles down to tell everyone the beast is harmless.
Simon’s Death
He arrives at Jack’s feast in the middle of a thunderstorm, while the boys are dancing and chanting, kill the beast, cut his throat, spill his blood.
A figure crawls out of the forest in the dark. The boys fall on it with sticks, teeth and hands. It’s Simon, trying to shout about a body on the hill. Even Ralph and Piggy were at the edge of that dance.
The Tide
Then comes one of the most beautiful passages in the book. That night, the tide comes in and the glowing sea creatures surround Simon’s body, and carry it gently out to sea.
The next morning, Ralph says what happened: that was murder. Piggy insists it was an accident, and that they were only on the outside.
The Glasses
Jack’s hunters raid Ralph’s camp at night. Not for the conch, but for Piggy’s glasses, the only way to make fire. Now Jack has the fire, and Piggy is nearly blind.
Ralph, Piggy and the twins go to Jack’s fortress, Castle Rock, with the conch, to demand the glasses back. Piggy plans to say: what’s right’s right.
Piggy’s Death
At Castle Rock, Jack and Ralph fight. Piggy holds up the conch and asks, which is better, to have rules and agree, or to hunt and kill?
High above, Roger, the boy who has grown crueler all book long, leans on a lever. A huge rock crashes down. It shatters the conch into a thousand pieces and throws Piggy forty feet onto the rocks below. The sea takes his body.
The Hunt
Jack throws a spear at Ralph and screams that he’s chief. The twins are captured and forced to join the tribe.
That night, they warn Ralph: tomorrow, the whole tribe will hunt him. And Roger has sharpened a stick at both ends. The same kind of stick that held the pig’s head.
The Fire
The next day, the hunters spread across the island in a line. They roll rocks down on Ralph’s hiding place, and then they set the forest on fire to smoke him out.
The whole island burns. Ralph runs, screaming, toward the beach, with the hunters right behind him. He falls in the sand, and looks up.
The Naval Officer
Standing over him is a naval officer in a white uniform. A warship saw the smoke. The boys suddenly look like what they are again: small, dirty children with sticks.
The officer says he’d have expected British boys to put up a better show, like in the Coral Island. And Ralph weeps for the end of innocence, the darkness of man’s heart, and his true, wise friend, Piggy.
The Irony
Here’s the twist most readers miss the first time. The fire that saves Ralph is the one lit to kill him. The signal fire never worked. Savagery got them rescued.
And the officer isn’t really an escape. Golding said the officer will take the boys off the island in a cruiser that will soon be hunting its own enemy in the same way. His question: who will rescue the adult and his cruiser?
What It Means
The book’s argument is that the evil on the island didn’t come from the island. The boys brought it with them, and so did the grown ups fighting the war overhead.
The conch stands for rules and democracy, Piggy’s glasses for reason and science, the fire for hope, and the beast for the darkness inside everyone.
My Verdict On The Ending
I think it’s one of the great endings in English fiction. The rescue feels like relief for about three seconds, and then the officer’s cheerful voice makes it worse.
My only complaint is Simon. He’s so obviously a saint that his scenes can feel more like a lesson than a story. Tell me in the comments: is the ending hopeful, or not? My review and the symbols guide are linked below.
