One of the final sentences in Lord of the Flies by William Golding, “Ralph wept for the end of innocence, the darkness of man’s heart, and the fall through the air of the true, wise friend called Piggy” (202), explains so much of the novel. This one sentence explains exactly why the boys will never be the same after they return to society, it ties into the themes of savagery and civilization and order, and it perfectly summarizes the events that occurred on the island. It mentions the death of Piggy and Simon, the descent into savagery, and the destruction of the island. The first thing that Ralph wept for was the end of innocence. Ralph most definitely lost his innocence after the events that unfolded on the island because of the death, destruction, and …show more content…
Innocence is the practice of being blissfully unaware of the dangers or evil of the world, and Ralph weeps because he is no longer unaware. He knows death. He lost two of his closest friends on the island in terrible ways. When describing how the boys killed Simon, Golding said, “The sticks fell and the mouth of the new circle crunched and screamed... The beast struggled forward, broke the ring, and fell over the steep edge of the rock to the sand by the water” (152-153). He knows destruction. As he was hiding from the hunters, Ralph witnessed the demise of the island. The hunters burned it in a massive fire when they were trying to find Ralph. “All at once the lights flickering ahead of him merged together, the roar of the forest rose to thunder and a tall bush directly in his path burst into a great fan-shaped flame” (Golding 199). Ralph witnessed the destruction of the place he took shelter in and the island on which he had lived for so long. He knew savagery. The hunters, the group that followed Jack, stopped caring about rules and order and started turning to hunting. They descended so far into savagery that they killed two people and attempted to kill a third. They organized and island-wide search for