William Golding’s The Lord of the Flies is not just a book about children stranded on an island, but is instead about the collapse of order when chaos is common. More specifically, it is about Ralph’s struggles to decide between being a savage or maintaining stability. Ralph often feels a strong desire to participate in the savagery that Jack’s group practices throughout his time on the island. The first major occurence of this trend occurs when Jack’s group kills their first pig at the expense of letting the signal fire burn out as a ship passes by. Ralph is offered a piece of meat from the pig and wants to refuse it in order to maintain a moral high ground over Jack’s group, but he instead “accepted a piece of half-raw meat and gnawed it like a wolf.” (Golding 73) Ralph eats the meat because his primitive instincts take over and make resisting the offer an impossible feat. By accepting the meat, Ralph effectively concedes that the group’s savagery does have …show more content…
The extent of his efforts can be seen after the boys participate in the dance that kills Simon. Sam and Eric don’t see a point to keeping a signal fire going when there are only four people still willing to do so, but Ralph is steadfast in his conviction that the fire is the only thing that can save the boys. Specifically, he says, “There’s only one thing we can do to get out of this mess. Anyone can play at hunting…”. (Golding 163) This line of dialogue demonstrates Ralph’s drive to keep the children on the island behaving as a group rather than doing only what they want to do. Nearly all of the kids only want to hunt for meat, but that leaves nobody left to ensure that the signal fire, which could be their salvation, will stay lit. Therefore, Ralph’s remaining followers must keep the fire going in order to have a chance to help everyone get off the