In chapter eight of William Golding's 1954 novel, “Lord of the Flies,” the chapter title, Gift for the Darkness, literally represents a decapitated pigs head on a stick, but figuratively represents Jack and the hunters furthering renouncement of civilization and its morals, and embracement of their new life and their reduction into barbarians. We see two clear examples (though there are many others) of how the hunters have become far more savage when they are finding a pig for a feast, with the goal of recruiting more of the boys to their new tribe. The first example is seen when the hunters actually catch the pig mentioned before. They don’t seem to think of it as an unfortunate but altogether necessary part of life this time around. In fact, when the hunters are killing the pig it goes far beyond disturbing. They’re smearing themselves with the pigs blood, …show more content…
In the highly disturbing and honestly quite terrifying subplot of chapter eight with Simon and the “Lord of the Flies” character, the Lord of the Flies says this: “Get back to the others and we’ll forget the whole thing… This is ridiculous. You know perfectly well you’ll only meet me down there-so don’t try to escape” (143). What it means by “you’ll only meet me down there” is that this entity, the Lord of the Flies, is the representation of evil and darkness on the island, and so you’ll never escape its presence there. “The Lord of the Flies” also calls itself “the beast” (143), which makes perfect sense, since the beast doesn’t actually exist and so it’s only another title for the evil, violence, and fury of the island, which again is the same entity that the “Lord of the Flies” is. Finally, again the whole reason that the pigs head is cut off and stuck onto a spike in the first place, was that it was supposed to be an offering to the beast, or a GIFT FOR THE DARKNESS from the Hunters