When Ralph tells Piggy what they saw, he is quite skeptical. Ralph tells him that the beast had teeth and big black eyes. Jack says that his hunters can defeat the beast, but Ralph dismisses them as boys with sticks. Jack tells the other boys that the beast is a hunter, and says that Ralph thinks that the boys are cowards. Jack says that Ralph isn”t a proper chief, for he is a coward himself. Jack asks the boys who wants Ralph not to be chief. Nobody agrees with Jack, so he runs off in tears. He says that he is not going to be part of Ralph”s lot.
Jack leaves them. Piggy says that they can do without Jack, but they should stay close to the platform. Simon suggests that they climb the mountain. Piggy says that if they climb the mountain they can start the fire again, but then suggests that they start a fire down by the beach. Piggy organizes the new fire by the beach. Ralph notices that several of the boys are missing. Piggy says that they will do well enough if they behave with common sense, and proposes a feast. They wonder where Simon has gone; he might be climbing the mountain.
Simon had left to sit in the open space he had found earlier. Far off along the beach, Jack says that he will be chief of the hunters, and will forget the beast. He says that they might go later to the castle rock, but now will kill a pig and give a feast. They find a group of pigs and kill a large sow. Jack rubs the blood over Maurice”s cheeks, while Roger laughs that the fatal blow against the sow was up her ass. They cut off the pig”s head and leave it on a stick as a gift for the beast at the mountain-top.
Simon sees the head, with flies buzzing around it. Ralph worries that the boys will die if they are not rescued soon. Ralph and Piggy realize that it is Jack who causes things to break up. The forest near them suddenly bursts into uproar. The littluns run off as Jack approaches, naked except for paint and a belt, while hunters take burning branches from the fire. Jack tells them that he and his hunters are living along the beach by a flat rock, where they hunt and feast and have fun.
He invites the boys to join his tribe. When Jack leaves, Ralph says that he thought Jack was going to take the conch, which Ralph holds as a symbol of ritual and order. They reiterate that the fire is the most important thing, but Bill suggests that they go to the hunters” feast and tell them that the fire is hard on them. At the top of the mountain remains the pig”s head, which Simon has dubbed the Lord of the Flies. Simon believes that the pig”s head speaks to him, calling him a silly little boy.
The Lord of the Flies tells Simon that he”d better run off and play with the others, who think that he is crazy. The Lord of the Flies claims that he is the Beast, and laughs at the idea that the Beast is something that could be hunted and killed. Simon falls down and loses consciousness. Analysis: Piggy remains the lone skeptic among the boys, still unsure of the presence of the beast, which continues to be the focus for Jack and his hunters. Even Ralph, succumbing to fear and suspicion, believes that there is a beast on the island.
Although Ralph is the clear protagonist of the story and the character for whom Golding has the most affection, he is still susceptible to the childish passions and irrationality that mark the other boys to a lesser extent. This point is not insignificant: Ralph may be more mature and rational than Jack and his hunters, but given the right circumstances he can submit to the same passions, an aspect of his character that foreshadows future events. The political subtext of previous chapters becomes more overt in this chapter, as Jack attempts to stage an overthrow of Ralph as chief.
Although Ralph successfully defends himself against Jack”s critiques by revealing Jack”s own absurdity and cowardice, Jack is resolved that he will take control. Jack”s refusal to accept the other boys” decision serves as a reminder that Jack is still a child who considers life on the island as a game; he essentially takes a position that, if he cannot set the rules to the game, he refuses to play at all. This builds to the later events of the chapter in which Jack, realizing that he cannot take authority directly away from Ralph, forms a separate authority for himself.
Two governments” therefore emerge on the island. Ralph presides over what roughly resembles a liberal democracy, while Jack forms an approximation of a military dictatorship. Golding continues to construct Piggy as the sensible and in some respects the most essential character for the survival of the boys on the island. The abrasive edge that Piggy demonstrated upon their arrival to the island now becomes secondary to his practical wisdom and ability to adapt to situations. Among the major characters, Piggy is the only one who does not have a predictable emotional arc.
While Jack and Simon descend into their respective forms of madness and Ralph remains sensible but increasingly cynical, Piggy confounds expectations; he assumes a particular authority among the boys despite his off-putting appearance and refined tastes as Ralph defers to his judgment and resolve. Jack and his hunters continue to descend into savagery in this chapter. They continue to indulge in stereotypical natives” behaviour that focuses on the use of violence. For these boys the actions are little more than a game; when Jack invites the other boys to join his tribe, he even states that the point of this new tribe is solely to have fun.
The boys see their behaviour as savages as part of an elaborate game, even as it takes on more dangerous and violent undertones. This foreshadows the point at which the boys acting as natives” moves from mere game to actual savagery. The Lord of the Flies, as Simon dubs the pig”s head, is the symbol of that descent from civilized behaviour to animalistic savagery. For Simon it is the final revelation that nature can be brutal and horrifying, an idea that clashes with his previous affinity with nature and the spirituality inherent in it.
Simon frames nature in terms of its Endemic qualities, but the Lord of the Flies is a direct contradiction of that view. Instead, it is a Hobbesian reminder that life in the most basic state of nature is in fact nasty, brutish and short. The pig”s head has deep religious connotations: the phrase “lord of the flies” is a translation of the Hebrew word Ba”alzevuv, or its Greek equivalent Beelzebub. The pig”s head is thus a symbol of Satan, but this devil is not an external force, but rather an internal evil created by the boys themselves.
