When the boys first crash land they explore and learn about every nook and cranny on the island. Their initial understanding of what inhabited the …show more content…
Their stomachs and need for water failed them like nearly every other human being. Food persistently presented itself as a problem, and some of the boys valued it more than others. Jack, one of the older boys who gradually became more and more savage as the story unravelled, had a very consistent kill streak. He and his choir boys were in charge of keeping the signal fire going and killing pigs for meat. A relatively simple task in theory, but Jack could not handle all the power and essentially failed to care for the fire. His main focus was killing, and in doing so, he forgot about the fire completely. On one occasion, Ralph and Simon saw a ship passing by and immediately made sure the signal fire was going. Jack had let it go out because he was on a hunt. Upon returning with their fresh meat for all the boys, Ralph was waiting. “There was a ship. Out there. You said you’d keep the fire going and you let it out!” (70). Jack took the comment as a minor annoyance and proceeded to brag about his pig. He argued that food was far more important than a ship that may or may not have seen them even if they had the fire going. Ralph, still angered by the upset, accepted his meat and ate his food ravenously like the other boys. Other problems arose concerning food, but more focused around the little ones. They constantly ate the fruit at the base of all the trees, and over time they started eating the unripened fruit and all became very sick. Very generously, Simon offered to climb up in the trees to fetch the riper fruits at the top. “Then amid the roar of bees in the afternoon sunlight, Simon found for the fruit they could not reach...passed them back down to the endless, outstretched hands” (56). The coconuts that needed to be filled numerous times a day ceased to be filled because the ignorant boys failed to do their duties as Ralph told them. All the