Summary: Ralph starts to think about his position as leader and calls a meeting. He tells the boys that they aren’t doing what they’re supposed to be doing. He brings up the fact that they don’t help build shelters or gather drinking water, they obviously don’t care about the signal fire, and they don’t use the designated toilet area. They boys start to talk about the “beastie” and the older boys try to tell the younger boys that they are all imagining things. One of the little boys says that he saw the beast and that it comes from the water, Jack says that his hunters can kill the beast. Jack then storms off and the other boys follow, only Ralph, Simon, and Piggy are left. Piggy suggests that Ralph blows the conch again but Ralph tells him …show more content…
maybe it’s only us.” “Nuts!” That was from Piggy, shocked out of decorum. Simon went on. “We could be sort of..” Simon became inarticulate in his efforts to express mankind’s essential illness.” (Golding 89)
The first quote is important because it shows what Jack’s intentions are for the future and who he really is. Jack knows that there isn’t really a beast, this is proven when he says on page 82, “There aren’t any beasts to be afraid of on this island”. Shortly after saying this though, he realizes that he can use the littluns fear to his advantage. He realizes that they will listen to him more if they think he can protect them from the beast. Jack’s manipulative strategy shows how thirsty he is for power and how he has no problem lying to people to get them to be loyal to him.
The second quote is important because Simon is the only boy to recognize the changes in the boys, and how uncivilized they are becoming, which is a major point in the story. None of the other boys understand what Simon means, Simon doesn’t even fully understand what he means, but him saying this so early on in the book foreshadows that the boys might find out what it means as the story