Chapter 11

Summary

Urged on by Piggy, Ralph calls an assembly, which seems pointless as only Samneric and the littluns will attend. They agree to go to Castle Rock and ask for the return of Piggy’s glasses so that they can restart the signal fire to increase their hope of rescue.  Samneric are fearful to approach the savage hunters at Castle Rock, but when they arrive, they blow the conch shell, but all the hunters do is laugh and curse them. The hunters are reduced to derogatory chants and boo – a disorganized rabble.  Ralph makes a last plea for sanity and the return of Piggy’s glasses so that they can rekindle the important signal fire. 

Jack gives orders to his tribe to grab Samneric and they are tied up to be later tortured by Jack and Roger.  This prompts a confrontation between Ralph and Jack, but they will not get involved in a direct fight and merely shake their spears at one another. Piggy, holding the conch, attempts to speak telling the boys off for becoming savages. Roger releases a huge rock and knocks Piggy off the cliff to his death on the rocks below. A large wage swiftly takes the body away.

Jack throws a spear at Ralph and it bounces off him, and he flees for his life.

Interpretation

Piggy’s virtual blindness at the loss of his glasses and also the loss of the signal fire prompt Ralph to approach Jack in order to get the glasses back.

Piggy has been the source of human intellect on the island since the start, but with his death that intellect is extinguished.

Ralph tries to use any means in order to bring the boys back from their undisciplined behavior.  He brings up the deaths of Simon and the littlun caught in the fire and says ‘what are the grown ups going to think?’ He is not mourning for the boys’ deaths, but for the loss of morals, discipline and ethics.  He claims that Jack must return the glasses because they do not belong to him. Unfortunately, they belong to Piggy, who is now dead.

The one character who epitomizes the drastic change, which has come over the boys, is Roger. One suspects that he had a strict upbringing, which suppressed his individuality.  Early on in the story he held back from hitting one of the littluns with stones, merely seeking a near miss, but now he stands alone in his cruelty by intentionally killing on his own, not in a group, another boy.  He is content to be subservient to Jack because it is through Jack that he is able to have the freedom to inflict misery on those below him. Roger is marked as the hangman as he is the one who has single-handedly killed someone else. Just as Ralph has an aptitude for diplomacy and leadership, Roger has an aptitude for torture and cruelty. Roger is free within Jack’s primitive sub-culture to carry out his bloodlust on the other boys.

Ralph’s response to seeing the twins captured is to shout at Jack calling him ‘a beast and a swine and a bloody, bloody thief’.  This is an accurate description because the deaths arising from Jack’s tribe’s behavior have been bloody and ferocious.

Evil has triumphed.  Intellect died with Piggy.  Spirituality died with Simon, and as Piggy was crushed by the rock and fell to his death, the conch too was destroyed being the symbol of authority and tradition.