46 pages • 1 hour read
William GoldingLord of the Flies
Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 1954A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 3-5Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 3 Summary: “Huts on the Beach”
After a few weeks on the island—indicated in how Jack’s hair is longer and how huts have been erected along the beach—Jack is obsessed with killing a pig. He follows the trails through the jungle with a spear, naked and tanned under the tropic sun. After flinging his spear and missing a pig, he walks back to the beach, where Ralph is trying to erect a shelter. Ralph remarks that he has no help, and Jack relates that he is frustrated because he wants meat. What’s more, he wants to kill. When Ralph points out Jack’s failure, Jack becomes angry.When Jack points out that Ralph hasn’t been successful in providing shelter, Ralph in turn becomes angry at Jack. Both agree the other boys are no help—they hold a meeting, and everyone promises to work hard, but five minutes after the meeting each child runs off on his own, to play or eat or swim. After Jack and Ralph give up their hunting and shelter-building for the evening and join the other children in play, Simon sneaks off into a private hole he found, where he watches the others.
Chapter 4 Summary: “Painted Faces and Long Hair”
By Chapter 4, the boys have grown used to the island. Their hair is longer, their skin is darker, and they have become accustomed to the rhythms of the island, the quick swing from dusk to dark, the long slow slide of the sun across the sand. They recognize each other by size and separate according to “bigguns” and “littluns” (59). The littluns have built sand castles along the beach, and while Henry, Percival,and Johnny are playing among them, Roger and Maurice come out of the forest, kicking sand on the littluns. When Henry wanders away from Percival’s crying, Roger follows him and begins to throw rocks, although he only throws them near Henry; the rules and regulations of civilization keep him from crossing that line. While he watches Henry, Jack appears out of the forest, beckoning to Roger. When Roger follows, he sees Jack has gathered clay and charcoal. He paints his face like a mask.
On the beach, Piggy tells Ralph they could make a sundial, but this depresses and angers Ralph, who thinks a sundial is as useless as a TV. When Ralph sees the smoke of a ship on the ocean, he begins to run up the mountain, even though he knows the fire is out. Piggy is too far behind to light the fire with his glasses, and they watch in frustration as the ship disappears. When Jack and his hunters appear with a killed pig, Ralph accuses him of letting the fire go out. Jack contends that they needed all the hunters, but in the argument, Jack and Ralph find themselves at odds with another: “By the time the pile was built, they were on different sides of a high barrier” (73).
Chapter 5 Summary: “Beast from Water”
After the missed attempt at signaling the ship, Ralph calls a meeting. In the twilight, he lays down rules, the most important being that the fire must not go out. He points out how they’ve stopped working together and how they have stopped doing the things they need to do, such as bringing fresh water and building shelters. He says that they were happy, at first, but then they started getting frightened, chiefly due to the littluns talk of a beast. Ralph firmly maintains that there is no beast, only fear, and that “fear can’t hurt [them] any more than a dream” (82). Jack, contradicting Ralph, declares that he’ll kill the beast because he’s a hunter, while timid Piggy suggeststhat they’re frightened of people. When Piggy asks the littluns about the beast, Percival relays that the beast comes out of the sea. Simon poses that he thinks the beast is them, the children themselves, as well as someone else—an anonymous voice in the dark that says there are ghosts on the island. Jack shouts them down, dismissing the notions. He ignores both the conch and the rules, boasting that they’ll kill the beast. Jack takes his hunters off into the darkness, ending the meeting and rejecting the rules.
Chapters 3-5 Analysis
Jack and Ralph, while still friends, experience the first conflict between them. Jack is obsessed with hunting and feels that their survival is dependent on taking up arms, i.e., spears. Ralph wants to provide shelter for everyone. Their conflict stems from differing ways of ruling: one wants war, and the other wants the safety of shelter: “They walked along, two continents of experience and feeling, unable to communicate” (54). Neither can explain to the other why their mode of governing is preferable, and so they remain at odds, perhaps in the same way the old world was at such odds they went to war.
A second conflict is that they are finding how hard it is to govern. The children will not work. They hold meetings, but afterwards the children wander off. Left to their own devices, the boys eschew their own survival for the pleasurable experiences of play and the comfort of food. Without the enforced rules of society, they find themselves reverting to an animal-like state, eating whenever they want, frolicking in the water, forgoing shelter-building, and underrating the ideation of working together for the common good.
The boys continue their descent into savagery. Roger’s longer hair makes him look forbidding; he throws rocks at Henry, and while he doesn’t cross the line into hitting him, the suggestion is there. Similarly, there is the underlying suggestion of murder on the island. When Jack’s hunters come back with a killed pig, they chant: “Kill the pig. Cut her throat. Spill her blood” (69). Piggy has already been named an outsider, and the chants to kill the pig foreshadow how the other boys will come to see Piggy.
By allowing the fire to die out, Jack chooses the savagery of the kill over the safety of civilization. The act is accidental, but he clearly values the hunt over being rescued. Even when Ralph tells him how he failed, Jack is ecstatic from the kill. It takes Ralph telling him about the missed ship two or three times before he begins to understand, yet Jack believes a simply apology will suffice.
Two factions become distinctive: Jack’s hunters and those who follow Ralph. The argument over the fire divides them. Jack repeatedly tells the story of killing the pig, while Ralph can only think of the lost chance for rescue. During the fight, Jack hits Piggy in the stomach, much as he gutted the killed pig.
Ralph’s meeting is to restore the orderhe can feel slipping awayas the chasm between him and Jack grows. In his speech, Ralph mentions building shelters, which are symbols of a civilized way of life. He also mentions water, which without they will die. With disdain, he addresses that they’ve stopped using the appropriate places to go to the bathroom, that they are, quite literally, dropping their waste all over the island. Ralph emphasizes the importance of the fire, which in itself is a symbol of light, goodness, and rescue. It is a symbol of their humanity, and without the fire—without the light inside them—they become less than human. Theirbrief attempt at building a civilization is failing, shown through the leaning shelters, the lack of fresh water, and the fire going out.
As they turn their attention to the fear pervading them, Simon poses that maybe it’s them. He means that maybe at the core man always fears other men and that civilizations inevitably break down into fighting. Percival believes that the beast came out of the sea. The children themselves literally came from the sea after the crash, and figuratively, mankind came out of the sea as he evolved. The overarching premise is that men are beasts, and the beasts occupying the island. Essentially, the ones the children need to be afraid of are themselves and their human nature.
