Ralph:

- 12-year old boy with fair hair > traditional image of a hero (positive character); one of the goodies

- active

- his father is a commander in the Navy > hope of romantic rescue

- he thinks of adventures on the island = real situation

Piggy:

- very fat, short,

- wearing glasses, having asthma > handicapped, physical deficient

- orphan (lives wit his aunt)

- afraid, no illusions

- called by his nickname PIG - GY

- not self-confident, unsure, scared of loneliness

- intelligent, wise, rational > symbol: glasses

- clumsy, needs authority

Jack:

- tall, tin, bony, red-haired, blue eyes, blackcap

- leader of the choir

- egoist with strong personality > repetition of the pronoun “I”

- always associated with darkness

- called “Merridew” > superiority > gives the orders

- boys in the choir have lost their identity > they look absolutely alike

- sun-blind when he sees Ralph

- he does not kill the pig because the pressure of the civilisation is still to prominent

needs authority

Chapter 2

Rules: to order the conditions on the island

- fire and people who look after it

- people are only allowed to speak when they have the conch

- building huts

- hunters for getting food

although life is organised they want to have fun

Chapter 4

Order

- littlens are playing in the sand - Roger and Maurice destroy the sand castles

- Roger throws stones, but doesn’t throw directly at human beings > still under layer of civilisation > Maurice feels uneasy: taboo of the old life

- painting their faces = disguise > Masks to loose identity, to get a different identity > primitivism

- signal fire dies down > civilisation was inside > chance of rescue is gone

- ritual chant

- ritual dancing

- kill the pig keyword: blood

Chapter 5

Everything gets out of control

Piggy / Simon: object of fear is inside man

Chapter 6 Dead parachutist:

symbol of

1. war raging a sign from the world of the grown-ups

2. rescue > dead (!) hope

- figure

- puppet on a string

Description (p. 60) Significance

- delicate, fainting spells

- likes to meditate

- without fear

- he prefers solitude

- individual, doesn’t belong to the group

- imaginative, sensitive

- has got poetic feeling

Chapter 10

Reaction of the boys after Simon’s death Ralph: “murder”, confused, bad conscience, is afraid Piggy: tries to excuse the deed, “accident” Jack: he ignores the murder, “beast”, it might appear again Broken glasses: end of intellectuality Now: savages

Chapter 11

What is left?

- brutality

- fear

- violence

Chapter 12

“stick sharpened at both ends”

The ending of the novel

The naval officer arrives on the island when Ralph, the last Goodie, is hunted by the others, the savages.

he falls down and wants to cry for mercy he is full of fear, he is in panic and absolutely hysterical

At this moment,

he sees the naval officer

outward appearance is just fantastic

uniform is clean and white in opposite to the boys who are dirty he represents authority, society, civilisation which the boys forgot officer - very surprised of the boys´ behaviour

- he does not understand anything because he cannot imagine what has happened

- thinks that the boys only play a war-game

- he cannot imagine, too, that the boys are able to kill someone because they are „British boys“ and he does not regard it as true

- he just think that they had „Fun and Games“

There is one sentence in the final part of the novel which is very important: „Ralph wept for the end of innocence, the darkness of man’s heart...“ it shows that Ralph has realised the truth: the beast is inside and part of man at the beginning:

at the end: