Within chapters 4-6 of Lord of the Flies, the plot development slows down in order to make room for a lot of character development. The children find themselves having to struggle with living on an island and dealing with such issues as who can exert authority, survival, and the emphasis put on attempting to be rescued. Within these conflicts between characters, Ralph emerges as a leader more than ever and his character is developed to a point where he begins to see himself as a leader and begins to take initiative.
Right at the inception of chapter 4, a physical description of Ralph’s size and a description of him as a “bigun” (Golding 61) illustrates an image of superiority over the other boys. When a ship passes on the horizon, Ralph is portrayed as a strong leader and displays a great deal of determination toward setting the fire. Although he fails, he takes it upon himself to make sure that no one ever “let[s] the fire out” (73). While Jack is more worried the present situation and survival on the island, Ralph displays a maturity in working towards a better life for himself and all the others. As such, Ralph is more concerned with being rescued and keeping the fire burning in order to do this. In a way, this displays Ralph’s kindness and sense of responsibility as he works toward more long term solutions and sees his moderation of the boys on the island as only a short term duty. Ralph feels a need to keep a civilized and organized society of sorts and tries to keep this “understandable and lawful world” (98) from “slipping away” (98). Even when all seems hopeless and everything is in disarray and full of conflict, Ralph feels a strong need to hold on to his beliefs and ideas of how the world should work. A lot is revealed about his character when he yells at Jack passionately saying “the rules are the only thing we’ve got!” (99). Ralph is smart and knows that there is more to surviving, but there is thriving. As such, he employs ideas such as rules to appease conflict and create a functioning and civil sense of humanity.
2 comments:
I agree with Jason on the ideas of character development in chapters 4-6, as it is primarily what is happening. The one character who I found to have large - but ultimately catastrophic -development is Jack. We have seen in these chapters his greater take into savagery even by his mask, his bloodthirsty attitude about hunting, and his complete lack of discipline. Even after the time the signal fire is out and the ship passes by, Jack is still chanting, "Kill the pig. Cut her throat. Spill her blood (Golding 72). Even Jacks over-the-top arrogance, and will to challenge anyone else shows his egotistical nature and his new developing trait, which is steadily becoming more of a curse to the other boy on the island - at this point mainly piggy. In these chapters as well, as Jason said Ralph is shown much character development. He is put into a situation here he needs to step up as a leader to take control over the other boys, especially in this time where Jack seems to want to take more and more control and power. Ralph's frustration with the putting-out of the signal fire, "Ralph reached inside himself for the worst word he knew. 'They let the bloody fire out'" (71), is a good example of a time in the story where he needs to exert some authority if anything is going to go right for he and the boys. In these three chapters, there is enough activity to keep the reader interested, but as Jason said it focuses primarily on character development, and at this point in the story is necessary to build further conflict as well as the tension Golding wanted to create for his brutally climactic ending.
Post a Comment