Lord of the Flies (WJEC Eduqas GCSE English Literature): Exam Questions

The hunters were looking uneasily at the sky, flinching from the stroke of the drops. A wave of restlessness set the boys swaying and moving aimlessly. The flickering light became brighter and the blows of the thunder were only just bearable. The littluns began to run about, screaming.

Jack leapt on to the sand.

‘Do our dance! Come on! Dance!’
He ran stumbling through the thick sand to the open space of rock beyond the fire.
Between the flashes of lightning the air was dark and terrible; and the boys followed him, clamorously. Roger became the pig, grunting and charging at Jack, who side-stepped. The hunters took their spears, the cooks took spits, and the rest clubs of fire-wood. While Roger mimed the terror of the pig, the littluns ran and jumped on the outside of the circle. Piggy and Ralph, under the threat of the sky, found themselves eager to take a place in this demented but partly secure society. They were glad to touch the brown backs of the fence that hemmed in the terror and made it governable.

‘Kill the beast! Cut his throat! Spill his blood!’

The movement became regular while the chant lost its first superficial excitement and began to beat like a steady pulse. Roger ceased to be a pig and became a hunter, so that the centre of the ring yawned emptily. Some of the littluns started a ring on their own; and the complementary circles went round and round as though repetition would achieve safety of itself. There was the throb and stamp of a single organism.

The dark sky was shattered by a blue-white scar. An instant later the noise was on them like the blow of a gigantic whip. The chant rose in a tone in agony.

‘Kill the beast! Cut his throat! Spill his blood!’

Ralph heard the great rock long before he saw it. He was aware of a jolt in the earth that came to him through the soles of his feet, and the breaking sound of stones at the top of the cliff. Then the monstrous red thing bounded across the neck and he flung himself flat while the tribe shrieked. The rock struck Piggy a glancing blow from chin to knee; the conch exploded into a thousand white fragments and ceased to exist. Piggy, saying nothing, with no time for even a grunt, travelled through the air sideways from the rock, turning over as he went. The rock bounded twice and was lost in the forest. Piggy fell forty feet and landed on his back across that square, red rock in the sea. His head opened and stuff came out and turned red. Piggy’s arms and legs twitched a bit, like a pig’s after it has been killed. Then the sea breathed again in a long slow sigh, the water boiled white and pink over the rock; and when it went, sucking back again, the body of Piggy was gone.

This time the silence was complete. Ralph’s lips formed a word but no sound came.
Suddenly Jack bounded out from the tribe and began screaming wildly. “See? See? That’s what you’ll get! I meant that! There isn’t a tribe for you any more! The conch is gone–”

He ran forward, stooping.

“I’m Chief!”

Viciously, with full intention, he hurled his spear at Ralph. The point tore the skin and flesh over Ralph’s ribs, then sheared off and fell in the water. Ralph stumbled, feeling not pain but panic, and the tribe, screaming now like the Chief, began to advance. Another spear, a bent one that would not fly straight, went past his face and one fell from on high where Roger was. The twins lay hidden behind the tribe and the anonymous devils’ faces swarmed across the neck. Ralph turned and ran. A great noise as of sea-gulls rose behind him. He obeyed an instinct that he did not know he possessed and swerved over the open space so that the spears went wide. He saw the headless body of the sow and jumped in time. Then he was crashing through foliage and small boughs and was hidden by the forest.

The Chief stopped by the pig, turned and held up his hands.

“Back! Back to the fort!”

Ralph saw that for the time being he was safe. He limped away through the fruit trees, drawn by the thought of the poor food yet bitter when he remembered the feast. Feast to-day, and then to-morrow…

He argued unconvincingly that they would let him alone; perhaps even make an outlaw of him. But then the fatal unreasoning knowledge came to him again. The breaking of the conch and the deaths of Piggy and Simon lay over the island like a vapour. These painted savages would go further and further. Then there was that indefinable connection between himself and Jack; who therefore would never let him alone; never.

He paused, sun-flecked, holding up a bough, prepared to duck under it. A spasm of terror set him shaking and he cried aloud.

“No. They’re not as bad as that. It was an accident.”

He ducked under the bough, ran clumsily, then stopped and listened.

He came to the smashed acres of fruit and ate greedily. He saw two littluns and, not having any idea of his own appearance, wondered why they screamed and ran.

When he had eaten he went towards the beach. The sunlight was slanting now into the palms by the wrecked shelter. There was the platform and the pool. The best thing to do was to ignore this leaden feeling about the heart and rely on their common sense, their daylight sanity. Now that the tribe had eaten, the thing to do was to try again. And anyway, he couldn’t stay here all night in an empty shelter by the deserted platform. His flesh crept and he shivered in the evening sun. No fire; no smoke; no rescue. He turned and limped away through the forest towards Jack’s end of the island.

Ralph found himself alone on a limb with Jack and they grinned at each other, sharing this burden. Once more, amid the breeze, the shouting, the slanting sunlight on the high mountain, was shed that glamour, that strange invisible light of friendship, adventure, and content.

“Almost too heavy.”

Jack grinned back.

“Not for the two of us.”

Together, joined in effort by the burden, they staggered up the last steep of the mountain. Together, they chanted One! Two! Three! and crashed the log on to the great pile. Then they stepped back, laughing with triumphant pleasure, so that immediately Ralph had to stand on his head. Below them, boys were still labouring, though some of the small ones had lost interest and were searching this new forest for fruit. Now the twins, with unsuspected intelligence, came up the mountain with armfuls of dried leaves and dumped them against the pile. One by one, as they sensed that the pile was complete the boys stopped going back for more and stood, with the pink, shattered top of the mountain around them. Breath came even by now, and sweat dried.

Ralph and Jack looked at each other while society paused about them. The shameful knowledge grew in them and they did not know how to begin confession.

Ralph spoke first, crimson in the face.

“Will you?”

He cleared his throat and went on.

“Will you light the fire?”

Now the absurd situation was open, Jack blushed too. He began to mutter vaguely.

“You rub two sticks. You rub—”

He glanced at Ralph, who blurted out the last confession of incompetence.

“Has anyone got any matches?”

Ralph pushed between them and got a thump on the chest. He wrested the conch from someone and sat down breathlessly.

‘There’s too much talk about ghosts. We ought to have left all this for daylight.’

A hushed and anonymous voice broke in.

‘Perhaps that’s what the beast is—a ghost.’

The assembly was shaken as by a wind.

‘There’s too much talking out of turn,’ Ralph said, ‘because we can’t have proper assemblies if you don’t stick to the rules.’

He stopped again. The careful plan of this assembly had broken down. ‘What d’you want me to say then? I was wrong to call this assembly so late. We’ll have to vote on them; on ghosts I mean; and then go to the shelters because we’re all tired. No—Jack is it?—wait a minute. I’ll say here and now that I don’t believe in ghosts. Or I don’t think I do. But I don’t like the thought of them. Not now that is, in the dark. But we were going to decide what’s what.’

He raised the conch for a moment.

‘Very well then. I suppose what’s what is whether there are ghosts or not—’ He thought for a moment, formulating the question.

‘Who thinks there may be ghosts?’

For a long time there was silence and no apparent movement. Then Ralph peered into the gloom and made out the hands. He spoke flatly.

‘I see.’

The world, that understandable and lawful world, was slipping away. Once there was this and that; and now—and the ship had gone.

The conch was snatched from his hands and Piggy’s voice shrilled.

‘I didn’t vote for no ghosts!’

He whirled round on the assembly.

‘Remember that all of you!’

They heard him stamp.

‘What are we? Humans? Or animals? Or savages? What’s grown-ups going to think? Going off—hunting pigs—letting fires out—and now!’

A shadow fronted him tempestuously.

‘You shut up, you fat slug!’

There was a moment’s struggle and the glimmering conch jigged up and down. Ralph leapt to his feet.

‘Jack! Jack! You haven’t got the conch! Let him speak.’

Jack’s face swam near him.

‘And you shut up! Who are you, anyway? Sitting there—telling people what to do. You can’t hunt, you can’t sing—’

‘I’m chief. I was chosen.’

‘Why should choosing make any difference? Just giving orders that don’t make any sense—’

‘Piggy’s got the conch.’

‘That’s right—favour Piggy as you always do—’

‘Jack!’

Jack’s voice sounded in bitter mimicry.

‘Jack! Jack!’ .

‘The rules!’ shouted Ralph, ‘you’re breaking the rules!’

‘Who cares?’

Ralph summoned his wits.

‘Because the rules are the only thing we’ve got!’