Lord of the Flies - Summary and Analysis - Chapter 1

Here's a summary and analysis of Lord of the Flies, Chapter 1

Lord of the Flies was written by William Golding in 1954 and it asks the basic question: “What would people do if they suddenly found themselves on a deserted island outside of society?” Not only that, but the people who suddenly find themselves stranded on this island are boys right on the verge of being young adults. Golding’s classic story is essentially a social experiment that seeks to understand what humans are truly like when the influences of society are stripped away.

Chapter 1 begins with some vague exposition that we have to take at face value. The boys were in an airplane from England. That airplane got shot down. They safely crashed onto this island in the middle of the sea. There are no adults with them.

At first, the descriptions of the island make it seem like an absolute paradise. The boys cannot believe there are no adults around, and they see the island as a sort of benevolent utopia where they can play all day with no rules or consequences. The innocence of the children is especially important here, in descriptions like them swimming naked, pointing out how the island is something like the Garden of Eden. They even realize for a moment that “here at last was the imagined but never fully realized place leaping into real life.”

So who landed on this island? While there seem to be perhaps around 50 children, only a few of the boys get names and descriptions. We first meet Ralph – the handsome, masculine, mild-mannered boy – and Piggy, who is pretty much Ralph’s opposite. It should be noted that while Piggy is overweight, asthmatic, wears glasses, and incredibly awkward socially, he does have brains. He logically deduces the nature of their situation as well as comes up with the idea to use the conch to summon the boys together. Unfortunately, his name is Piggy and despite these brains, he is immediately disrespected by everyone.

Once Ralph uses the conch to call the boys, they all begin to gather together on a naturally shaded platform. Then, ominously, Jack marches in leading his choir boys toward the others like they are some sort of darkly dressed military unit. It’s immediately apparent that Jack has the strongest personality of the boys.

But Jack, along with the others, begins asking about the grownup who blew the conch. The boys seem to have mixed feelings about there being no grownups on the island. On the one hand, it’s great to feel free from oppressive sources of authority. But at the same time, the boys recognize grownups as the leaders, organizers, and arbiters of order of the world. While Jack asks about grownups, Piggy reminisces about his aunt and Ralph idealistically fantasizes about his father rescuing them.

When the boys call for a vote for chief, they don’t vote for Piggy, who was obviously intelligent, or Jack, who was the most obvious leader. Instead, the crowd enthusiastically approved of Ralph. Why? As the story points out, “most obscurely, yet most powerfully, there was the conch. The being that had blown that, had sat waiting for them on the platform with the delicate thing balanced on his knees, was set apart.” This is where the conch first suggests itself as more than a random object but as something of a symbol within the story – and Ralph’s connection to the conch helps catapult him into the democratically elected chief position.

It’s during this initial encounter that we first meet Simon, Roger, and twins Sam and Eric – some of the other pre-adolescents who will begin to stand out. Most interesting, though, is Jack’s reaction to the outcome of the vote. He was mortified at the rejection, even by his own choir. As a show of appeasement, Ralph lets Jack retain control of the choir, and Jack immediately re-appropriates the choristers into hunters. This is not only an ironic shift from boys who sing religious hymns to boys who hunt and kill, but it’s also ironic because so far there’s no proof that there’s anything to hunt on the island at all.

The chapter ends with a brief expedition by Ralph, Jack, and Simon to explore the island. It turns out the island is “boat-shaped,” and by all appearances uninhabited. Aside from the mountain slope they climb and the beach they came from, the majority of the island appears to be covered with dense trees and thick vines called creepers. And it’s in these creepers where the three boys find an entangled piglet. Jack springs into action, unsheathes his knife, and prepares to bring home the bacon. But the boys’ innocence is underscored once again when Jack hesitates to kill the pig because understands “what an enormity the downward stroke would be.”

Unable to spill the piglet’s blood before it escapes, Jack is mortified for a second time in this chapter, and he storms off swearing that “next time” he would show no mercy....

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