46 pages 1 hour read

William Golding

Lord of the Flies

Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 1954

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Chapters 8-9

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapter 8 Summary: “Gift for the Darkness”

When Jack, Ralph, and Roger come down from the mountain, Jack calls an assembly. He tells the others that they saw the beast. He says that Ralph thinks the hunters are no good. When Jack calls Ralph a coward, saying he stayed back instead of crawling toward the beast, he and Ralph come close to blows. Jack asks for a vote as to who should be chief, but none of the boys vote, so he runs off down the beach. Ralph and Piggy decide they should build a fire on the beach, but by the time they’ve finished building it, most of the bigguns have run off to join Jack. At the far end of the beach, Jack tells his hunters that he’s chief. He leads them on a hunt, where they kill a fat sow with their spears and bare hands. Jack, in a gift to the beast, cuts off the pig’s head and puts it on a stake. When Simon sees it, he names it “Lord of the Flies”(138) because of the big green bottle flies swarming over it. As Jack plans a feast and goes down to steal fire from Ralph, Simon sits talking to the pig’s head, who tells him that he is a silly boy for thinking the beast could be killed.

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By William Golding