"Cliff Notes - Lord of the Flies" - читать интересную книгу автора (Cliff Notes)

Jack practices stalking a pig and Ralph tries to build shelters; Simon goes off into the jungle to meditate.

Jack is alone in the jungle. Notice the description of his surroundings: "The silence of the forest was more oppressive than the heat, and at this hour of the day there was not even the whine of insects. Only when Jack himself roused a gaudy bird from a primitive nest of sticks was the silence shattered and echoes set ringing by a harsh cry that seemed to come out of the abyss of ages." The jungle is threatening; it is a metaphor for what is dark, dangerous, and wild in someone's mind. Jack is learning to be comfortable where most of us would be lost.

In the same passage, Jack is said to be "dog-like, uncomfortably on all fours yet unheeding his discomfort." He closes his eyes and raises his head, breathing in "gently with flared nostrils, assessing the current of warm air for information."

Golding's description of Jack is filled with animal references. Jack is acquiring the dangerous and threatening ways of the jungle. He is learning to hunt like an animal by depending on his senses of smell, sight, sound, and movement. Sniffing the warm, steamy pig droppings, Jack becomes more primitive and dismisses his human inclinations. His chase after the pigs is described as "the promise of meat." Jack misses his prey again, but this only serves to fuel his determination to kill.

NOTE: Many references to Jack and Ralph make use of dark and light imagery. Jack is described as being comfortable in the dark jungle, and he can even see in the dark, much like an animal. Ralph is building shelters to protect the boys from darkness and the unknown beast of the jungle; he is a champion of light.

When Jack returns to the lagoon where Ralph and Simon are finding it difficult to build shelters, he has trouble explaining his desire to kill. Jack is slowly becoming an animal and is unable to express his longings. He is so caught up in learning to hunt that he can't remember why they should be rescued. Ralph, on the other hand, is trying to learn to express his thoughts; he is groping toward an understanding of what it means to be a person. "He wanted to explain how people were never quite what you thought they were.

To avoid an argument, Ralph and Jack discuss the fear of the beast, which is getting worse among the smallest boys. Simon says: "As if... the beastie or the snake-thing, was real." Jack and Ralph both shudder.

The fear of the beast in the jungle is so great that no one mentions it by name anymore. Remember the idea of naming? If the boys can't give a name to what they fear, it has gained power over them.

Jack makes fun by calling them all batty, which diminishes the tension. Yet moments later he says, There's nothing in it of course. just a feeling. But you can feel as if you're not hunting, but--being hunted, as if something's behind you all the time in the jungle."

Jack denies the existence of an actual beast by ridiculing those who believe in it. However, he recognizes the presence of "something" lurking in the jungle that Ralph is unable to accept. Jack knows what the littluns feel, but rather than fearing it, Jack is attracted to the presence in the jungle.

The conflict between the two main characters is mounting. Ralph believes the only solution is to keep the fire going in order to assure their rescue. Because the well-tended fire is also a form of light, it may be considered a symbol of knowledge and/or communication. You might say Ralph stands for the positive forces and Jack represents the darker, negative, and lesser known urges of mankind. Ralph and Jack are described as "two continents of experience and feeling, unable to communicate." Because neither is able to listen to the other and their differences in opinion are growing stronger, a clash must eventually take place.

The closing scene of the chapter is Simon's. Much like Jack, he goes alone and unafraid into the jungle. But compare Simon's jungle with Jack's. The harshness is portrayed, but so is the beauty: "With the fading of the light the riotous colors died and the heat and urgency cooled away. The candlebuds stirred. Their green sepals drew back a little and the white tips of the flowers rose delicately." Simon loves nature, and the description here is filled with a sense of awe for it. Simon is like a mystic who goes into the wilderness to pray, and the jungle shows him its undetected beauty. Butterflies often follow him.

Like Jack and Ralph, Simon knows there is no real beast in the jungle. However, Simon is not afraid to call the fear of the beast by name. And there is power in being able to call something by its true name.

Simon is kinder and more compassionate than the other boys. Simon (his name originally meant one who hears) hears and understands more than most people his age, and he has the quiet courage to attempt an explanation of what he knows. But his task is impossible because no one on the island can appreciate what he says. Ralph and Jack label him an oddball because they can't understand him.

^^^^^^^^^^LORD OF THE FLIES: CHAPTER FOUR

A ship passes the island while Jack is leading the hunters, their faces painted, on an expedition to kill a pig. Jack breaks one lens of Piggy's glasses.

A lengthy and important narrative at the beginning of the chapter gives us the impression that months have passed. The boys no longer clock the hours of day and night. The civilization they've known is dropping away, like primitive man, they are being guided by the sun and stars.

This section describes the different times of day as though they were different times of life. Morning is seen as childhood, "a time when play was good and life so full that hope was not necessary and therefore forgotten."

The middle of the day is likened to the difficulties of middle life. "Strange things happened at midday.... Sometimes land loomed where there was no land and flicked out like a bubble as the children watched." Exhausted by the heat, the boys dismiss the mirages they see without trying to understand them. The inability to understand what might be happening around them and the necessary acceptance of living without explanations are equated with the middle years of a person's life--a time when there are often denial, ignorance, and confusion.

Late in the day the boys are more comfortable, but they begin to dread the onset of evening. Similarly, late in life a person may experience freedom from confusion, but by then the closeness of death looms large. Golding says that late afternoon is a "time of comparative coolness but menaced by the coming of the dark." Night, or being near death, fills one with "restlessness, under the remote stars." When a person is near death, all that is associated with the living universe becomes distant.

NOTE: GOLDING'S METAPHOR FOR LIFE Why does the author include this commentary in a tale about a bunch of boys trying to survive on an island? Golding is offering us his philosophy that life starts out playfully and ends anxiously. The passage holds the key to some of the story's deeper meaning. We all begin as playful children, move slowly and painfully into adulthood, and anxiously approach death. This is a story about young boys coming of age or approaching the end of innocence. We see them young and playful at the beginning, and we will find them elderly in spirit by the end. The activity of boys on an island is also a metaphor for the human race's struggle to survive. The earth is our island, and some people are trying to build shelters while others are hunting pigs. Only a few see messages in the mirage; most are blinded.

Piggy, who has impaired vision, dismisses along with the others the "mysteries" and the "miraculous" on the island. It is he who labels the strange happenings a mirage. Although no mention is made here of Simon, he is the one who does not dismiss the wonder and the terror of mirages, as we will see later.

NOTE: MIRAGE AS METAPHOR An important idea underlies Golding's use of mirages. A mirage is something that does not really exist yet has a power of suggestion that can impress a person and influence how he acts and thinks. For example, if you were thirsty and thought you saw water, but the water was only a mirage, you would probably feel even more thirsty because of the very idea of water. The glands in your throat which cause you to feel thirst will react just as strongly to real water as to imagined water.

Here mirage introduces the idea of the suggestive power of something which does not really exist. In daylight the boys ignore mirages seen in nature, such as the palm trees which seem to float in the sky, but mirages of the night, like the beast in the jungle, cannot be so easily dismissed.

Invisible things also influence how people act and think. We watch Roger throwing stones at a littlun called Henry. He doesn't hit Henry; "there was a space round Henry... into which he dare not throw. Here, invisible yet strong, was the taboo of the old life. Round the squatting child was the protection of parents and school and policemen and the law." Something invisible, like a concept, the concept of civilization, has the power to control human thought and actions. We can think of civilization as an invisible mirage. It does really exist, and it has power over us if we hold the concept in our head. When we do, it influences our behavior and thought, as it keeps Roger from hitting Henry. When we stop believing in the concept of civilized ways, the concept ceases to have power over us.