Chapter 5: Beast from Water

Lord of the Flies

Chapter 5: Beast from Water

This disobedience has to stop!

Perspective: Ralph

It took me a long time to plan that meeting, it really did, and the outcome was unbearable. We need to bring back order, and it was the whole point of the meeting, that I spent the hour before pacing around the beach, thinking of what to say, all for nothing. It started with the concern of letting the ship go by and the fire going out, which Jack was not pleased about. The main concern of this meeting quickly became the beastie after the topic was brought up. We asked some littleuns if they saw the beastie, because that was the main reason of why they were having nightmares and crying at night. One of them named Paul said that he saw him in the trees, and Simon said that he got up to go to a place, and Jack interrupted and said he was taking short. I wonder if that was the truth, or if he was going somewhere else, and not taking short, I don’t know. But the boys shoved up another boy, who apparently had seen something too. We asked him his name, but he seemed too afraid to respond, and we asked him again, and the others started to chant, “What’s your name! What’s your name!” He seemed terrified and said “Percival Wemys Madison” and gave us his formal address as he would at home. The thought of home made him and the other littleuns seem to feel the wanting to go home, and they seemed to feel his sorrows of that mix with theirs, and they started wailing. Maurice fell over on his log and said, “Look at me!” He kept pretending to fall off the log and bump his head, the other boys joined in on the turning log, and they all fell over. The littleuns all started laughing, along with Percival. At the perfect time, Piggy walked over and asked him where the beastie was, and he said that it came from the sea. There were murmurs among the crowd about the beastie coming from the water, and they wondered if it was some sort of land squid. I tried to convince them that they were wrong and that wasn’t true. They seemed to go on a riot, and Piggy beckoned for the conch as he had done once before, and I had finished with what I had to say and what I had planned for this meeting, so I gave it to him. Piggy went off about how, scientifically, it was impossible for there to be a beastie, and Maurice backed him up on it, and then he brought something interesting up. He proclaimed that we could be the beasties, that it was our dark, savage side that was the beastie. He was about to say that it was part of the “dirtiest part of human nature,” and Jack interrupted, and I knew what he was talking about, we were destined to turn into savages. Piggy fought back, he had the right to speak, and he had the conch. Jack started to rebel against the rules, and he ran off, the whole assembly with him. Piggy, Simon and I watched from the platform as they ran around on the beach. “I should give up being chief,” I said to them, at the beginning of our experience on this island, it seemed like a great job, but it becomes the worst if no one is willing to listen to you. Piggy said that I can’t give up, because if he were chief, no one would listen to him, and if Jack were chief, we would be here until we died. I had to agree, he was never listened to and Jack was showing no sign of wanting to leave the island. Our lives here are slowly falling apart, and I hope that we can put them together again after another long assembly, tomorrow. I can’t give up on the position of chief. If Jack is chief, like Piggy said, we will all be here until we die.

NOTE TO MS. GANESAN!

I do not have the vocab for this chapter because it is in my binder which is with you! Please notice this as the reason that I do not have my vocab words in this entry, and the previous one.