LOTF quotations

• For a moment the boys were a closed circuit of sympathy with...

  Piggy on the outside...
• Something dark was fumbling along


  ...... the darkness was not all shadow but mostly clothing
• They knew very well why he hadn't [killed the piglet]: because of the enormity of the knife descending and cutting into living flesh;...

  ...because ofthe unbearable blood.
• (About Piggy) "with the...

  ...martyred expression of a parent"
• (Jack) I agree with Ralph.

  We've got to have rules and obey them.After all, we're not savages. We're English, and the English are best at everything. So we've got to do the right things.
• (Jack) We'll have rules...

  ...thenwhen anyone breaks 'em-/ Bollocks to the rules
• (About Jack) became

  less a hunter than a furtive thing,...….ape-likeamong the tangle of trees
• (About Jack) He tried to convey

  the compulsion to...track down and killthat was swallowing him up.
• (Jack)If you're hunting sometimes...


  ...you can feel as if you're not hunting, but --being hunted, as if something's behind you all the time in the jungle.
• They walked along,

  two continents of......experience and feeling, unable to communicate.
• (About Roger) Here, invisible yet strong, was the


  taboo of the old life.Round......squatting child was the protection of parents and school and policemen and the law. Roger's arm wasconditioned by a civilisationthat knew nothing of him and was in ruins.
• The mask was a thing on its own,


  behind which Jack hid,......liberated from shame and self-consciousness.
• (Ralph's thoughts) If faces where different when lit...


  ...from above or below --what was a face? What was anything?
• (Ralph)

  Things are breaking up. I don't understand why. We began well;......we were happy. And then -- ...Then people started getting frightened.
• (Piggy)I know there isn't no beast - not with claws and all that, I mean - but I know there isn't no fear...


  either...Unless--...Unless we get frightened of people.
• (Simon) "What I mean is... Maybe it's only us.... What's the dirtiest thing there is?"...


  ...Simon became inarticulate in his efforts to express mankind's essential illness.
• ... Once there was this and that; and now -- and the ship had gone.


  The world, that understandable and lawful word, was slipping away…
• (Ralph) If only they could send us something grown-up...


  …a sign or something.
• The bright morning was full of threats and...

  the circle began to change. It faced out, rather than in and the spears

  of sharpened wood were like a fence. Jack called them back to the centre.
• However Simon thought of the beast, there rose before his inward sight...


  …the picture of a human at once heroicand sick.
• (Ralph's thoughts) after all we aren't savages really and...

  being rescued isn't a game.
• (Ralph) He... gazed at the green and black mask before him,...

  ...trying to remember what Jack looked like.
• (Jack)

  I'm not going to play any longer…Not with you.
• (About the parachutist) poor broken thing that sat stinking by his side...


  …The beast was harmless and horrible.
• (Jack)

  The beast is a hunter......we couldn't kill it.
• Ralph wept for the end of innocence,…

  the darkness of man's heart, and the fall through the air of a true, wise friend called Piggy.
• Simon: 'However Simon thought of the beast, there rose before his inward sight the picture of a human at once heroic and sick'
• Ralph: 'Ralph too was fighting to get near, to get a handful of that brown, vulnerable flesh. The desire to squeeze and hurt was over-mastering'
• About Jack: 'A stain in the darkness, a stain that was Jack, detached itself and began to draw away'
• Jack on The Beast: 'The beast is a hunter... we couldn't kill it'
• Jack on leaving the group: 'I'm not going to play any longer. Not with you'
• On the sow: 'The hunters followed wedded to her in lust... they were heavy and fulfilled upon her'
• The parachutist: 'Poor broken thing that sat stinking by his side. The beast was harmless and horrible'
• The Lord of the Flies: 'The half-shut eyes were dim with the infinite cynicism of adult life. They assured Simon that everything was a bad business'
• The Beast speaking: 'There isn't anyone to help you. Only me. And I'm the Beast... Fancy thinking the Beast was something you could hunt and kill. You knew, didn't you? I'm part of you?'
• During Simon's death: 'Piggy and Ralph, under the threat of the sky... were glad to touch the brown backs of the fence that hemmed in the terror and made it governable'
• Describing the beast: 'A thing was crawling out of the forest. It came darkly, uncertainly. The beast stumbled into the horseshoe.... It was crying out against the abominable noise something about a body on a hill. There were no words, and no movements but the tearing of teeth and claws'
• Piggy: 'It was dark. There was that-that bloody dance. There was lightning and thunder and rain. We was scared!'
• Piggy on his glasses: 'Not because you're strong, but because what's right's right'
• The concealing paint


  • Brings liberation into savagery