lord of the flies

• 'the rules are the only thing we've got'

  rules are the only thing that is keeping them from descending further from civilisation and more into savagery.
• 'kill the pig. cut her throat. spill her blood.'

  mob mentality (jacks hunters)

  first successful hunt.

  shows a change in savagery in the boys.

  repetition
• 'Don’t you want to be rescued? All you can talk about is pig, pig, pig!'

  Chapter 4- Ralph angrily realizes that Jack and his hunters let the signal fire burn out while hunting a pig. As he believes the signal fire is their only legitimate means of rescue from the island, Ralph becomes furious with Jack’s short-sighted obsession with hunting and killing a pig rather than focusing on getting rescued.
• 'That was Simon...That was murder.'

  Ralph is the only character to admit that he helped kill Simon in Chapter 10, while Samneric and Piggy prefer to lie and make up excuses. Ralph acknowledges that the boys have killed Simon, not the imaginary beast they believed they were attacking. Ralph returns the boys from their frenzied fantasy to the brutal reality of their actions.
• 'I’m frightened. Of us. I want to go home. Oh God, I want to go home.'

  In Chapter 10, Ralph grapples with his grief the morning after the boys kill Simon. Ralph understands that he has committed an unspeakable act. His new knowledge of his and the other boys’ capacity for violence causes him to fear their situation even more than before.
• 'Bollocks to the rules!'

  Chapter 5- Jack feels that being a hunter is more important than following Ralph’s rules. He values killing and hunting more than contributing to the order and civilization of the island. Jack demonstrates his growing desire for power over the others as he begins establishing an authoritarian system focused on hunting and barbarity.
• 'I know there isn’t no beast … but I know there isn’t no fear, either...Unless we get frightened of people.'

  Chapter 5- Piggy refuses to believe a real beast is on the island, but he does think that fear itself exists, and could be dangerous if the boys start to become frightened of one another. Manipulating fear in order to control people is a tactic eventually employed by Jack and Roger in the final chapters, proving Piggy right.
• 'Maybe there is a beast… Maybe it’s only us.'

  Simon admits in Chapter 5 that he does believe in the beast, but suggests that the beast is actually the evil inside each one of them. Simon senses early on that the boys will fall into violent savagery and become their own worst enemies. Simon’s insight into the dangers of hysteria makes his murder by the group all the more tragic.
• 'Let's have a vote.'

  Roger is the first to suggest a vote for leader in Chapter 1. This indicates that Roger himself doesn’t wish to be in charge, but wants to be told who to follow, and how. This desire to follow a leader makes him the perfect lieutenant for Jack, and an apt torturer and terrorizer of other boys on the island.
• 'The rock struck Piggy a glancing blow from chin to knee; the conch exploded into a thousand white fragments and ceased to exist.'

  in this scene, Roger, deliberately lets go of a large rock with the intention to injure or kill. Piggy is hit by the rock and falls to the rocks below and dies. In this moment, the conch that Piggy was holding is shattered. The destruction of the conch, the object used to call meetings and keep order, symbolizes the end of civilized rules and democracy.
• 'What I mean is . . . maybe it’s only us.”

  Simon - Chapter 5. Simon, proposes that perhaps the beast is only the boys themselves. Although the other boys laugh off Simon’s suggestion, Simon’s words are central to Golding’s point that innate human evil exists. Simon is the first character in the novel to see the beast not as an external force but as a component of human nature.
• 'Sharpen a stick at both ends.'


  In a brutal hunting scene in Chapter 8, Jack tells Roger to use a sharpened stick to mount the dead pig’s head and leave it as an offering to the beast. The head becomes the Lord of the Flies with whom Simon has a hallucinogenic conversation. In the final chapter, Roger and Jack sharpen a second stick. While they don’t explicitly state their plans, because of this earlier quote we know they intend to mount Ralph’s head as an additional offering to the beast.