Lord fo the Flies _ Quotes 4-6

Lord of the Flies
Quotes Chapters 4-6
Directions:
1. Locate the quotes in the book and highlight or underline them in the book.
2. Write down the page number on this sheet.
3. Be prepared to discuss why these quotes are important to the plot, foreshadowing, symbolism, or character development.

Chapter 4

_____ Page “At midday the illusions merged into the sky and there the sun gazed
down like an angry eye”

_____ Page “Ever since then he had been peaked, red-eyed, and miserable; a littlun
who played little and cried often”

_____ Page “The smaller boys were known now by the generic title of ‘littluns’”

_____ Page “They suffered untold terrors in the dark and huddled together for
comfort”

_____ Page “They obeyed the summons of the conch, partly because Ralph blew it,
and he was big enough to be a link with the adult world of authority”

_____ Page “Roger led the way straight through the castles, kicking them over,
burying the flowers, scattering the chosen stones. Maurice followed,
laughing, and added to the destruction”

_____ Page “In his other life Maurice had received chastisement for filling a younger
eye with sand. Now, though there was no parent to let fall a heavy hand, Maurice still felt the unease of wrongdoing”

_____ Page “He made little runnels that the tide filled and tried to crowd them with
creatures. He became absorbed beyond mere happiness as he felt himself exercising control over living things. He talked to them, urging them, ordering them. Driven back by the tide, his footprints became bays in which they were trapped and gave him the illusion of mastery”

_____ Page “Roger gathered a handful of stones and began to throw them. Yet there
was a spaced round Henry, perhaps six yards in diameter, 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. Roger’s arm was conditioned by a civilization that knew nothing of him and was in ruins”


_____ Page “When Roger opened his eyes and saw him, a darker shadow crept
beneath the swarthiness of his skin; but Jack noticed nothing”

_____ Page “He began to dance and his laughter became a bloodthirsty snarling. He
capered toward Bill, and the mask was a thing on its own, behind which Jack hid, liberated from the shame of self-consciousness”

_____ Page “He was the only boy on the island whose hair never seemed to grow”

_____ Page “Piggy was a bore; his fat, his ass-mar, and his mater-of-fact ideas were
dull, but there was always a little pleasure to be got out of pulling his leg, even if one did it by accident”

_____ Page “Piggy saw the smile and misinterpreted it as friendliness”

_____ Page “Piggy was an outsider, not only by accent, which did not matter, but by
fat, and ass-mar, and specs, and a certain disinclination for manual labor”

_____ Page “Piggy, always clumsy, stood up and came to stand by him, so that Ralph
rolled on his stomach and pretended not to see”

_____ Page “The smoke was a tight little knot on the horizon and was uncoiling
slowly. Beneath the smoke was a dot that might be a funnel. Ralph’s face was pale as he spoke to himself. ‘They’ll see our smoke’”

_____ Page “A moment later he was battling with the complex undergrowth that was
already engulfing the scar”

_____ Page “Ralph reached inside himself for the worst word he knew. ‘They let the
bloody fire go out’”

_____ Page “Ralph picked out Jack easily, even at that distance, tall read-haired, and
inevitably leading the procession”

_____ Page “Behind Jack walked the twins, carrying the great stake on their shoulders.
The gutted carcass of a pig swung from the stake, swinging heavily as the twins toiled over the uneven ground”

_____ Page “Instead, he danced a step or two, then remembered his dignity and stood
still, grinning. He noticed blood on his hands and grimaced distastefully, looked for something on which to clean them, then wiped them on his shorts and laughed”

_____ Page “ ‘You and your blood, Jack Merridew! You and your hunting! We might
have gone home--”

_____ Page “Jack smacked Piggy’s head. Piggy’s glasses flew off and tinkled on the
rocks. . . . ‘One side’s broken’”

_____ Page “. . . they were on different sides of a high barrier”

_____ Page “He meant to refuse meat, but his past diet of fruit and nuts, with an odd
crab or fish, gave him too little resistance”

_____ Page “ ‘Aren’t I having none?’ Jack had meant to leave him in doubt, as an assertion of power; but Piggy by advertising his omission made more cruelty necessary. ‘You didn’t hunt.’ ‘No more did Ralph,’ said Piggy wetly, ‘nor Simon.’. . . Simon, sitting between the twins and Piggy, wiped his mouth and shoved his piece of meat over the rocks to Piggy, who grabbed it”

_____ Page “With the conch. I’m calling a meeting even if we have to go on into the
dark. Down on the platform. When I blow it. Now”


Chapter 5

_____ Page “He found himself understanding the wearisomeness of this life, where
every path was an improvisation and a considerable part of one’s waking life was spent watching one’s feet”

_____ Page “This meeting must not be fun, but business”

_____ Page “With a convulsion of the mind, Ralph discovered dirt and decay, understood how much he disliked perpetually flicking the tangled hair out of his eyes, and at last, when the sun was gone, rolling noisily to rest among dry leaves”

_____ Page “Perhaps one of those legendary storms of the Pacific had shifted it here”

_____ Page “Once more that evening Ralph had to adjust his values. Piggy could
think. He could go step by step inside that fat head of his, only Piggy was no chief. But Piggy, for all his ludicrous body, had brains. Ralph was a specialist in thought now, and could recognize thought in another”

_____ Page “Piggy came and stood outside the triangle. This indicated that he wished to listen, but would not speak; and Piggy intended it as a gesture of disapproval”


_____ Page “ ‘We decide things. But they don’t get done. We were going to have
water brought from the stream and left in those coconut shells under fresh leaves. So it was, for a few days. Now there’s no water. The shells are dry. People drink from the river’ ”

_____ Page “ ‘We all built the first one, four of us the second one, and me ‘n Simon
built the last one over there. That’s why it’s so tottery. No. Don’t laugh. That shelter might fall down if the rain comes back. We’ll need those shelters then’ ”

_____ Page “ ‘We chose those rocks right along beyond the bathing pool as a lavatory. That was sensible too. The tide cleans the place up. You littluns know about that. . . Now people seem to use anywhere. Even near the shelters and platform. . . This place is getting dirty’ ”

_____ Page “ ‘Look at us! How many are we? And yet we can’t keep a fire going to make smoke. Don’t you understand? Can’t you see we ought to—ought to die before we let the fire out?’ ”

_____ Page “ ‘Things are breaking up. I don’t understand why. We began well; we were happy. And then. . . Then people started getting frightened’ ”

_____ Page “ ‘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 we get frightened of people’ ”

_____ Page “ ‘I wanted—to go to a place—a place I know’ ”

_____ Page “There had been no further numberings of the littluns, partly because there was no means of ensuring that all of them were accounted for and partly because Ralph knew the answer to at least one question Piggy had asked on the mountaintop. . . . No one had seen the mulberry-colored birthmark again’ ”

_____ Page “ ‘What I mean is. . . maybe it’s only us.’ . . . Simon became inarticulate in his effort to express mankind’s essential illness”

_____ Page “The world, that understandable and lawful world, was slipping away. Once there was this and that; and now-and the ship had gone”

_____ Page “ ‘What are we? Humans? Or animals? Or savages? What’s grownups going to think? Going off—hunting pigs—letting fires out—and now’ ”

_____ Page “ ‘Because the rules are the only thing we’ve got!’ ”

_____ Page “ ‘If I blow the conch and they don’t come back; then we’ve had it. We shan’t keep the fire going. We’ll be like animals. We’ll never be rescued’ ‘If you don’t blow, we’ll soon be animals anyway. I can’t see what they’re doing but I can hear’ ”

_____ Page “ ‘If Jack was chief he’d have all hunting and no fire. We’d be here till we died’ ”

_____ Page “ ‘If you give up,’ said Piggy, in an appalled whisper, ‘what’ud happen to me?’ ”

_____ Page “ ‘He can’t hurt you; but if you stand out of the way he’d hurt the next thing. And that’s me.’ ”

_____ Page “ ‘We’re all drifting and things are going rotten. At home there was always a grownup. Please, sir; please, miss; and then you got an answer. How I wish’ ”

_____ Page “ ‘Grownups know things,’ said Piggy. ‘They ain’t afraid of the dark’ ”

_____ Page “The three boys stood in the darkness, striving unsuccessfully to convey the majesty of adult life”

_____ Page “ ‘If only they could send us something grownup…a sign or something’ ”


Chapter 6


_____ Page “But a sign came down from the world of grown-ups, though at the time there was no child awake to read it. There was a sudden bright explosion and corkscrew trail across the sky; then darkness again and stars. There was a speck above the island, a figure dropping swiftly beneath a parachute, a figure that hung with dangling limbs. . . . The figure fell and crumpled among the blue flowers of the mountainside, but now there was a gentle breeze at this height too and the parachute flopped and banged and pulled”

_____ Page “But they could never manage to do things sensibly if that meant acting independently, and since staying awake all night was impossible, they had both gone to sleep”

_____ Page “Eric watched the scurring woodlice that were so frantically unable to avoid the flames, and thought of the first fire—just down there, on the steeper side of the mountain, where now was complete darkness. He did not like to remember it, and looked away at the mountaintop”

_____ Page “Then as though they had but one terrified mind between them they scrambled away over the rocks and fled”

_____ Page “Ralph was dreaming. . . for he was back to where he came from, feeding the ponies with sugar over the garden wall”

_____ Page “Ralph stood up and walked for the sake of dignity, though with his back pricking, to the platform”

_____ Page “By custom now one conch did for both twins, for their substantial unity was recognized”

_____ Page “ ‘We don’t need the conch anymore. We know who ought to say things. What good did Simon do speaking, or Bill, or Walter? It’s time some people knew they’ve got to keep quiet and leave deciding things to the rest of us’ ”

_____ Page “Ralph could no longer ignore his speech. The blood was hot in his cheeks. ‘You haven’t got the conch’, he said. ‘Sit down’ ”

_____ Page “Piggy let out his breath with a gasp, reached for it again and failed. He lay against a log, his mouth gaping, blue shadows creeping round his lips. Nobody minded him”

_____ Page “Ralph walked in the rear, thankful to have escaped responsibility for a time”

_____ Page “However Simon thought of the beast, there rose before his inward sight the picture of a human at once heroic and sick”

_____ Page “ ‘What a place for a fort!’ . . . ‘Not me. This is a rotten place’ ”

_____ Page “ ‘I’m chief. We’ve got to make certain. Can’t you see the mountain? There’s no signal showing. There may be a ship out there. Are you all off your rockers?’ Mutinously, the boys fell silent or muttering. Jack led the way down the rock and across the bridge”