Chapter 8: Gift for the Darkness

In this chapter Jack and Ralph get into an argument after Ralph insults Jack's hunters saying "Boys armed with sticks." (125) Jack is angered and he blows the conch to call a meeting. I think this is the moment that it became very obvious that Jack was usurping Ralph. In the meeting Jack basically says that Ralph is a bad chief, Jack is leaving the tribe, and is going to be hunting on his own. He says anyone who wants to join him can come with, and he leaves. At the start nobody goes with him, but slowly more and more kids dissapear. Since the mountain is occupied by the "beast", Piggy suggests making a fire where they presently are. I thought this was a good, logical idea, and everybody should have listened to all of Piggy's ideas from the start. The boys ate fruit. While all this is happening Simon is climbing up the mountain, and Jack is planning how he will get more people in his tribe. Jack decides to give a feast. His group of boys went to hunt and killed a large sow. The pig's head was put on a stick and stuck into the ground as a gift for the beast. Jack and his hunters came to where Ralph and Piggy were, took a few branches from the fire, and Jack announced that there will be a feast. The last eevent in the chapter is Simon hallucinating that he was talking to the Lord of the Flies. In this chapter lots of stuff happened. First of all the conflic between Jack and Ralph went to the next level. Jack had argued with Ralph before, but in this chapter he started his own tribe and stole fire from him. Also Jack and his hunters are reffered to as savages for the first time. This is foreshadowing because it gives you a clue about how Jack and his hunters are going to act further into the book. I liked this chapter because, in my opinion, it was the first chapter of the book that was not boring. In chapters before this one there was not really much going on, but this chapter was the one that actually got me interested in the book.